How to surpass the urge to check my social media or do something else when I am coding/doing a hard task? Sometimes it seems I can't control it and it just opens a page and goes to HN or Twitter or something.<p>I have tried the block the page but it doesn't make sense since I just can unblock them and it is not very effective
You've already mentioned you block tabs. Perhaps by exercising focus in other areas you can apply that to your internet habits. For example, try reading for 20mins a day without any distractions, or drawing, or anything else. Practicing deep focus in small increments, like a muscle, may help you in this case. Like exercising a muscle however, it takes time, perseverance, and small increments of load in order to improve. Best of luck!
There are a lot of tools to help change your online behavior. For instance, iPhone has the ScreenTime feature. I block reddit from 9am-6pm and only give myself 15 minutes of reddit outside of that. Turns out 15 minutes is more than sufficient to get your fill of reddit. Only my partner knows the password to the screentime feature, so if I try to unlock it outside of the rules I set, I have to ask her.<p>You are not going to change your behavior until you really understand how negatively it's affecting your life. For me, once I cut out basically all social media, all talk radio, all youtube, my ADD symptoms improved considerably. From my personal experience, this stuff seemed to just wreck my brain and motivation. It was so surprising personally how much better my life got when I just <i>stopped fucking scrolling</i>
It would probably help if you reduced dopamine spikes and made them more intermittent (less regular).<p>If you stack multiple pleasures together it could be making it harder to focus. (Like drinking + watching something you enjoy + snacks, or smoking weed + playing video games).<p><a href="https://youtu.be/QmOF0crdyRU" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/QmOF0crdyRU</a><p>This video explains the science behind it.<p>Make your dopamine spikes more random and intermittent and try to reduce the peak on them by sometimes enjoying your pleasures separately instead of stacking them all at the same time.
Set blocks of time where you can work, automatically turn of your screen using my tool: <a href="https://github.com/devtox/sleep-computer" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/devtox/sleep-computer</a><p>By limiting the time you can work, you don't have time to randomly surf the web.<p>You could add a countdown clock as well, some people work better under pressure.
It is not possible to unblock the page if you use coldturkey and set its 'blocks'.<p>I have access to the distracting websites for an hour a day and that is it. It is blocked for the rest of the day. The free version is more than sufficient.
Have a dedicated window of time for The Thing you need to accomplish. Turn off your smartphone, and just hyperfocus. I even have a dedicated SSD which boots into an OS specifically tailored and configured for coding.
I write a distraction log. I write things down on a physical notebook whatever is coming to my mind either as a list or just phrases. It helps immensely sometimes. Other times I just give in to the distraction.
I personally use Ritalin.<p>It's a drug given to people with ADHD, so I can't recommend it to everyone. But my productivity tripled since I start using it.