Alex Payne — My Get-Back-To-Work Hack

http://al3x.net/2009/09/14/my-get-back-to-work-hack.html

by twampss • 17 years ago

51 48 17 years ago

edw5192• 17 years ago

My Keep-Working Hack: 2 computers. One for work. One for internet. In different rooms. An egg timer. 48 minutes of work. 12 minutes of break.

http://successbeginstoday.org/wordpress/2006/09/the-power-of...

http://www.paulgraham.com/distraction.html

gila• 17 years ago

An alarm would ruin my train of thought so much, this idea probably works better for those of us that can't control our procrastination.

I know I have used my hosts file (windows and *nix) to block those domains that server such good distractions.

unalone3• 17 years ago

That works for those of us with two computers. I wish there was a way of routinely disabling the Internet, rather than having me manually do it.

pavel_lishin• 17 years ago

I'm pretty sure there's software out there for every OS that will do this.

Alternatively, you can unplug a cable / disable WiFi.

gizmo• 17 years ago

Complete overkill, but my router enforces a daily limit for sites I visit too often. It's not that difficult to set up. Make a iptables chain, route all traffic that matches certain ips to that chain, add a --limit and --limit-burst counter to that chain, deny by default, allow when below said limit.

For bonus points, make all http connections redirect to your favorite todo list when you've exceeded your limit, and deny all ssh access (to the router) during working hours.

Setting it up was complete procrastination of course, but it works better than any manual block list. By slightly lowering my daily time waste allowance I can reduce the time I spend on sites like these.

EDIT:

Blocking with hosts is terrible, because you don't want to block sites permanently, and if you continually enable/disable the block list your muscle memory will unblock a site even before you realize you should be working. Cron job limits don't work when you don't have very strict working hours. Basically, you want to take a break for a few minutes every hour or so, and you need soft limits to enforce that.

vilya• 17 years ago

If you're on a Mac, check out Freedom: http://macfreedom.com/

It does exactly what you want. I think I first heard about it on a HN thread a while ago...

run4yourlives2• 17 years ago

rescuetime does this.

webwright• 17 years ago

http://blog.rescuetime.com/2009/08/19/turning-off-the-distra...

We're actually pretty close to this (just soft-launched our windows version-- mac version hot on its heels). Starting with focus "toggling" ("Shut of the bad parts of the internet for 30 minutes") and moving on to nudges ("let me know when I exceed 30m of news time") and blocking ("block social networking if I exceed X hours or X %").

Disabling the internet is a baby/bathwater thing for a lot of people, I think. There's too much value there to turn it off completely (research, etc).

dcurtis2• 17 years ago

What? Do you really do this? It would drive me insane. Every 48 minutes you're interrupted by an alarm forcing you to stop what you're doing, get up, lose your train of thought, and then start over again?

Also, you can't reliably separate the work computer from the internet one if you want to search the web for help/resources. How do you manage that?

edw5192• 17 years ago

From your own web site, http://30dayflight.com/ ...

It is impossible for me to achieve the minimum level of awesomeness that I require of articles before I publish them within just a few hours in a single day, so I'm going to switch to a 3- or 5-day publishing timespan. This will hopefully keep me from going totally insane.

For someone who so goes "insane" and finds things "impossible" so easily, perhaps you should open your mind to the success strategies of others before you criticize them so hastily. Looks like you need to be doing something differently if your 30 day website is already 4 days behind on Day 7.

mattm• 17 years ago

I do something similar usually stopping around 45 minutes. I've gone to this method over a couple years of trial and error and it seems to be ideal for me. I have also come across studies which show that people can only focus on something for about 40-50 minutes before losing interest. So a short break is needed after that time period to refresh.

Also I have noticed that I tend to accomplish something worthy (eg. fixing a bug, implementing a small feature) at around the 45 minute point so it is good for motivation as I can take a break knowing I have accomplished something.

ptn• 17 years ago

Even better would be if when you tried to open a web that's a distraction, the browser opened your text editor.

I'm kinda dreaming...

Timothee• 17 years ago

It's kind of what Alex's setup is doing by opening Things.

mrduncan• 17 years ago

The best get-back-to-work hack I've ever had is to work on something that interests you. If you're able to do that, you won't need any hacks.

sophacles• 17 years ago

That is disingenuous. In any job/work, even if you love it, there are tasks that blow. Documentation, bug hunting, administrivia, the boilerplate crap that crops up are all examples of this. Some or all of them are required, and since they are not fun, it is easy to get distracted and procrastinate. Some people are just prone to such things. Is it not better that they figure out how to not procrastinate, or that they search for the elusive (possibly mythical) work that has 0% sucky tasks?

3pt14159• 17 years ago

I use rescue time. It is amazing. Having fun to do work also helps. Well that is it for this comment, I need to get back to work.

jonknee• 17 years ago

I wish it would work with Snow Leopard. Crashes on startup for me (even the special Snow Leopard version they posted).

jreposa2• 17 years ago

So, everytime I take a break and actually don't mind wasting time on reddit, I have to comment out parts of my /etc/hosts ?

yan• 17 years ago

You can write a slightly more complicated index.php than he does to time how long it's been since you last checked a distraction, and give you an allowance of, say, one distraction per hour. If you're allowed, the script can just proxy all requests for half a minute.

tiredandempty• 17 years ago

you can have two /etc/hosts (hosts - hosts.restricted), and a script switches each.

implementation is left as an exercise for the reader.

run4yourlives2• 17 years ago

Or you can just install rescue time. I think this is a new feature now.

jreposa2• 17 years ago

If you have TextMate and want to be able to disable and enable those /etc/hosts lines quickly, see the Screenr HOWTO:

  http://screenr.com/Sg7

After seeing Alex use Screenr, I just had to try it out myself.

short version:

  1. mate /etc/hosts
  2. select the lines you want to comment out
  3. command forward-slash (⌘/)
  4. save and authenticate if necessary

pxlpshr• 17 years ago

Pretty cool app I found for Mac. http://getconcentrating.com

Concentrate helps you work and study more productively by eliminating distractions.

To start, create an activity (design, study, write, etc) and choose actions (shown below) to run every time you concentrate. When ready, just click “concentrate." All your distractions will disappear and a timer will appear to help you stay focused.

mrtron2• 17 years ago

I use it - even tried to buy it but my credit card was rejected.

Works great for me. The only added feature I would like is to be able to schedule activities, ie. 9-5 daily block distractions.

reedlaw• 17 years ago

How about just get back to work instead of spending time on this hack? That would save you at least 15 minutes.

jacquesm• 17 years ago

I think to call this a 'hack' is to devaluate the term.

_giu• 17 years ago

I use a proxy (Pivoxy) to block requests to distracting sites. not the most effective method, but it works pretty good for me.

btw0• 17 years ago

I wrote a shell script that controls and logs your internet usage, hope someone will find it useful.

netctrl script: http://gist.github.com/187318

Basically you set up a cron job (use "netctrl -c") to take your computer online and offline at sometime automatically, and when you want to use internet when you are not supposed to, you have to specify a reason to do so (use "netctrl -u"), and the reason is logged.

mrlebowski• 17 years ago

This is exactly what I would love to use, sadly won't work with Vista :(

untitledz• 17 years ago

my hax: http://untitledz.wordpress.com/2009/02/08/the-coworking-pact... http://untitledz.wordpress.com/2009/02/12/dont-cowork-pair-p...

wave• 17 years ago

Instead of blocking the distracting sites permanently, using iptables might work little better by restricting access by time of day or duration.

[edit] I found the following: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=192953

prakash• 17 years ago

Why do all that, why not use freedom? http://macfreedom.com/

Psyonic• 17 years ago

While this is no doubt useful, its hilarious that something that actually removes a feature from your computer is being billed as "the most wonderful software ever invented." (not by you, by someone quoted on their homepage.)

mrtron2• 17 years ago

Concentrate app for mac users breaks the procrastination cycle.

warfangle• 17 years ago

Psst. Why is al3x.net loading an external gif every 20 seconds? It's distracting to see my browser indicate that it's loading something when I didn't interact with anything :)

dsplittgerber• 17 years ago

Spending hours or minutes working out yet another restriction on distractions instead of learning how to focus and concentrate properly? What good can this possibly ever do.

figital• 17 years ago

I drag the favicon of my current project to the home button (to set it as my home page). Everytime I open a new browser window I am reminded of what I should really be doing.

When that task is finished, I change the home page to the next task.

erso• 17 years ago

Every time I see something like this I'm reminded of the idea of trying stop drug addicts by maEvery time I see something like this I'm reminded of the idea of trying stop drug addicts by making drugs harder to get. Somehow, some way, you're going to get the drug.

The problem is not to restrict your access, but to change your desire. There's a much deeper problem if you require hand-slapping to stop you viewing sites like reddit while at work.

arohner• 17 years ago

My hack: run bittorrent during work time. Every site gets a lot slower. For me, the increase in latency makes distractions less enjoyable, but full access is still there if I really need it. On a few occasions, I've found important work-related stuff on HN.

thirdstation• 17 years ago

I think about money going into my bank account. Makes the distractions seem more expensive (I'm currently salaried and it still works).

tlrobinson• 17 years ago

Is there any way to do this without changing the user Apache runs as? I'm having problems with that...

_3ex7• 17 years ago

I do something similar. I use LeechBlock, an add-on for Firefox. I have it set to let me view sites, such as HN, before 7:30 (a reward for getting in early), during lunch (hopefully, that means between 11:30-Noon:30), and after 4:30 (brain is probably mush at this point anyways). LeechBlock even lets you redirect to a different site instead of a blacklisted one. I picked my companies web site. I must say, I have conditioned myself doing this. The urge to check time-sinks have dropped significantly since I have been doing this.

After reading this, I feel editing /etc/hosts is a better option.

Alex Payne — My Get-Back-To-Work Hack

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