You only have to lose once
You set the block up on a good morning. You take it off on a bad night. Those aren’t the same decision — and only one of them happens hundreds of times.
Everybody who has done this knows the shape of it. Sunday afternoon, feeling clear-headed, you install the blocker and pick the sites. It feels great. It is great, for a while.
Then some Thursday the work goes badly, and at half past eleven you find yourself typing the password you set on Sunday. Ninety seconds later everything is back. Not loosened. Back.
Count the decisions
Here is the whole thing in one observation.
Setting the block up was one decision, made in the best state you get all week — rested, honest, thinking about next month.
Taking it off is a decision you face hundreds of times, and never once in that state. It comes at you when you’re tired, bored, annoyed, at the exact moments your judgment is worst. That is not a coincidence; those moments are what the block was for.
So the scoreline is lopsided before you start. To keep a setup that depends on you, you have to win every single one of those encounters. The distraction has to win one. And when it wins one, you’re back at zero — with a bit less belief that setting it up again will work.
Any setup you can undo cheaply loses on volume alone. It has nothing to do with how much you meant it on Sunday. Sincerity doesn’t get a vote at 11 p.m.
Spend the conviction on the right thing
This isn’t an argument that conviction is useless. It’s the reason you installed anything at all. But it has exactly one job, and most people spend it on the wrong one.
Conviction is the builder. It isn’t the building material. Use it while it’s strong to build something that still holds when it’s weak — and then make sure you can’t reach the key. Spend it once, on the setup. Don’t save it for Thursday. It won’t show up.
That’s the whole meaning of you can’t undo it. Not that you’re forbidden anything. Just that the person you’ll be at 11 p.m. doesn’t get a vote, because the person you were at 10 a.m. already voted, and had better information.
Three questions for whatever you’re using
- Can you undo it in under a minute? Then it’s a reminder, not a lock. Reminders are useful — just don’t confuse the two.
- Does undoing it need somebody other than you? Any key you hold, you’ll eventually use. It’s why every iPhone app blocker comes off in forty seconds until the recovery account belongs to someone else.
- Does it hold in the states you’re worst in? After a restart, in a different browser, at two in the morning. If your answer starts “well, technically you could…” — that’s the route you’ll take.
Most tools fail the first question. That’s the entire reason this site judges them on what they refuse to undo rather than on their feature lists.
There’s a longer version of this argument — why a connected device defaults to entertainment in the first place, and why productivity is the thing that has to be built — on the philosophy page.