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Comment by noahlt | Hacker News Reader

That's fine if you're PG and you write all the software yourself, but what if you're using a web framework or other open-source tools and need the web to access documentation or ask questions?

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This is what I meant when I said the long-term solution might be software that controlled how you used the Internet, rather than simply turning off wifi.

> This is what I meant when I said the long-term solution might be software

And I thought that was just a not-so-subtle plug for YC-funded companies ;)

PS - I guess these things aren't intentionally PR-ish. If anyone spends time talking to startup founders who are solving problems, it's only natural to start incorporating these problems into your world-view...

It wasn't because we funded Rescuetime that I wrote about this problem, but because I already thought this problem was so important that we funded Rescuetime.

I've found personally I don't need to block the whole internet - just the top few procrastination websites - facebook, reddit, slashdot, bbc news etc. that I'd otherwise be tempted to read.

There's a Firefox extension called LeechBlock ( http://www.proginosko.com/leechblock.html ) that will do that for you, and allow fine control over how long or when the sites are blocked as well as the option to stop you simply disabling it during these time periods.

But you can still use the web for research.

(Hope it didn't sound too much like an advert, but it's helped me).

Excellent advice. I solved 80% part of the problem two days ago by simply blocking news.yc at the hosts file level on my main machine. My laptop is now my news.yc machine. It is hilarious to have PG publish the same solution two days later. :)

I tried the noprocrast setting on this site. Reading between the lines of his essay, I surmise that PG, like me, has evolved around noprocrast. My lizard brain has figured out how to click the override button before my conscious mind can notice.

Most of the rest of the stuff I read is a few dozen blogs. They update through RSS, and there are few enough of them (and I skim quickly enough) that they aren't a big time sink. It's news.yc -- which tends to embroil me in writing -- that's the sink.

Of course, there are worse ways to waste time than news.yc. Sometimes you need to tell yourself that.

I have got a lot of benefit from Leechblock too. I use it to reward myself my allowing 10 minutes of fun every hour.

How about downloading the documentation to your work computer and using that local copy? If the docs fail, you can use the other computer to ask questions.

And I found that with google and irc I became lazy. Instead of just looking at the code of the framework to understand it when I have a problem (which is good for improving myself as a programmer), I just do a quick search on google or irc hoping that someone gives me an answer...

Or even just installing Google Desktop and searching that when you are offline since it seems to index most HTML files you look at or are on your machine

After reading your comment and others', I realized that iptables might be able to help out here. I wrote up an Ask HN ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=192953 ) which shows my current setup for throttling internet usage. Granted, storing pages in the browser cache is one great way to access documentation, but throttling might allow one to add pages to the cache while keeping procrastination at bay.

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