Procrastination and the Internet

Procrastination. It happens to all of us. Work starts to get overwhelming and the shiny Interwebs are there to take us away.

When I start to feel overwhelmed with all the things I have to take care of, I’ll open up Netflix or Hulu and catch up on shows I’ve missed. Or, I’ll look at random news on Reddit and Hacker News. I can easily escape and avoid all my burdens. A couple hours of this is okay, but sometimes it can turn into days; and then reality starts to sink in: none of this is pushing my business forward! Knowing my own weaknesses, I’ve developed a several techniques over the years to keep me productive and away from the Internet.

Block Sites at the Computer Level

For this I like to use Concentrate. You can specify domains you visit often and it’ll block them for you.

Blocking Hacker News

Blocking Hacker News

Unfortunately its abandonware but you can still download the 60 hour trial. I’ve also heard good things about Freedom. If you want to go completely old school you can also manually edit your /etc/hosts file.

Block Sites at the Router Level

I use OpenDNS as a DNS service. Just sign up, log into your router, pop two IPs to use as your DNS servers and you’re golden. It allows you to specify filters and individual domains on the web interface.

Setting Filters

Setting Filters

Block Sites/Apps at the Phone Level

I do this more so for social and family reasons. There was a time when I noticed we were all having dinner and everyone was just looking at their phones. Now, by default, I do the following things:

Disable Emails

Disable Emails

Turn off Emails

Restrict Safari

Disable Safari

Disable Safari

Restrict Apps

Restricting to 9 and under blocks most of my time sucking apps (Netflix, Instagram, etc)

Restricting to 9 and under blocks most of my time sucking apps (Netflix, Instagram, etc)

Block Things at the Partner Level

This is when you know you have a real problem. I used this technique when I was playing a lot of World of Warcraft and StarCraft II several years back. The solution? Create a random password for the account, give it to your partner and have them hide it or throw it away.

What about you? What kind of tricks do you use to stay away from the internet?