How To Turn Your Computer Into a Focus Machine

Go Cold Turkey

When I am focused, I am completely focused. There are people who would kill for my productive abilities.

However...

I work at home, almost always have, I have OCD, an auto-immune disease that periodically gives me brain fog so debilitating I don’t know what year it is, and when I am not well I have the brain of a squirrel.

Completely nuts.

Hardehar.

Here is what I wrote in a locked Patreon post in May 2020:

My OCD has morphed again, and my OCD now manifests itself as social media overuse. Which I've discussed before, but not in such gory detail.

Social media is especially horrific for people with anxiety disorders because the more you use social media, the more anxious you get. The more anxious you get, the more it triggers your OCD. The more you overuse social media. The more anxious you get. That is the definition of Vicious Cycle.

My social media management issue is not addiction. I don't enjoy it, and when I am not on it, I feel nothing but a profound sense of relief. I get sick to my stomach at the thought of going on twitter. Last night I threw up in my mouth thinking of going on twitter.

Then I went on twitter.

I’ve given interviews to the makers of the Freedom app, and the makers of the Rescue Time app going over the issues people with cognitive disorders face.

I also spoke with two social media management developers, and to my surprise, they hadn’t even considered how the net affects people with ADHD, brain fog, or other cognitive issues, and no one had brought it up to them before.

They only thought of it as an impulse control problem.

Classic.

You can’t simply turn off the computer and the internet when you have to work on the computer and the internet. It’s like telling someone with an eating disorder to not touch the pile of candy in front of them over the next year.

And then they keep bringing in more candy.

And you hate what candy does to you.

When my computer began to slowly die the inevitable death of a 15-year-old MAC Pro Tower, limping toward 95% operation failure and all the general tragicomedy that entailed, all my management apps stopped working and I went off the rails.

When I got a new system, you better believe I popped those apps back on, and added Cold Turkey to my management strategy.

Here’s something Cold Turkey can do that none of the other apps can do as effectively.

It can block the entire internet except for sites I allow it to see.

I exclude sites I use for work. Dropbox, my mail, Creative Cloud, my Substack etc. I also like to listen to music and audiobooks while I work, so I keep those open.

I allow myself to watch Youtube which I often go to for ambient music and documentaries, but I block distracting Youtube shorts and search terms, or even individual channels I never want to see.

Everything else on the net gets blocked for as long as I wish. I’ve blocked certain social media sites for a year or more. I can block all of Google or individual Google search terms.

It took me awhile to figure out what sites I really need to access for my job, and so I didn’t block the whole internet for more than a few hours at a time. Now I block it for days.

Or months.

Yes, there is a kill program you can install.

I really hate to do this.

My workaround is to block the link to the download for the kill program and if I ever have to get it and use it (I’ve done it twice and it was such a pain I never want to do it again,) immediately delete it from my system.

There’s a free version of the app, but I bought the pro version and it’s worth every penny.

Give yourself the gift of freedom from drama and distraction.