A tool to help you focus (that actually works)
You open the browser to answer one message and half an hour later you are ten minutes into a video about something you had forgotten you cared about. The will was there. The friction was not, in the right place.
What a focus tool has to do
Three jobs, and most apps only cover the first.
- Close the door. Block the time-eating sites during the hours you choose.
- Give a destination. When the site closes, say where to go. Closing with no destination just pushes you to another tab.
- Count the outcome. Show whether you actually read, not just whether the block stayed on.
A blocker that closes the feed and leaves a blank page loses. You go back, reopen, and turn the block off. Lergate does the opposite: when the site closes, it opens your book where you stopped.
Concrete setup
Two blocks, not the whole day. One in the morning (7 to 9) and one at night (9 to 11). Outside those hours the block is off, so you are not at war with yourself. Inside a block, the only fast thing to open is the book.
Three sites are enough to start. Instagram, YouTube, and the news feed you open by habit. Add twenty and you turn the whole thing off on Friday.
Why the schedule beats the list
An allowlist is work to maintain and you can bypass it in two clicks. A schedule is easier to respect because you decide it earlier, when you are calm, and it holds on its own later. At 9pm you do not argue with the tool. It already decided.
What not to do
Avoid permanent blocking. It turns every emergency into an exception, and exceptions teach your brain that the rule bends. Do not let the minute counter become the goal. Chasing 120 minutes a day ends with scrolling the book without reading it.
If starting is the problem, read how to build a reading habit. If the feed is the problem, read read before you open Instagram.