Jonathan's slightly less boring-but-useful site

Freedom: does what it says on the tin

In just less than 4 minutes, I will turn on Freedom for the severalth time,  a tiny application that I installed last week on the advice of a friend. All it does is turn off your computer’s internet access  for a given number of minutes that you stipulate in a pop-up dialog box.  When I first heard about it, I thought ‘What kind of slattern needs a program to tell them not to access the internet for a bit? Whatever happened to self-control?’

But then a few days ago, I gave it a whirl anyway, and it’s transformed my early morning working life. The magic figure for me is 90 minutes. 90 minutes in which every attempt to ‘just’ look this up, follow that link, check your email, respond to an incoming alert, nervously search for related articles etc. is thwarted, while you just get on in perfect peace with good old-fashioned, enjoyable work. And if you’re having a good day, you can say, OK another half hour and I’ll make myself a coffee, so you set it again, thus ensuring that your precious half-hour isn’t dissipated into a hundred pointless online excursions. Although you can use it for free, I am so grateful to its inventor, that I donated the suggested $10 after only a few days of experiencing the Freedom advertised on the tin.

That’s it. Goodbye for now -my time’s up. I’ve finally found web-discipline.