This is not what you asked for, but I wanted to share some general skepticism of content blocking tools. Over time, I’ve come to the conclusion that they do more harm than good for me personally:
Content blockers have an adversarial vibe to them, like the different agents in my brain are fighting each other, and one blocked the other from doing what it likes. I prefer something that feels more like I’m being nice to myself.
I’ve had more success with setting up good nudges and more ‘peaceful’ negotiation between the different agents in my head. Not in the sense of compromise à la “just 15 minutes of YouTube, then back to work”, but more in the sense “Ok, what does the YouTube-craving part of my brain really want, and can I make it happy in some other way?” For me, the answer is often “take a break from work, get away from the screen, and spend some time with friends.”
In general, it seems to me that content blockers shift the focus from “why do I do X and how can I do Y instead?” to “how can I prevent myself from doing X?”, which doesn’t seem fruitful.
Content blockers lead me to replace bad behavior X by bad behavior Y (e.g., watching YouTube videos → watching videos on some other site that isn’t blocked).
As you said, there’s often some scenario where I need to make an exception (e.g., access facebook because a work-related conversation took place there).
Overall, I’ve found these tools useful to occasionally break particularly bad (addiction-like) habits, but not for being more focused in general. I’ve tried many of them but haven’t used any for a while.
This is not what you asked for, but I wanted to share some general skepticism of content blocking tools. Over time, I’ve come to the conclusion that they do more harm than good for me personally:
Content blockers have an adversarial vibe to them, like the different agents in my brain are fighting each other, and one blocked the other from doing what it likes. I prefer something that feels more like I’m being nice to myself.
I’ve had more success with setting up good nudges and more ‘peaceful’ negotiation between the different agents in my head. Not in the sense of compromise à la “just 15 minutes of YouTube, then back to work”, but more in the sense “Ok, what does the YouTube-craving part of my brain really want, and can I make it happy in some other way?” For me, the answer is often “take a break from work, get away from the screen, and spend some time with friends.”
In general, it seems to me that content blockers shift the focus from “why do I do X and how can I do Y instead?” to “how can I prevent myself from doing X?”, which doesn’t seem fruitful.
Content blockers lead me to replace bad behavior X by bad behavior Y (e.g., watching YouTube videos → watching videos on some other site that isn’t blocked).
As you said, there’s often some scenario where I need to make an exception (e.g., access facebook because a work-related conversation took place there).
Overall, I’ve found these tools useful to occasionally break particularly bad (addiction-like) habits, but not for being more focused in general. I’ve tried many of them but haven’t used any for a while.