For myself, I’m a little skeptical of “just hide it from myself” to solve addiction issues. I would have put the Oreos on high shelf and lost 50lbs a long time ago if that worked. But I think there is some evidence that it does work for some personalities.

This browser extension is in that category.

It’s just some fancy front-end codin’ that literally hides the inbox part of your Gmail inbox for timed intervals.

I like how it doesn’t prevent you from sending email, just looking at your inbox. I too like thinking of these things as distinctly different and worthy of treating differently. I like the idea that hand-writing an outgoing email to someone is probably a lot bigger deal at pushing yourself forward in the world than the rat race of responding to email after email in your inbox.