Unreadable on mobile - even if it's only meant for desktops you need people on mobile to easily read what it's about. I also just see the "whoops" message.
I noticed a lot of my procrastination came from habit. Opening Reddit, or Hacker News was the path to a surge of dopamine. Where as getting down to work didn't have the same surge. So I tried to just block "bad sites". That helped, but I still found myself occasionally opening a new tab, than out of habbit going to one of the sites. What I needed to do was remove the root cause. So I wrote this script (https://gist.github.com/steven-p-walsh/9b7c0ffd2fe4817d67459...) it's like a shock-collar for social media.
I've blocked Reddit and HN on my desktop, now I am watching more YouTube, drink 3 times as much coffee and tea and am hyperaware of what's going on outside of my window.
Seems that specific websites aren't the cause, the problem is much deep than that.
This is exactly what happens to me. If I do work that I enjoy, I don't procrastinate. I don't even mind doing the shitty stuff if most of the work is fun, but when I'm not enjoying the majority of my work, I procrastinate... Which is what I'm doing right now.
The solution is to push back on whoever assigned the task to you and what the value of it is, what the end result should look like, etc. If it's worthless effort and busy work, make them understand it. If it's just the boring drudge that makes the better things happen, at least you can be engaged in the end goal.
I've gotten rid of ever using hacker news from browsers, and now I'm typing in a vim buffer from w3m to reply to you. At least I'm not leaving my development environment...
YouTube was tricky for me too. Because so many tutorials are on youtube it’s hard to ban it. And you watch one it’s no longer blocked at least on that tab. Get “distract free tube” or something like that on chrome/Firefox. It gets rid of the side bar, trending, suggestions etc. basically everything but the video.
It doesn’t solve the deeper problem but it turns a time suck website into a productive one.
Dunno if people find this useful, but there's a program called cold turkey that blocks certain sites that you can specify for a period of time that you also specify.
Optimal time for breaks vary. You should figure it out yourself. When it comes to productivity it's 52 minutes work time vs 17 minutes break[1]. There is also 'pomodoro technique'[2]. There is also kind of interesting work (which can be extended to topic of procrastination) done by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi [3], namely - idea of 'Flow'.
From personal perspective I would say to also look at how do you eat, sleep, spend your free time and take any substances (alcohol, drugs, cigarettes...). Even if this is not an ongoing thing but occasional it has tremendous effect on ability to concentrate for long periods of time. Excessive carbon based (or worse, sugar based) diet can make you hyperactive (same as excessive fat based diet can make you dull btw). Again, that's a personal perspective.
As last resort, there are some supplements which could help you with concentration, not pharmaceuticals, there are a lot of natural nootropics[4] you can get anywhere.
Bottom line, if you waste time on Internet - just stop. There is no other way. Blocking websites can help, but in the end, you need to choose not to visit those. It's addiction as any other. And don't treat this post as advice, everybody needs to figure it out himself.
Unfortunately the pictures seem to be intentionally cropped to be low-quality with apparent JPEG artifacts. Originals look great. Granted my screen is 2560x1440, so it's more apparent, but still.
When I hit the "Whoops, failed" screen, I pressed F5 to refresh the page and it started working. It tells you to turn off all devices and give yourself this 5 minutes to really put everything aside, then shows a series of nice nature scenes fullscreen.
First though, I did View Source and spent about 5 minutes trying to figure it out, thinking I should really learn some more JavaScript! Great break, now I'm ready to get back to things I need to do!
I think this is a neat idea. I would love it if you made this into one of those scary image popping up and loud screaming audio pranks. Three and a half minutes in everyone would be pretty sold on just relaxing. The perfect targets.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 108 ms ] thread>>> Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'src' of undefined at t.value (Break.js:92)
nice idea though
Jokes aside. Excited to see what it will show when it is back up :)
Seems that specific websites aren't the cause, the problem is much deep than that.
Find the least damaging form of procrastination and use that. For me these are:
1. Reading fiction books (currently reading "The Humans")
2. Exercise
3. Hacker News
In that order (I'm protecting myself against YouTube which is way worse than HN).
It doesn’t solve the deeper problem but it turns a time suck website into a productive one.
I think it only supports Windows and macOS though. https://getcoldturkey.com/
Failed to load resource: the server responded with a status of 500 (Internal Server Error)
Api.js:4 GET https://b45-backend.herokuapp.com/images 500 (Internal Server Error) value @ Api.js:4 value @ Break.js:39 value @ Break.js:35 $a @ react-dom.production.min.js:4978 Va @ react-dom.production.min.js:5123 (anonymous) @ react-dom.production.min.js:5975 t.unstable_runWithPriority @ scheduler.production.min.js:274 Nl @ react-dom.production.min.js:5974 Il @ react-dom.production.min.js:5958 Pl @ react-dom.production.min.js:5925 Ml @ react-dom.production.min.js:6020 _n @ react-dom.production.min.js:1737
Sounds like an interesting idea though.
From personal perspective I would say to also look at how do you eat, sleep, spend your free time and take any substances (alcohol, drugs, cigarettes...). Even if this is not an ongoing thing but occasional it has tremendous effect on ability to concentrate for long periods of time. Excessive carbon based (or worse, sugar based) diet can make you hyperactive (same as excessive fat based diet can make you dull btw). Again, that's a personal perspective.
As last resort, there are some supplements which could help you with concentration, not pharmaceuticals, there are a lot of natural nootropics[4] you can get anywhere.
Bottom line, if you waste time on Internet - just stop. There is no other way. Blocking websites can help, but in the end, you need to choose not to visit those. It's addiction as any other. And don't treat this post as advice, everybody needs to figure it out himself.
[1]https://lifehacker.com/52-minute-work-17-minute-break-is-the... [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique [3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mihaly_Csikszentmihalyi [4]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nootropic#Herbs
Thank you for sharing.
First though, I did View Source and spent about 5 minutes trying to figure it out, thinking I should really learn some more JavaScript! Great break, now I'm ready to get back to things I need to do!
"Whoops, it failed."