Let’s start with “why”
The opposite of distraction isn’t focus. It’s traction—actions that move us toward what we really want.
— Nir Eyal (@nireyal) November 7, 2021
How do we turn distraction into traction? By acting with intention.
Here is my typical procrastination routine:
- I press CMD+T
- then I type: “yo”
- then my browser knows that by “yo” I mean “youtube.com”
- then I’m watching a guy turning plastic gloves into hot sauce for 40 minutes
Sounds familiar?
And now to “how”
To help myself out, I decided to build a Chrome extension. The extension should be able to store a list of “viral” sites, detect when I want to visit one of them, and redirect me back to localhost:3000. It should be easy to turn on and off. It should be slick looking.
Aren’t there extensions that do this? There are some. But unfortunately they want to collect my data, show me ads or just don’t work the way I want them to.
Behold, Traction Control.
