
I took Scott Hanselman's advice on productivity, and now look at me... - josh_earl
http://whiletruecode.com/post/taking-hanselmans-productivity-advice
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harryf
It's one thing to remove distractions but it's another to have real _focus_.

IMO we're reaching the point where the ability to focus on one topic for
prolonged time periods will become a new social / class divide; e.g. 80%
unable to concentrate on anything for more than a couple of minutes vs 20% who
have learnt how to focus. If you're not able to focus, you're effectively
disabled from being able to define your own "destiny".

~~~
vidar
Great point, it is an interesting extra dimension to the digital divide.
Consumers vs producers.

~~~
laluser
Well, I also agree, but I'd like to just add something to your small comment
on consumers vs. producers. In this case, I don't think it's necessarily
consumers vs. producers, but the divide among the consumers. Those consumers
who can consume some particular piece of content in a way they understand it
well, vs. the consumers who merely are looking for the tl;dr.

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namank
This is interesting. I reached similar conclusions several years ago and:

-turned data off on my phone. The control provided by pull is so much more than push. (email/twitter/facebook)

-email client is not running 24/7 anymore. Same philosophy as above.

-started hacking on extended projects - spend sometime every weekend over 5 months on one more challenging project.

-stopped posting every link I found interesting on FB/Twitter.

-decreased the amount of time spent on things I knew that I knew.

-started spending more time in solitude. (resisting the impulse to pull out the phone while waiting at the doctor's office)

-actually read books. Before this, I couldn't even remember the last time I had read a book back to back; magazines don't count.

Not only does the concentration help but I found the idle state of mind keeps
me much more relaxed and it encourages new ideas to pop into my head. (Idle
CPU being spent on the subconscious? I don't know but it works.) The overall
affect on my life is freaking amazing.

If there was ever a book called, "creativity by design", this would definitely
be in there.

~~~
brc
Similar to me.

In fact my hn activity is sporadic because I occasionally entirely block the
site at the host file level.

I've now got myself a little app that blocks a blacklist site for a specified
amount of time. I set this for 2-3 hour blocks, turn off email and get on with
things. It's a bit crummy but it works OK.

I've never had push notifications on my phone.

I use RescueTime but I find it a bit after-the-event. As in, it tells me how
bad I was in the prior week.

Ultimately, though, it takes self discipline, the same as any other worthwhile
task like eating well, getting fit, or maintaining relationships and
friendships.

If you find yourself mindlessly looking for distraction, I find it helps to
stop and question yourself on what task it is you're trying to avoid, and then
just get on and do that task.

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amcintyre
_I power through as quickly as possible using keyboard shortcuts, making quick
decisions about whether each item is important enough to devote some small
fraction of my life to. Will it help me work faster, understand something I've
been wrestling with, solve a difficult problem?_

This kind of approach reminds me of Richard Hamming's "You and your research"
talk: <http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~dahlin/bookshelf/hamming.html>

"Under these circumstances it seems better to live a life in which you do
important things (important in your eyes, of course) than to merely live out
your life. No sense frittering away your life on things that will not even
appear in the footnotes."

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astrofinch
I worry that those who successfully stop their Internet procrastination will
no longer be around to tell the rest of us how they did it.

~~~
chernevik
Hopefully some BodHTTPsatvas will remain behind to show the way out.

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tferris
Some good tips, especially this one browser addon.

I'd add:

\- Using Pomodoro with 25 min units + 5 min breaks.

\- Being logged in FB in your least favorite browser + checking FB in the
evening only—works like a charme, you stop entering facebook.com in your url
bar because it won't work in your most used browser and after a while you get
too lazy to log in or to change into your least favourtie browser and thus,
you stay away from FB. Doing this for months and it reduce my FB the to zero
during the day.

~~~
danso
Yeah, I go as far as to enter a password that I can't remember (copying it
from some text file) and leaving the cookie only on the reserved browser.
Keeps me from checking FB when I'm on my phone with nothing to do

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sea6ear
The other day I changed my Linux window manager to stumpwm (also tried
ratpoison but stumpwm works slightly better for my particular case). It's
definitely helped me focus, and the fact that I have to run a command or
keystroke to get to the Internet gives me just enough extra effort that I can
stop myself.

However, I also find it somewhat grueling to go without any distractions for a
long time. After about 4 hours straight I'm surprisingly drained.

~~~
jasox
I changed too my linux window manager three days ago to stumpwm. It feels and
runs great. Try conkeror web browser If you didn't yet, +10% productivity
gain.

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ExpiredLink
BTW, the 'zap colors' bookmarklet still works (at least with FF):
<https://www.squarefree.com/bookmarklets/zap.html>

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joelrunyon
What was the chrome extension you used to block distracting sites? That would
have been sweet if you could have included that link.

~~~
dkulchenko
I'm guessing here, but more than likely StayFocusd:
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/laankejkbhbdhmipfm...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/laankejkbhbdhmipfmgcngdelahlfoji?hc=search&hcp=main)

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guelo
I went with Windows Firewall for blocking sites on my work computer hoping it
would give me more control than /etc/hosts. But I haven't been able to come up
with a filter for Google that blocks News and Reader but allows me to use
Search and Mail.

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steveplace
If you work from home, I strongly suggest getting a DD-WRT router and block
sites at that level. Then password protect the router and give the password to
someone you trust.

~~~
TheCowboy
If you use /etc/hosts to block sites can be enough for some people to break
the habit of casually drifting to those sites when your attention is on the
wane or you're trying to focus. Less of a hassle too.

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WalterBright
Time to stop reading HN!

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gwern
The year followup will be more interesting.

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herbig
Who's Hanselman and what is this article about? I generally ignore random blog
stuff like this.

~~~
runjake
He's a fairly well-known blogger, podcaster, speaker, and .NET programmer
who's entries get submitted here pretty frequently. But you could've learned
this by visiting the link you're complaining about.

~~~
jiggy2011
Ironically I think he's actually already following the advice from the link by
not visiting it.

~~~
herbig
Twas the joke. But I did get a bunch of useful links above that I didn't read.

