I’ve long tried to block distraction in the absence of something else I enjoyed. I used Cold Turkey to commit to blocking websites for the next 1-2 months, which has the ability to add websites to the filter whenever I wanted. I use iOS Screen Time blocks to lock myself out of my own phone. The idea is that most distractions are bad coping mechanisms, but some are worse than others. For example, the internet browser on my phone is far worse for my sleep than podcasts.
Quarter-on-quarter improvements to my blocking strategy are hard to see on a graph, but I notice that removing these blocks immediately reduces my productivity by 25-70% with similarly dramatic effects on my sleep and mood. It’s closer to 70% when I don’t enjoy my current work, so mitigating distractions in this regime is possible, just difficult.
I’ve long tried to block distraction in the absence of something else I enjoyed. I used Cold Turkey to commit to blocking websites for the next 1-2 months, which has the ability to add websites to the filter whenever I wanted. I use iOS Screen Time blocks to lock myself out of my own phone. The idea is that most distractions are bad coping mechanisms, but some are worse than others. For example, the internet browser on my phone is far worse for my sleep than podcasts.
Quarter-on-quarter improvements to my blocking strategy are hard to see on a graph, but I notice that removing these blocks immediately reduces my productivity by 25-70% with similarly dramatic effects on my sleep and mood. It’s closer to 70% when I don’t enjoy my current work, so mitigating distractions in this regime is possible, just difficult.