Free browser add-ons such as for Chrome and for Firefox offer easy ways to block distracting websites, but they are also easy to disable. All you need to do is switch to another browser, or start a private browsing session, and you're free to procrastinate again.

Cold Turkey, modeled after Mac utility , takes blocking much more seriously. Specify which websites to block, pick a time frame for blocking, and start. When I used ColdTurkey, I also turned off my smartphone and put it in another room (the application won't do this for you, unfortunately).

When Cold Turkey is active, you are truly locked out of those sites: Opening a different browser (or a private session) won't help. Neither will restarting your computer or killing the ColdTurkey process (it doesn't even run in the background, so there's nothing to kill). And if you try to do something clever like tamper with the HOSTS file to disable blocking, ColdTurkey may detect that and lock you out of your distracting websites for a whole week.

Simply put, there is no way to abort blocking once you're midway through, so you need to carefully consider the websites you block and the time frame. I once locked myself out of Gmail so I could focus on writing, but I finished sooner than I thought and was then unable to submit my work until the lock expired. When you try to access a blocked website, the browser simply fails to find it--just as if you were offline.

Another technical limitation is that Cold Turkey does not let you block site paths. For example, there is no way to block just google.com/reader (Google Reader) while leaving google.com accessible. Since Google Reader is a gateway to endless procrastination (at least for me), my solution was to block Google altogether and use alternative search engine DuckDuckGo instead.