Ask HN: How do you focus on productivity when working on the computer?

I'm curious what methods people here use to avoid distractions when working on a computer. Obviously computers are excellent tools, but simply having access to an internet browser can be a gateway to a massive time sink.

Some things I have tried:

- Set up a Pi-Hole with distracting websites on the blacklist so the DNS requests do not resolve. I disabled this to dork around on the web today, so clearly not an effective commitment device.

- "Cold Turkey Writer" which locks down your PC giving only a text box essentially, until you write X words. I didn't find this useful for my writing style since I tend to look up additional references/sources as I write, and losing access to that hurt my flow.

- Using a Raspberry Pi 4B as my desktop PC, with the idea being I couldn't play games and YouTube isn't entertaining when 30% of the frames are dropping. I ended up wasting a bunch of time messing with Linux trying to get stuff to work (oh Obsidian needs to be compiled and installed for ARM, oh there's no Google Drive installer for Linux, let's set up rclone, oh the audio driver broke). It was cool to have a fanless, low-power PC but I went back to my Windows desktop out of frustration and desire to have things "just work".

Is it futile to use hardware/software to try and fix a self-discipline issue? What works for you?