Cold Turkey (Blocker / Micromanager) vs. Focus

You can literally build the same functionality, as long as the UI isn’t identical you’ll be fine.

I would pay for a ColdTurkey replacement that can be triggered via a webhook or IFTT.

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You’d have one user here probably, so I hope you do :wink:

How does Cold Turkey work? Is it able to block URL spaces or just whole domains? I just found out you can add [spoiler]tags like this to make text here blurred out until you click on it[\spoiler], for the benefit of those that actively don’t want to know. It shows up like this:

This text is protected by [spoiler] tags

A commitment device, maybe? half-wink

Rescuetime Premium (aka FocusTime) is neat but you can in a whim disable the whole thing and I prefer something more rigid like ColdTurkey or Focus to that. And indeed ColdTurkey got the perfect blocking mechanism. Where RescueTime changes the address in your browser, CT goes deeper in the network stack which does not mess with the browsers functionality.
This is important for me because often when I am on a blocked site I want to add it to my „Read Later List“ in Safari (compare with Pocket in Firefox) or bookmark it for later.
It is the „smartest“ in terms of when it will trigger though. You can set it so it starts blocking for x minutes after y minutes of distraction. That is pretty neat I think! But what good is it if it takes mere 3 clicks to completely stop the blocking mechanism?

It’s frustrating. I want RescueTime Premium / FocusTime to just be as good at blocking ad ColdTurkey is. It’s the most expensive option yet it disappoints in so many essential ways, it’s unfortunate.

@eugeniobruno right! I forgot about how CT nagged me about all the different browsers, yeah. I’d assume it’s done through the extension rather than messing with the network stack. Either way: It does a way better job than RescueTime.
I forget how Focus does it.

I can confirm that your rate never changes (I’m on a 54$/year rate for the last 5 years)

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I would definitely pay for something like Focus with scripting as well for PC.

I already have Rescuetime integrated with Beeminder but it would be great if I couldn’t visit entertainment apps/websites unless I complete some time with productive stuff first which Rescuetime can track and can also alert you… Then I will just need some code to automate disabling the block for apps/websites once I reach the productive time on the day. That would be the perfect scenario for me. Basically I can’t do entertainment without be productive first and there is no way to get around it.

I guess that is possible for mac environment only but I also have a PC so it wouldn’t be so useful for me :frowning:

A far more nerdy and manual version would be to use something like this repo to manually block websites with host files. (How to use on Windows / OSX ) No idea how to relate it to Beeminder, but it’s an option!

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