My most precious productivity tip:

  # Productivity
  127.0.0.1 mail.google.com
  127.0.0.1 gmail.com
  127.0.0.1 news.ycombinator.com
  127.0.0.1 www.bbc.co.uk
  127.0.0.1 netflix.com
  127.0.0.1 www.youtube.com
  127.0.0.1 boingboing.net
  127.0.0.1 xkcd.com
  ...

I've been doing this for a while.

I didn't make an app to customize this list. Nor am I going to spend the next twenty minutes explaining why it works for me.

It works for me.

=)

Esp effective if you are doing web development on local machine. Oops, I just started to work.

Or on a remote machine, just set it to that IP (assuming your project is the default/only vhost). Now that I mention it, I think I'll try that.

That is so funny, but it is true...specially for web devs. (Myself included)

This works better for me:

  # Productivity
  127.0.0.1       mail.google.com
  127.0.0.1       gmail.com
  127.0.0.1       news.ycombinator.com
  127.0.0.1       www.bbc.co.uk
  127.0.0.1       netflix.com
  127.0.0.1       www.youtube.com
  127.0.0.1       arstechnica.com
  127.0.0.1       theverge.com
  127.0.0.1       www.google.com
  127.0.0.1       xkcd.com
  127.0.0.1       duckduckgo.com
  127.0.0.1       www.theguardian.com
  127.0.0.1       www.apple.com
  127.0.0.1       store.apple.com
  127.0.0.1       www.microsoft.com

Thanks for the list, didn't know about all these interesting sites ;)

how come duckduckgo.com is there? Do you never need to do searches for various (valid) reasons?

store.apple.com ? You shop apple products every day ? Wow.

he probably just spends time gazing at them and wishing to own them.... people do stuff like that. Me too, but now with apple products. With me it's more likely to be a travel site

An unfortunate truth.

    # Productivity

    127.0.0.1 *

Alternatively, cut your ethernet cable or smash your wireless router!

Nah. Destroying electronic equipment is fun, but editing hosts makes you feel like you're actually accomplishing something. :P

If you are interested in a slightly less heavy-handed approach. I wrote this to steer me away from the distractions. Just click the browser button to "block" new domains. You can unlock a page, but you only get a 5 minute window. This works well for me and most of my colleagues are using it as well.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/focused/kjlinclboa...

no reddit? You're lucky. Don't go there.

They probably left reddit out of the list since it's kind of a dirty word on HN. :)

Wait, why? Isn't Reddit funded by HN?

But I think you have to separate full and pure entertainment value from partial entertainment and learning for sure.

Of the above list, while there is certainly entertainment on HN, some of the others you listed are definitely less important learning wise other than perhaps lifting your mood.

There's an add-on for that: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/leechblock/

This would be a great time to plug Gas Mask for OSX

https://code.google.com/p/gmask/

is there any reason people don't do this:

127.0.0.1 mail.google.com gmail.com news.ycombinator.com [etc]

Does Mac not handle it or something?

For me it makes things more pleasant to read, and also makes it easier to re-enable a single site.

I should try that...

I Can testify to the effectiveness of this. I had been putting off reading a growing pile of papers. I might try building a chrome extension which embeds my todo list above the HN header - guilt myself into productivity haha.

Hah! That's not a bad idea actually. Maybe extend it a bit so that it will only show you X# of posts until an item is checked off the todo. Get them all checked off and you can see everything on the front page again?

Personally, I can ignore a checkbox, but I have a very hard time lying to one.

If HN is such a distraction, activate the noprocrast option in your preferences.

It's still too easy to get around that. There's no way to get around "The site is down / ddos'ed"

Yep, for some reason people keep making the same mistakes with their time. I always try to keep in mind Donald Knuth's "Getting to the bottom of things attitude" to help me when I need to focus.

http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2008/07/15/getting-to-the-bott...

Uptick in the tech sector today, eh?

It was canceled out by Stack Overflow and Bitbucket also being down this morning.

> When you go offline, that equation changes. You have to be active. Since you can’t input, you output. If you don’t do something, nothing happens.

> So turn AirPort off. Or go to a coffeeshop without wifi. Resist the siren song of being connected (for a couple of hours at least) and watch your productivity skyrocket.

http://37signals.com/svn/posts/80-get-off

Man, I even had breakfast before coming to work!

It seems that you really could use something like http://www.HNdigest.com (it sends you a daily email with the top posts).

(BTW, I run it :))

Haha...I feel you man, I've been trying to complete this course on Coursera & only today did I actually complete a full week of it after seeing HN was down !!!

We should setup some iptables script to block it except at lunch time :)

You should turn the noprocast option on in the settings!

I have to admit, the usual hour binge of the frontpage this morning was a LOT more productive

Was just wondering why everybody here was actually doing something.

I was thinking similar. :-) Productive mornings everywhere!