About My Blocklists 23 May, 2024

In an earlier post, I explained how I used Cold Turkey Blocker to keep me sane. Today I’ll go over the blocklists I use and how I cycle between them for maximum efficiency and sanity-preservation.

• Digital Duloxetine This blocklist is permanent, 24/7, until Cold Turkey is uninstalled (in other words, a system reset). It consists of of over 500 websites, ranging from garbage clickbait sites to pornography to central social media platforms to news outlets and beyond. There is no way to access these sites, so I can’t access them whatsoever. Good!

• Digital Benzodiazepine This blocklist is enabled every so often, when I want to take a break. It blocks EVERY website except around ~100, mostly entertainment sites like YouTube. This is activated for a few days - never more than a week. By the time it’s over, I should have the mental energy to access the rest of the net - except those on Digital Duloxetine.

• Digital Methylphenidate This is my no nonsense, get-to-work blocklist. It’s essentially a more hardcore version of Digital Benzodiazepine, shutting off access to all websites except a whitelist, except this time the number of sites are even smaller - from 1 to about 12 depending on what I’m working on.

Important note to self: always activate the blocklist in the night, not in the morning! You don’t want to see something upsetting first thing in the morning and have to deal with a black wave for the rest of the day…