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Ask HN: Procrastination tools for sites/apps other than HN

4 points by russjhammond ↗ HN
I have enabled the procrastination settings for HN over the past week and love it. It keeps me focused when I am logged in and keeps me from coming back to waste time.

I would love programs that are similar, especially for email (I use Apple Mail) or Reddit & Digg. Any suggestions?

7 comments

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jbrennan
I've been a big fan of Concentrap http://getconcentrating.com It lets you set periods of time where you'll be focusing on a certain task, and lets you perform actions when you start and end that period.

For example, when you start a "Work" concentration period of say, 50 minutes, you can have it block a list of domains (HN, Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, whatever you choose), have it quit your IM apps, and launch your Text editor, for example. It's a wonderful and effective app.

russjhammond
Wow, that looks awesome. Thanks for the suggestion. Have you setup any scripts to run with it? If so I would be curious what you setup?
jbrennan
I don't use any external scripts, I just set mine to block problematic domains for me (places where I find I sink a lot of time, HN, Reddit, Twitter are the primary ones), and usually I make it close my IM client (or sometimes set my status to Busy), close Twitter, and my feed reader. Then I'm good to go.

I find 50 minutes is a good duration for me. During the ten minutes downtime in an hour, I let myself read Twitter, and get up and walk around the office. Then back to work.

It's marvellous for staying on task.

russjhammond
Do you tend to use it everyday or only on the days you are having a hard time concentrating?

And while we are at it, any other great anti-procrastination/focus apps or tricks you have found lately that work really well?

jbrennan
Realized there's a typo. Should be "Concentrate.app", not Concentrap.