Show HN: Prod – Blocks addictive websites until you've finished your to-do list | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Prod – Blocks addictive websites until you've finished your to-do list

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96 pointsJohnBartlet45 comments

Very nice extension. I think one of the best things that’s happened to me productivity-wise is switching from an employer who was very loose/lenient about personal use with company computers to one who is very strict about it (we work with much more sensitive data). Knowing I can’t just jump over to HN whenever I want makes it a lot easier to focus. I also like the clear segmentation between my digital work environment and my personal one.

I agree on the segmentation. I actually have no work-related reason to keep everything separate, but purposely do so for the distraction-related reasons you mentioned. I do this by keeping each type of work and personal project in its own Chrome user profile. This creates a silo'ed workspace for me to keep things only related to that project, but still have a personal profile to keep all my interesting bookmarks that I like to waste my time on.

I went a bit further a created separate macos users for work and personal stuff. It helped with distractions but I did encountered a minor inconvenience when wanted to sync vscode / shell configurations.

I have modified my localhost to block the sites that are addictive, on my work machine. Works wonders for me.

I'm in my mid 30's and have my bad habits really drilled in over the years, tried a lot of things ( more or less ) and the most effective thing so far has been (and is) 'https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique'. Until few years ago I didn't realize how much you can get done in 4 x 30m of really focused time.

I’ve tried the Pomodoro technique a few times over the last couple of years and just couldn’t ever get it to stick. Part of my problem is that I have pretty bad anxiety and focus issues, so I really have to force myself into a space that is conducive to being productive.

This wouldn't work for me - my to-do list only grows bigger, not smaller :-)

Anyway, I've had a lot of success with Cold Turkey for blocking distracting websites and applications. I even bought a license for the extra features since it is so good. So yeah, I recommend it. Not affiliated.

Just adding the direct URL https://getcoldturkey.com/ MacOS/Windows (not affiliated either, first time I see it)

Yep, Cold turkey is great. I use Freedom for IOS for similar functionality.

Freedom's been removed from the iOS App Store, unfortunately :(

Whoa, must be recent. Do you know of any alternatives?

My iOS app studycity may provide what you are looking for. If not, we might be able to modify it to provide some of the features freedom did.

I'm pretty certain that Freedom (and many other ad-blocking apps) got banned because they were using a VPN for uses other than a strict VPN. Your app uses a VPN for access control, right? Why do you think it won't be banned?

EDIT: I don't want that to sound hostile at all...genuinely curious

Fair question. There are a number of differences between apps like Freedom and StudyCity. We are aware of the recent VPN rules. StudyCity simply needs a gate to direct the student / child to take a couple of minutes to earn points on Khan Academy or another supported site. The gate can be implemented in many ways. At the moment, this is all the detail I can provide.

Cold Turkey is great. After starting a session, I tried all of the basic stuff like looking through the /etc/hosts file or unloading the plist. None of it seemed to disable it, so I have been less distracted ever since.

What do you do when you're building?

SSH into a remote server and read HN using w3m.

Gotta go, compiler throwing errors...

First of all, this looks like a great project...

...but the problem I've always had with these types of systems is that there's always that one item on your to-do list which ends up more complicated than you expected: So at the end of the day you're stuck with either (1) redefining the scope of that one to-do list item so that you can enjoy your evening and browse the web or (2) sticking with the original scope of your todo item and then you don't get to enjoy your websites/evening, even if you've worked hard otherwise.

In this way, what was supposed to be a cut-and-dry, objective productivity metric unavoidably devolves into a subjective decision.

Re: "the problem I've always had with these types of systems is that there's always that one item on your to-do list which ends up more complicated than you expected", I 100% agree. To avoid being subjective like you mentioned, I often prefer to time-box my tasks if I think there's any risk of the scope being unclear. So instead of:

- Migrate photos from iCloud to Google Photos

I'll start with:

- Spend 1 hour trying to migrate photos and write down where I left off

This avoids the issue of being unsatisfied at the end of the day because something didn't get done or something took longer than expected.

If something absolutely has to get done and cannot be time-boxed, I like to veer conservative and either start way earlier than necessary or devote a whole day or more to doing just that one thing (example: taxes - start early, work fire drill - drop everything until it's done).

Thanks for checking it out. I think that's a real problem with all to-do lists. I often have to break down my to-dos into smaller chunks just so I can have the satisfaction of checking them off. I used to write "write to-do list" on my to-do list.

Perhaps it would be worth adding a To Don't list? I mean, it's not the To Do List that makes or breaks us, but doing things we shouldn't be doing (that pours sand in the gas tank of productivity).

That said, and perhaps this is outside your scope, what kills me is social media. I know #duh :) let me finish :) For example, I'll be stuck on something semi-pressing so I'll post it on SM. That leads to checking back for answers. Or having something to share to SM and not wanting to forget about it later so it becomes a now thing.

To some extent that's what this does, it has a to-don't list of sorts; the list of sites you'd like to block. I'd suggest just deleting all social media accounts, you won't miss them. Email is still king.

Yes. But __maybe__ if the To Don't stared you down as well that would be helpful. Maybe even keep score somehow? Evidently, afaik, a score is a good nudge when it comes to influencing human decision making / behavior.

Ultimately, these things fail us (or us them?). I'm what-if'ing a couple of tweaks that might help just a little bit.

This is not production perfect yet, but it integrates with Github, DuoLingo, and several education sites to offer similar help to develop better habits. Target market is children, but we added a github option to measure progress as an alternative to the learning sites.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/studycity/jhehahil...

My main problem with the web usage is not blocking unwanted websites but rather understanding which when and how I should or shouldn't block them.

For example, On one hand, I can't block Wikipedia Stack Overflow or GitHub because I need them for work. On the other, I find myself hours later browsing the source of a project unrelated to the task at hand.

By far, the only way I found to work is to introduce a delay between the need for information and the actual retrieval.

Like you write down queries to the Google and then do something else. In ten minutes time, you do exactly what you wrote in your log file. If you want to search for something else, you introduce it into the journal again, and in ten minutes repeat it. So goes the cycle.

But then, because you have this lag you can't do research faster because your every step is now bound by drag and red tape that you introduced yourself.

TBH, this is a book material here, because working with internet but not abusing the information hoarding instincts is a methodology question.

Not a technical one.

My go to is meditation. Everytime I find my mind wandering I take a break for 3 minutes and concentrate on my breathing. I find it brings my brain back to focus on the present.

Sounds... exhausting :(

What happens when you're mind wanders while you meditate?

the whole point of meditation is focus your mind..

Cool! I made one awhile back called Todobook, it replaces the FB Newsfeed (and various other sites' feeds/lists, like HN) with a todo app that unlocks the feed when you finish your task(s) (either all or one, via config). Fun project :)

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/todobook/ihbejplhk...

It looks great and I think there are a lot of potentials. But you need to create a to-do list which could be finished in the right amount of time. But in the beginning, it's difficult to know how long you need for which task. Is it possible to unlock the websites after x finished to-do's? Maybe unlock it for 30 minutes?

We build our own productivity Tool Zenkit and that's why I need to discover tools in a different way.

Personally self control and discipline is the only way to avoid productivity nightmares. Still I can see it as a productivity enhancer for many usecases.

Discipline is a habit that can be built in part by cutting out the habit of the distraction. No matter how unconsciously one may type in facebook.com, etc., it's an immediate cut to the loop.

I think discipline is more about being completely honest with yourself than habit.

Thanks for your work. I have been wanting a tool like this. It really appreciate the design; both in terms of functionality and aesthetics.

One way to use this plugin would be to break tasks down into manageable pieces. It is usually easier to motivate yourself to knock out a 15 min task than to do a 4 hour task.

Is it open source? If not, any chance of a ff extension?

Hi, it's not open source. Once I've nailed the Chrome version, I'll release one for Firefox. Stay tuned.

The idea is good but I still think you could just schedule use of various websites like any other meeting.

Does it work for https? I've found blocking on the router level often fails and the hosts file is more reliable. Especially because of browser hopping, firefox for security, chrome for google services, opera for specific sites, iexplore when things are too broken a by ublock origin and no script or older camera firmware.

Hello, do you mean will it block websites using https?

...and hands all your browsing over to someone from the internet.

Have you validated that this is true? I just pulled the extension to look at the source (it's not minified). It does have google analytics on it, but that is noted by the author in the extension.

All of the blocking logic is done client side, with a single web request that I could find (not posting any data).

What I mean is that you run code on your machine from a guy you know nothing about. It has full control and you have no idea what it does.

The average user does not know how to study the code before installing it.

Heck, I don't know it. How do you do it?

Is this open source?

I'm afraid not. I plan to monetize it, but not in an annoying way.

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