I am very easily distracted, and often I’ll click on something with the best intentions but then end up spending too much time on something completely unrelated that I regret spending time on. Recently I’ve found a way to setup my computer and firefox browser to mitigate this somewhat.

First thing is to setup a new user for a specific purpose. This sets the context for me and my brain at the moment when I log into the user. If I log into my user SomeStupidProject, I am only supposed to work on some stupid project. It’s almost like a portal into working on the project. If I use one user for everything, it quickly becomes cluttered with a lot of bookmarks and whatnot. My mind also becomes confused or something because it hops back and forth between working and relaxing in the same environment. I find it helps setting different backgrounds etc. related to what I want to do when logged into the user as that are more signals telling my brain what the current context is.

The second thing is to use the leechblock addon for firefox and block all domains all of the time with * and time period 0000-2400. Then when you need to open a website, add it as an exception using +. For some websites I find i can whitelist all of it, for example fast.ai. Other websites, like youtube, I treat very carefully. I find that whitelisting one and one video (or playlist) works quite well.