Lets be real, its way too easy to spend your “work” day jumping between social media, news, daily.dev, YouTube and reddit. If you’re anything like me, it’s tempting to tell yourself that learning new things is the same as actually getting work done.
I have spent many years trying to beat this, but on my own i never really succeeded. Then i found the following tools and since then, its way easier:
<ol>
<li>
Cold Turkey Blocker 
<a href="https://getcoldturkey.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">Cold Turkey Blocker</a> blocks websites across all browsers and blocks desktop apps and games as well. It lets you set timers during which you cant unblock it. The best part? Its smarter than you are: change your system time? Nope. Kill the process in Task Manager? Good luck. Its stubborn, and thats exactly what I needed, and you might too. I HIGHLY recommend it!
</li>
<li>
onesec App 
For your phone, <a href="https://one-sec.app/" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">onesec</a> is a genius little app. Whenever you try to open a distracting app, it throws up a long, unskippable screen. You have to wait a few seconds before you can proceed, which is just enough time to realize that you dont actually want to go there.
</li>
<li>
Phone Lock Box 
The easy solution would just be to put your phone in the next room, but if that doesnt work for you, this one might help: put your muted phone in a lockbox and set a timer – No notifications, no doomscrolling, just you and your work. 🫠
</li>
</ol>
<hr>
What about you? Got any weird or wonderful distraction killers or focus tricks I didnt mention? Drop them in the comments, I’m always looking for new ways to outsmart myself.

Fabian Letsch

Explores practical tools and strategies for managing digital distractions during work hours. Recommends Cold Turkey Blocker for desktop website and app blocking with tamper-proof timers, onesec app for mobile that adds intentional delays before opening distracting apps, and physical phone lockboxes as a last resort. Emphasizes the challenge of distinguishing between productive learning and procrastination.

Beating Distractions: A Survival Guide

I recommend reading “The 1% method” from James Clear. Easy read - a guide you should have in your shelves guys.
<img src="https://media4.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTc5MGI3NjExeDc3ZjYxMG1xanN2czd6dzBvcmFmbnpneTBnOXJ5cnJzeng1cXZvayZlcD12MV9pbnRlcm5hbF9naWZfYnlfaWQmY3Q9Zw/WoWm8YzFQJg5i/giphy.gif" alt="">

Fingers crossed that I don’t get any repercussions for recommending things that could impact the revenue of daily.dev negatively… 🤞
Still love the product. Actually, I love it too much, that’s why I created the post in the first place. 😅

I had actually bought Cold Turkey, but still have to try it out…
It’s great to see, some honest men are still out there, not milking people in need with subscriptions btw.
Problem is actually, that big distractions come from offline life. Depending on your living and or working situation, you constantly get distracted and something like Cold Turkey would help with that part of all distractions.
For example, if your work requires you to attend a lot of meetings, then you have barely any time left to accomplish your actual work, the one from your contract, let alone build up focus over the day.

During my time of finding apps to stop my discractions (I have a love/hate relationship with my phone, use it for spotify but doomscroll for 2 hours when I finally get any sort of free time), I found the app called “Ascent”, works really well for me (Note, there are sometimes where it works and doesn’t, I don’t know if it’s my old motorola phone or the app)
There is subscription (I’m not that certain about prices and honestly I don’t like spending money) but it’s insanly good, you get a free trial for around a week and it has a lot of features I couldn’t find on other distractions free apps. (note you do not have to add your card info like most other subscriptions do now a days)
There is also an app called “Forest app”, I gave it a try and didn’t really touch it afterwards, it’s solid but I honestly didn’t really use it that much as ascent.