Enhance Time Limits and Its Countdown Mechanism for Better Flexibility and Habit Management

[gepz]

I have been regularly using the time limit features for my Block Sets and appreciate their role as a productivity management tool, providing flexibility that calendar scheduling do not have. However, I have come across a few limitations in their current design.
While I understand that incorporating these suggestions may not be feasible or in line with the original design intent, I'd like to propose the following enhancements to improve usability:

• More granular time period adjustments: The current time period settings aren't very granular, making it challenging to incrementally adjust my habits. Allowing for more precise time period adjustments could help users better manage their habits.
• Rethink the countdown mechanism: The present mechanism resets the countdown at specific times of the day, resulting in excessive allowance time if the user start their browsing routines closer to the reset time, especially when "roll over unused time" is enabled and high time limits are set. For instance, if I set a 90-minute limit every 3 hours with "roll over unused time" enabled, and I start using the site at 7:30 after waking up, I will be allowed to use it for 4.5 hours straight until 12:00.
  To address this, I suggest either:
  • Implementing a "x duration of total usages are allowed within any y duration" mechanism in a literal sense. I can see that this might be challenging to integrate with other existing functions, although I'm not sure.
  • Alternatively, instead of aligning the periods with specific times in the day and weeks. periods starting times could be realigned to (deferred to) when the user start browsing the sites for the first time in a while.
  • Alternatively, add a button for user to realign the current period starting time to the current time (thus deferring the limit reset time, the starting time of the next period).

In my opinion, these changes would enhance the flexibility and effectiveness of the time limit features. Thank you for considering my suggestions, and I look forward to any feedback.

[gepz]

I'll add that I do currently manually use Reset Rollover Time and Discard Remaining Time functionalities at the right timing as a workaround.

And that the high time limits are primarily used for "work time" management, which I think the feature would be particularly useful for people with flexible work schedules.

[Azirine]

How about a time allowance of x time every y time up to a maximum of z time? Time allowance only accumulates when blocked sites are not being used.

In your example of 90-minute limit every 3 hours, in effect your usage is limited to 50%. With the allowance function, it could instead be 1 second allowance every 1 second, up to a maximum of 10 minutes. It would still be a 50% usage limit, but you could only use it for 10 minutes (or anything you choose) instead of 4.5 hours before getting blocked.

You could even let users choose the usage limit % and maximum allowance. If one chooses a 25% usage limit and 20 minute max allowance, it would automatically give 1 second allowance every 3 seconds, up to a maximum of 20 minutes.

This way the limits would be more granular and users wouldn't get sudden lumps of allowance at regular intervals, which they would likely use up too quickly.

[gepz]

That sounds good too. If I understand correctly, once the user has used other sites for 20 minutes first, your mechanism will become functionally the same as my mechanism if I set mine to "10 minutes allowed within every 20 minutes"?

[gepz]

Now I see how your time allowance feature is a little different. A user can get a small allowance whenever they take a small break. Even if they have just used up all their allowance, while mine always requires the user to wait for a sudden reset.
That sort of removes the concept of a period altogether, although I have also noticed a situation where this is not desirable, as it might be useful to encourage a user to accumulate a "minimum allowance" before using it, since some tasks require a minimum amount of time to be done, or to be done efficiently.
If we add another option "the minimum allowance", and have a rule for it that "a newly earned allowance at a given time will be preserved (cannot be used) if it is needed to accumulate the minimum allowance before the next period", it will be powerful enough to simulate both your new mechanism and the current one, and everything in between.

[Azirine]

Yes, periods are not a good idea because it forces users to allocate their usage time appropriately. If they are able to do so, they wouldn't need this extension anyway. Furthermore, if users run out of time and need to do something, they might turn off leechblock, which makes the blocks useless in the first place. The proposed time allowance feature will be able to solve these issues. The minimum allowance option will be a good addition, thank you for suggesting.