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Comment by adenadel | Hacker News Reader

Here's a Chrome extension that is useful for enforcing the Pomodoro technique. It allows you to blacklist websites and customize the work/break lengths.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/strict-workflow/cg...

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Thanks, but no way to stop a timer except removing the extension, by design? O-kay. That may have been the shortest-lived extension I've added and removed.

Out of curiousity, why do you want to stop the timer? To me the point seems to commit to lay out a specific segment of time to be productive and holding to the commitment helps. I imagine you have a different perspective on this though.

Because I installed it and clicked on the new browser icon to see what it did, and it said I couldn't browse the web for the next half hour of my evening unless I uninstalled it. I understand some barrier to change of mind in a self-discipline app, but forcing me to uninstall (which the user is perfectly capable of with a different couple of clicks) does not make me want to install it yet again, because the app annoyed me on purpose the first time I did.

In pomodoro if you get interrupted to the point where you need to stop what you are working on you are supposed to stop the timer and start over when you can.

It forces you to make sure interruptions are actually worth dealing with vs putting them off till after the timer is up.

Good point, but by itself restarting the timer isn't much of a deterrent (at least to me). It makes me wonder if a better incentive might exist so that you can pause the timer but with a weightier tradeoff.

I'm not the developer, and I haven't used the extension in awhile, but I think there was a way to stop the timer somehow (possibly by closing the browser and reopening).

I don't know if there was an undocumented way, but the extension explicitly stated you had to uninstall it to stop the timer or to change any settings.

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