How to choose what Kellet blocks
Kellet blocks whatever you decide it should. Adult content is on from the start; everything else is a choice you make while you are thinking clearly.
Start with the categories, add specific sites and apps as you hit them, and set a cool-down before you need one. The list you start with matters much less than how long it takes to change it.
How to do it
Start with the categories
Categories cover the things that are hard to list: gambling, proxies and VPNs, social feeds, dating. Turning one on covers sites nobody has named yet, which a list of domains never will.
Add the specific things that get you
Everybody has one or two that are personal. A shopping site at midnight, a particular game, a news site you refresh instead of working. Add them by name; there is no minimum size for something worth blocking.
Decide what happens when a rule is broken
A blocked screen can simply say no, or it can tell your accountability partner. Neither is more virtuous than the other. Pick the one you will not resent in a month.
Set the cool-down last, and be honest
This is how long it takes to loosen anything: unblocking a site, turning off a category, removing a device. Most people land between two and twelve hours. You are setting it for a version of yourself who will be arguing with it.
It is not only about porn
Adult content is the one category that stays on, because it is the reason most people arrive. It is not the limit of what Kellet is for.
People block sports betting, shopping, news, YouTube, games, and the one social app they cannot put down. Some block nothing but a schedule: everything except work, between nine and six. All of that is ordinary use.
Tightening is instant, loosening waits
Adding a block takes effect immediately. Removing one waits out your cool-down, and that asymmetry is deliberate: it means a decision made at 1am cannot undo a decision made in daylight.
Anything waiting shows up on your Cooldowns page with the time it lands, so nothing is ever silently pending.
A first week that you will still be running in a month
The most common way this goes wrong is not being too lenient. It is arriving on day one, switching everything on at its strictest, hitting something you genuinely needed on day three, and removing the lot.
- Start with the two or three real problems.Not everything you would ideally use less. You can add more once you know how the first rules feel in an ordinary week.
- Use a short cool-down at first.Fifteen minutes to begin with. It is long enough to break a reflex and short enough that you never feel cornered while you are still deciding whether you trust this.
- Cover every device on the same day.A phone left out is not a partial setup, it is the whole habit relocated. This is the step most people skip and most regret.
- Lengthen the uninstall delay last.Once the rules feel right, make removal the longest wait. Doing that first is how people end up trapped by settings they had not tested.
The rules that get abandoned
Two patterns account for most of the setups people give up on, and both are recognisable in advance.
The first is a rule with no window. Blocking something you have a genuine weekly use for, with no scheduled time when it opens, guarantees a confrontation with your own settings on the day you need it. Give it an hour on a weekday instead; a window that closes by itself is easier to live with than an exception you have to remember to remove.
The second is a rule set while you were annoyed with yourself. Those tend to be punitive rather than practical, they bite hardest on an ordinary day, and being cornered by your own settings is the fastest route to tearing the whole thing down. If you are picking numbers in that mood, pick them tomorrow instead.
Common questions
What should I block first?
Can I change my mind after setting a rule?
What if I block something I need for work?
Related guides
Calmer water is one decision away.
Kellet blocks the distractions you choose and lets you stay accountable to yourself, or to someone you trust.