Productivity Extension: Design

04/29/15

So, yesterday's leaking frustrations led me to consider what my system is missing and what I could implement to be more consistent. Which means I'm already not following my advice and am solving the system internally instead of seeking external help.

But that's okay. I can do both. Attempting one does not prevent me from doing the other. And seeking external help will be time-consuming anyways, Stephan. Though, if I had comments available on this blog, I may well have gotten external feedback already.

Eh, I'll get to that eventually.

Anyways, my main conclusion is that I need to finally get around to making my own redirection extension. Block site isn't cutting it at home, and LeechBlock, whilst faring better at work, still is not good enough.

There are certain factors that ensure some level of productivity at work, and better home habits will reinforce good work habits, so I'm going to start with making a chrome extension for better chromebook productivity.

Why I Need to Do This

The problem with Block site, and even LeechBlock, is that they don't consider why I want to block, and lack context beyond blocking after a time-limit or within a specific time-block. These things don't know what I think I should be doing, nor do they know what alternative actions I find acceptable or am willing to do.

As such, in certain circumstances I'm more motivated to circumvent or disable the site blocking extensions instead of using them for the reason I have hired them.

Knowing Alternative Actions

I have various large lists of things I want to do. Many of these things lists are already digital. A system capable of catching me doing something I don't want to do should offer up actions I have already agreed are worth doing.

These digital lists live in:

Bookmarks
Email
Text files
HTML files
Calendar

Further, having a good digital tool could lend itself well to digitizing various physical notes floating through paper systems:

I'm at the point where what I gain from automating will probably quickly make up the time investment of automation. Both because a lot of my system consists of rules enforced by my brain, and because I've gained some experience making somewhat-useful things in HTML5.

Automatically Recording Metrics

An intelligently designed extension would allow me to tag the browsing I engage in:

Off-time
Short break
Long break
Research
Work
Maintenance
Etc.

When ending whatever action I'm engaged in, I could have ready-made questions to ask about how effective whatever I did was towards whatever purpose it has.

For example, for breaks I could:

Track how long the break was
Track what the break was
Track the url of the break
Ask if the break reinvigorated or further drained
Ask if the break was satifying

This could build up to gather good data on which sites are good for breaks, and which are not, and from there I could improve my site-blocking setup to change how these sites are dealt with.

Understanding Context

In the morning, I have this bad habit of circumventing Block site (via muscle memory at this point), and wasting valuable morning time on the SmashBros subreddit.

Now, I think small doses of reddit is mostly harmless now, especially if I stick with specific subreddits of interest, but the morning is definitely not the time for it, especially since small doses in the morning just doesn't happen.

I also got a good checklist of things to do in the morning and the evening, and really need to start developing the habit of falling asleep at the same time every night, so having this system demand I check off these routine items before unblocking certain sites may be of considerable value.

First Steps

I think it shouldn't be too difficult to have an approximation of Block site made pretty quickly. I mean, I wouldn't have an actual interface to insert blocked sites, but I could just hard-code sites at first. The main purpose would be to get redirection for specific sites working.

From there I can add new features by ease or value of implementation.