

Ask PG: Disconnecting Distraction progress? - hella

I just reread Disconnectinb Distraction and saw this:<p>Note: The strategy described at the end of this essay didn’t work. It would work for a while, and then I’d gradually find myself using the Internet on my work computer. I’m trying other strategies now, but I think this time I’ll wait till I’m sure they work before writing about them.<p>1) Thank you for the openness and honesty. It's somehow comforting to know the greats suffer from distraction, too.<p>2) What are your current thoughts about and strategy against distraction?
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tep
I experience this problem on a daily basis, too. A few days ago I decided to
set up another user account on Ubuntu. That one, I use from 9 to 5. On this
account only work related programs can be used (but no e-mail client!). What's
more, I installed Leechblock[1] for Firefox. It blocks every website that is
not Wikipedia or university-related.

Hopefully this will work out in the long term.

[1]<https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/leechblock/>

~~~
fluidcruft
Why is there nothing as annoyingly effective as leechblock for chrome? Why?
It's almost as if Google prefers you to get lost in the web, rather than work.

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zyfo
Of course, time on the web and adword clicks are highly correlated!

Jokes aside, there's always StayFocusd:
[https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/laankejkbhbdhmip...](https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/laankejkbhbdhmipfmgcngdelahlfoji)

~~~
fluidcruft
StayFocusd provides more of a gentle hint but is not an effective cage. You
should compare it to leechblock's "evil" modes. Like forcing you to type a
64-character random stream of letters and digits (that can't be copied and
pasted) before accessing settings or disabling the extension when in lockdown.
StayFocusd is just a right click away from being disabled, it's really not
even worth installing.

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BasDirks
It really depends on your job, but for me the key is: stay at your command-
line. When you need to do some thinking or planning, don't open up your
browser immediately to _see what others say_.

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aik
Addendum questions I have in addition to the above questions:

1) Do you find it silly or irritating being called a 'great'?

2) Do you find yourself in disagreement with the usage of such a word
describing yourself? Are you unable to relate?

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dstein
I've been experimenting with having my work computer be physically
disconnected from the internet. I have everything I need to do my job self
contained on my laptop, including documentation. If I want to use the internet
I need to step away from the computer and use an iPad in another room.
Theoretically it works great, but so far results have been mixed because it's
such a viscous cycle I almost always find some reason I need to reconnect the
internet.

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derrida
A little off topic, but I was wondering if you do away with any sort of GUI on
your primary desktop and only use emacs, does that get you a distraction free
environment?

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tomjen3
The problem is that I would still need to read api documents, find solutions
to issuse etc.

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hollerith
Exactly: even when there was no X windowing system installed on my Linux and
the only browser I have access to was Lynx, I found myself using Lynx to
procrastinate.

ADDED. Actually, the proper way to think about anti-procrastination is
"willpower conservation", and not having a graphical browser installed or not
having software on the computer that allows the watching of videos does
conserve significant willpower when one is trying to get work done.

~~~
derrida
That is an excellent way to think of it.

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zyfo
Here's how a couple of guys deal with it:

Randall Munroe (creator of xkcd):
[http://blog.xkcd.com/2011/02/18/distraction-affliction-
corre...](http://blog.xkcd.com/2011/02/18/distraction-affliction-correction-
extensio/)

Alex Payne (early Twitter employee): <http://al3x.net/2009/09/14/my-get-back-
to-work-hack.html>

Please fill in with more examples. Preferably people who've accomplished
something, as opposed to random students who managed to get their homework
done in time.

