Do Not Disturb - A life hack

What are you doing at the moment? Not this week, or today, but right this second? You're reading this post, and I'm guessing you shouldn't be. You have more important things to do. Guessing again, you arrived here from some other distraction: an e-mail arrived, your RSS feader popped up a message or you linked here from some other web site you don't have time to read.

You're probably not one of those super-organised people who divide their day into timeslots: an hour for e-mail in the morning, 30 minutes surfing over lunch and then an hour for e-mails in the evening, leaving large uninterrupted thinking zones for most of your day. I'm certainly not: I'm always getting distracted and I check my e-mail obsessively. I know that I shouldn't, and I know that it's unproductive: the context switching is a killer. But often I just can't stop myself.

A few weeks ago I came across a bit of software called DoNotDisturb. You load it up and it will ban you from using certain applications. I ban myself from browsing and checking my e-mail for an hour at a time. In case of emergency browsing I can, however, enter a 64 digit code to override it.

I thought it was such a great idea that I bought the rights to distribute it for free for a few months to the readers of this blog. You need this software. To get it for free (it's usually $20), download it here.

(PS, you can subscribe to the RSS feed for this blog from here).

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Comments

[Maksym Shostak]

Great idea.
It would be nice if this tool can block telephone calls, and other noises in office space.

[Jeff]

Link expired?

Jeff,

I only had the rights for a short time. You can download a free trial from http://www.seeplain.com/donotdisturb.htm though.

- Neil