I used to think website blockers were enough.

They were not.

I could block Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, whatever. Then five minutes later I would end up on the same sites through some side door:

recommendations inside another app

"just checking" a creator page

search results that turned into a feed

one innocent click that became twenty minutes gone

That was the real problem.

The issue was not access to a domain. The issue was the feed itself.

So I built Monk Mode, a macOS app that blocks distractions at the feed level instead of only blocking whole websites.

That difference matters more than I expected.

When you block an entire site, you often also block the useful part:

messages

work groups

documentation

a specific video you actually needed

When you block the feed, you can keep the useful surface and remove the slot machine.

That has been a much better mental model for me.

A few things I learned while building it:

1.…