I keep disabling my website blocker (what actually works)

By Sameed Ahmad, who builds Focus AI (so read the Focus AI parts with that in mind).
Updated September 2026

The pattern goes like this. You install a blocker in a burst of resolve. It works for a day or two. Then one evening you open the extensions menu, flip it off "for five minutes", and it stays off. A week later you uninstall it, and a month later you install a different one.

If that is you, the blocker you choose next matters less than understanding why the last one died. There are two different reasons, and they need opposite fixes.

Reason 1: it blocked something you needed

You blocked YouTube, then needed a lecture. You blocked Reddit, then needed the thread with the answer. This is not weakness. The rule was wrong for how you actually work, so you broke it for a good reason, and once it is off the bad reasons walk in through the same door.

Fix: a blocker that does not need switching off for real work. That means allowing specific pages instead of whole sites, either through careful allowlists or through a blocker that judges pages against your task. See blocking YouTube but keeping lectures.

Reason 2: the exit was one click away

The person who installs a blocker and the person who meets it at 11pm want different things, and the second one has the mouse. If quitting takes one click, the urge wins most nights, because urges are fast and clicks are faster.

Fix: make leaving slower than the urge. Most urges peak and fade within minutes, so the exit does not have to be impossible, just long enough that you meet yourself on the way out.

The ladder, from free to strict

1. Hide the switch. Unpin the blocker from your toolbar and put its settings behind a password where it offers one (LeechBlock NG does). Free, and enough for mild cases.
2. Add a delay. Some blockers make you wait before changing settings. A 60-second wait kills a surprising number of urges.
3. Make quitting a sentence. Focus AI's strict mode, on by default, makes you type a sentence to end a session early. Typing "I am choosing to give up" letter by letter is a different act from clicking a toggle.
4. Guard the back door. During a Focus AI session the browser's extensions page is blocked, so the usual route to switching it off is closed.
5. Remove the exit. Nuclear modes take away the quit option until the timer ends: StayFocusd's Nuclear Option, Focus AI's nuclear mode, locked modes in Freedom and FocusMe.
6. Leave the browser. If you get around every browser blocker by opening another browser or an app, go to the operating-system level: Cold Turkey Blocker or FocusMe. A browser extension, including mine, can always be removed by someone determined enough.

Why I built Focus AI around both reasons

Every blocker I used failed me for one of these two reasons, usually the first one followed by the second. So Focus AI asks what you are working on instead of which sites to ban, which removes the good reason to switch it off, and makes the exit cost a typed sentence, which slows down the bad one. It will not stop you if you switch browsers or pick up your phone; the full comparison covers what to use then.