I find the Pomodoro technique to be great for combating internet procrastination. All you do is take a forced break after some fixed time of working. I do 45 minutes of work followed by 20 minutes of break. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique
Since you know you're going to take a break soon, you can't justify slacking off during work time. It's a mental hack that's simple and effective.
Posts about the technique pop up on Hacker News from time to time.
Seconded. I wrote a little python script [1] that I use for this that additionally disables my network adapters during work time.
This is going to sound incredibly lazy, but I've found that a good way to keep myself off the internet during break periods (which often leads to extended breaks) is to play a game of Civilization. One turn per break and you'll be so absorbed you won't even think about HN or Reddit.
I've done it. I save the game right before I'm about to uncover a barbarian hut, then move onto it. If I don't like what the random number generator gives me, I load the saved game and do it again. Over and over again.
See? I've played ONE turn of Civilization, just repeated about 50 times.
Early game, no. Late game, it can take 5 or 10 minutes per turn and you may be capturing more than one city per turn during an invasion, I can see it working.
Although I struggle with focus myself, I can't help but feel jaded about things like this. To paraphrase some stuff Merlin Mann said, the real issue is seeking out things that you care enough about that you don't need to trick yourself in to staying on track.
This is true. I spent the last week almost completely absorbed in an interesting UI design/implementatiom problem, keeping me online but crazy productive for the time. That, combined with a scuba diving course meant I was practically out of blogs and microblogs the whole week.
But of course sometimes you also have to do the boring stuff, and then tricks like this can help.
Since you know you're going to take a break soon, you can't justify slacking off during work time. It's a mental hack that's simple and effective.
Posts about the technique pop up on Hacker News from time to time.