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Comment by theon144 | Hacker News Reader

Thank you! I definitely observed a similar pattern using distraction blockers; it worked for a while, but after a while I just ended up wasting just as much time, except on different websites or on devices where the blocking wasn't enabled.

The real "cure" is just mindfully deciding not to open "unproductive" apps and sites. Otherwise, my time-wasting workflow (hah) just naturally adapts after a while.

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It's amazing how quickly we adapt to get around hindrance, even if that's something we created for our own benefit.

I wonder how you could get around this? Maybe a huge blacklist and deliberately messing with sites randomly to the point it become too much of an issue, e.g. making sites load very slowly; breaking css, images randomly, etc. Something like netflix's chaos monkey?

I use userstyles to browse in black and white, 11px regular font, and no images:

    https://userstyles.org/styles/137906/s-somesites-black-white
    https://userstyles.org/styles/107911/o-small-text-hide-images

Less colorful websites -> less time browsing.

That would actually make browsing far more pleasant for me. MMMV.

I've tried delays too, but it ends up being almost the same, because I just associate opening reddit/hn/youtube on my computer with the delay and discomfort - so I open it on my phone or another computer.

If there's a way to circumvent it, it just becomes muscle memory at some point later.

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