🕓 Taking Control of Your Time w/ Cold Turkey App & Website Blocker
After years of struggling with digital distractions and work-life boundaries, I’ve crafted a Cold Turkey Blocker setup that works for me. Here’s my comprehensive guide to creating a balanced digital life that allows for both productivity and rest.
Table of Contents
00 ⏳ The Problem
01 🔒 Lock Strategy
02 🧱 Block Strategy
- 02.01 ☀️ 24/7 Blocks
- 02.02 🕔 Time-Based Blocks
- 02.03 🤞 Failsafe Commitments
00 ⏳ The Problem: It’s hard to recognize and stop time-sinks while they’re happening
The present moment can be all consuming. This can include traditional binges into apps like YouTube, Instagram, Netflix, or other apps that the attention economy has designed. But it can also include working non-stop into the night or procrasti-working on a side project when you have more urgent things to do. As a college student, the draw of working — the allure of getting everything done in one all-nighter is intoxicating but overall damaging to your sleep, long-term mental health, and general sustainability.
As someone who gets easily distracted or hyper-fixated on a topic, it’s incredibly difficult to align my present actions with my long-term goals. I am good at planning, but often stumble when executing. Using blockers like Cold Turkey or Apple’s Screen Time are so great because they turn these short-term focus issues into more manageable long-term planning issues. While some might chock up a failure to concentrate on the larger picture as an issue of willpower, I find this an extremely unproductive perspective that offers no solutions on how to improve. We are human and our psychology is not well adapted for the modern world, using a tool to have greater control over yourself is something to be proud of.
01 🔒 Lock Strategy
All of these blocks are locked but can be temporarily overridden, if I have good reason, by typing in long strings of random text. Depending on how reasonable I could imagine an override being, I may assign more or less random text that needs to be typed before being unlocked.
For example:
- The block I have to completely lock myself out of my computer for 10 minutes every two hours to force me to take a break during the work day may need to be overridden if I have an important meeting and so I assigned it around two-minutes worth of random text.
- However, I can see far fewer reasons to need to use my computer between 01:00 AM and 05:00 AM, so I assigned it around six-minutes worth of random text.
🧱 02 Block Strategy
The following blocking strategy detailed below is one I’ve been using for a bit and while it might not work for everyone and it might be a bit over-engineered, I believe it has reliably prevented me from a variety of poor decisions (like all-nighters).
Below was my (very informal) original document for planning my blocks and my goals in setting them. It’s a bit messy but I thought it was worth including.
I organize my blocks into three categories:
- ☀️ 24/7 Blocks
- 🕔 Time-Based Blocks
- 🤞Failsafe Commitments
02.01 ☀️ 24/7 Blocks
These are my always-on guardrails that prevent me from burning out or spending hours on a particular distraction. I find that it is important not to be too strict — doing so makes it more likely you will disable and abandon the block than stick with it.
- ⛓️💥 Alternating Distraction Binge-Break
This is a block that is enabled for 45 minutes at the end of every three hours chunk of time (09:00–09:45, 12:00 — 12:45, 15:00–15:45, and so on — hence “Alternating”).
It blocks what I deem to be 🍕 Pure Distractions (Video Games, Social Media, Streaming).
The goal is to Break Binges by stopping me from participating in any activity I consider to be “Junk Food” for too long. It can be healthy and fun in small amounts, but it’s the larger stretches I’m concerned about. - 🧘♀️ Stop Working: A 12-hour daily cumulative allowance for work apps like VSCode, Notion, and Airtable. this ensures I’m not constantly working or organizing in Notion. It allows for 9 hours during the workday (until 18:00) and a buffer until 21:00 for occasional evening work.
02.02 🕔 Time-Based Blocks
The day is divided into distinct periods, each with its own rules:
💤 Sleeping Hours (00:30–05:30)
- 🧙♀️ Sleep!!!: Blocks all apps and websites during the cursed hours of the night to make sure I go to bed.
💼 Work Focus (09:00–18:00 Weekdays)
- 🧑💼 Workday, No Distractions: Blocks 🍕 Pure Distractions (Video Games, Social Media, Streaming) during business hours.
- ⛽️ Workday Break Shutdown: Forces 10-minute breaks, locking me out of my computer, four times daily (11:00, 13:00, 15:00, 17:00) to prevent burnout.
🌳 Detox Transition (18:00–19:00)
- 🏠 Go Home: Blocks all apps and websites to encourage me to leave the office or campus to go to the gym or head back home.
02.03 🤞 Failsafe Commitments
I will sometimes find myself mid-activity saying to myself “I really shouldn’t be spending my time doing this right now.” The classic example being “one more episode” or “one more game”. Perhaps “one more” would actually be fine. The issue is when it turns into two, three, or ten more.
The 🤞 Failsafe Commitments are to hold me to my word and actually commit to this promise of “one more and only one more”. It’s a preconfigured block I can enable at any time, as I see fit, that will lock me out of whatever is distracting me after X minutes. I have two levels of these:
- 👀 Commit to Work (in X Minutes) — This will shut down any potentially distracting app after X minutes so I can use my laptop for work.
- 🥔 Touch Grass (in X minutes) — This will forcefully lock me out of my computer after X minutes so I am forced to move my body and “touch grass” instead of being on the computer.
Conclusion
Setting up Cold Turkey Blocker with thoughtful constraints has been transformative for my digital wellbeing. These guardrails have given me more control over my time and helped me build a more sustainable relationship with my computer, on which I spend the considerable portion of my day. By not relying on perfect willpower and instead creating systems that work with your human nature, you can make important steps towards your long-term goals.
Alternatives to Cold Turkey: I have been using Cold Turkey Blocker for a while and I am pretty happy with it, although setting up complex blocking strategies can be difficult. Back when I first started using Cold Turkey, there weren’t many alternatives that blocked both desktop apps and websites. The time-management ecosystem has changed since then, but the time-cost to switch is too high for me at this point. I own the pro version which is a one-time cost of $39.00, but the free version has enough features that it should fit most people’s needs.
