I suffer from a similar problem of getting distracted at work. Thinking and learning more about luke’s procrastination post, specifically the hyperbolic discounting part made me understand why switching to mildly rewarding tasks was so attractive. Hyperbolic discounting means that a task who’s rewards are low overall but is slightly more pleasant right now can be intensely motivating.
RescueTime does do blocking of ‘everything with exceptions’. It categorizes websites (not sure how) and you say whether each category is distracting or not distracting. You could simply say everything is distracting but unblock the specific websites you do need to use. This is what I use at work. When I use it, it works. The trouble is making myself use it, I think maybe random reminders to use it might help here. Even when I don’t use the blocking part the productivity tracking is interesting and useful.
Another option is an XKCD-style 30 second delay before loading a page. This lowers the attractiveness of switching tasks by taking advantage of hyperbolic discounting and increasing the delay till reward which can drastically reduce your motivation to do those other things. The comments section links to a couple different extensions, and I you can find more by searching for “xkcd delay extension” or some such.
Does reading academic or semi-academic papers count as ‘low energy entertainment’? If it’s not quite interesting enough, you could try the gamification strategy of tasking yourself with highlighting the important parts. You could try to hooking up with someone researching some field in order to do a LW post and help them doing research.
I suffer from a similar problem of getting distracted at work. Thinking and learning more about luke’s procrastination post, specifically the hyperbolic discounting part made me understand why switching to mildly rewarding tasks was so attractive. Hyperbolic discounting means that a task who’s rewards are low overall but is slightly more pleasant right now can be intensely motivating.
RescueTime does do blocking of ‘everything with exceptions’. It categorizes websites (not sure how) and you say whether each category is distracting or not distracting. You could simply say everything is distracting but unblock the specific websites you do need to use. This is what I use at work. When I use it, it works. The trouble is making myself use it, I think maybe random reminders to use it might help here. Even when I don’t use the blocking part the productivity tracking is interesting and useful.
Another option is an XKCD-style 30 second delay before loading a page. This lowers the attractiveness of switching tasks by taking advantage of hyperbolic discounting and increasing the delay till reward which can drastically reduce your motivation to do those other things. The comments section links to a couple different extensions, and I you can find more by searching for “xkcd delay extension” or some such.
Does reading academic or semi-academic papers count as ‘low energy entertainment’? If it’s not quite interesting enough, you could try the gamification strategy of tasking yourself with highlighting the important parts. You could try to hooking up with someone researching some field in order to do a LW post and help them doing research.