This is a simple browser extension which redirects away from distracting sites. It prompts you to provide an unblock justification and time interval. This way, you can briefly unblock as long as you have a constructive intention.

While blocking is paused, your intention is displayed at the bottom of the page:

The inspiration for this was using a site blocker and finding that I would disable it to do something constructive, but then neglect to re-enable it.

• Intended to work with our psychology to avoid valueless distraction.

  • Requires that you set an intention before unblocking, and defaults to a short time interval.

  • Can require you to type a reminder, to add friction and remind you of some priority / wisdom / quote / value / etc.

  • It then asks you to confirm that the intention is legitimate. The key-press to confirm is randomized to reduce muscle memory of reflexive confirmation, whereas the key-press to deny (n or escape) is constant.

• Blocking is always on - unblocking is just for exceptional cases where you have a legitimate / constrained use for the site

• Very efficient site blocking via request redirects. The extension's code won't be executed at all for sites that are not blocked. I got this idea from a blog post by cirocosta.

I have not yet polished this extension enough to upload it as an official browser extension. Here's how to use it:

1. Clone this repository

$ git clone https://github.com/mgsloan/unblock-with-intention

2. Load the extension

• Open chrome
• Go to chrome://extensions
• Enable the Developer mode toggle in the upper right corner
• Press load unpacked extension and then select this repo

3. Right click extension icon and click options (or from extension details page).

You can then specify sites to block like this:

*://*.facebook.com/*
*://*.reddit.com/*
*://*.youtube.com/*
*://*.netflix.com/*

You must then press "Set block sites", and it will then ask for permissions on these sites.