In the earliest version of Freedom, the program had a set time limit – an hour or less, if I recall correctly. None of this 8 hours business that ya’ll demanded. I am a believer in focused short bursts of work – 55 minutes of writing/thinking, followed by 5 minutes of email/Facebook/etc.
Lately, I’ve discovered that micro-bursts – 10- or 15-minute Freedom sessions – are a great way to beat procrastination, writer’s block, or simple inertia. If you are used to running Freedom for longer times, try a micro-burst when you need to break an unproductive streak. If it helps, you can start chaining micro-bursts together – Freedom allows you to re-enter a session with the same time parameters when your Freedom session expires.
It is amazing how different 5 or 6 10-minute Freedom sessions chained together can feel, as opposed to an hour long session. So next time you need a boost, give a shorter session a try.
Many people have written me with requests like: “I love Freedom, but I need access to Wikipedia and e-mail (etc.) to do my work.” If this sounds like you, I have good news: I will create custom builds of Freedom to your specified access needs. If you need access to Wikipedia and email, but want to block everything else – a custom build of Freedom can do just that.
Freedom’s design philosophy centers around the “complete block,” so the main program will remain that way. The custom build is a unique, individual modification of the program for your needs. Freedom, of course, remains free – but a custom build requires programming effort, which costs $250 US. In return, you’ll get your own version of Freedom and a 5-seat license you can share with friends.
If you are interested in a custom build, please email me – fred at fredstutzman.com – and describe your needs.
Last week, Freedom was featured in a New York Times article on productivity tools. Farhad Manjoo writes:
“One Mac app that has found a way to solve this problem is called Freedom, which blocks all of your computer’s networking functions for a pre-determined number of minutes. In other words, once you set it, you’ve got no Web, no instant messaging, no e-mail — and the only way to undo Freedom’s block before the time runs out is to restart your machine.”
Freedom also garnered a mention on Mashable, in a post on 20 productivity tools for Mac users:
“Sometimes the Internet is more of a distraction than it is a productivity aid. For those times, the best solution is just to unplug. Freedom will turn off your Mac’s networking card for up to 8 hours, so you can get what you need to get done done, without the distraction of Facebook, Twitter and the latest viral videos.
Obviously, as a web writer, this doesn’t really work for me during the work week, but it’s great for when I’m on a deadline — like trying to finish an article of 20+ Mac productivity tools!”
