

Ask HN: Strongest way to block distracting sites? - hella

Say I'm addicted to HN. How might one block visiting HN, without an easy way to unblock it?
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roxstar
In your hosts file add:

    
    
        127.0.0.1 news.ycombinator.com
        127.0.0.1 other.distracting.site
        ...etc
    

Windows, Linux, MacOS all have a hosts file if you don't know where it is
google it real quick. Editing a file is pretty annoying for me especially if
the file requires admin rights, I think mac has a few distraction apps (google
should probably find some) and windows/linux probably do too.

Disciplining yourself with a timer reward system may work well for some people
(1 hour working, 10 minutes web browsing set to an egg timer).

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metachris
Set "noprocrast" to yes in your HN profile. maxvisit defines how many minutes
you are allowed to stay on HN, minaway the minutes until the site will be
available again. Such a great feature, only works on HN though.

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robeastham
Best by far that I've found is SelfControl by Steve Lambert - thanks Steve!

<http://visitsteve.com/made/selfcontrol/>

It's OSX only though I'm afraid. It blocks at the network driver level and
survives a restart. I switch it on for two hours or more, after one check of
my email, before starting work in the morning. This initial two hours of
inability to visit distracting sites usually gets me in the groove with
whatever I'm working on. I then find I'm less likely to get distracted
throughout the rest of the day and more able to stay focused on my daily task
list.

I've been developing a system designed to get my procrastination under
control. Fifty percent of this procrastination takes the form of reading posts
from HN. So I feel your pain! My system is based on a modified version of Bill
Westerman's GSD system (<http://www.utilware.com/gsd3.html>). I've got a draft
blog post that describes it and the software I have used recently to help me
focus. It's helped me finally get round to building what I think is going to
turn into a pretty useful app for managing résumés.

I'll post a link to the blog article soon so keep an eye out for it here on
HN.

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coderdude
If you really want some peace from distraction on the net -- disconnect your
Ethernet cable.

Anecdote: I went without the net for about a month a few years ago and during
that time I picked up Python, starting with zero knowledge of it, with just
the copy Diving into Python that so happened to be on my Ubuntu machine. I had
nothing better to do and nothing to distract me so I figured what the heck,
I'll learn this language. I think it was one of the best things that happened
to my programming career because it's now my language of choice.

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guynamedloren
If you use Chrome, there's an extension called Focus (I think) that works
extremely well. The only problem is that it's pretty easy to disable Chrome
extensions..

~~~
PonyGumbo
The one I use in Chrome is called "StayFocused", and it includes an option
that prevents you from overriding it. I also use LeechBlock for Firefox.

