NextDNS: The Game Changer

NextDNS turned out to be a game-changer for several reasons. First of all, it’s fairly cheap. The pro plan costs around $2 a month and the free plan is more than enough to try out this product. The setup couldn’t be easier. They offer a few different ways to set it up on all of your devices. The final thing is reliability. I’ve been using NextDNS on all of my personal devices for the past six months without encountering any issues. It almost sounds too good to be true.

For those of you who value community endorsements, NextDNS receive a seal of approval form the HackerNews crowd.

In short, NextDNS ticked all of the boxes for what I had been searching for in a content blocker.

Breaking Bad Habits

While I initially started using NextDNS as an ad blocker, it unexpectedly became a tool to help me break a bad habit. Until recently, I was compulsively browsing websites like LiveLeak just to kill time. It started affecting my productivity. NextDNS came to rescue with its parental control features.

With NextDNS, it’s possible to block specific websites or entire categories of sties, such as Dating or View Streaming. Now, you might wonder why I didn’t simply use Apple’s Screen Time for this purpose. The answer is friction. With Screen Time, it’s only a matter of two clicks before you can extend your limit by 15 minutes or turn it off completely for the day. For this use case, Screen Time is just too easy to disable.

I do use Screen Time for blocking apps. In order to keep myself accountable, I use Streaks App. You can read more about how I use Streaks here.

I’ve added friction to the process by blocking relevant sites, enabling 2FA, and storing recovery codes safely, just out of reach from my desk. It’s simple but effective. Thanks to NextDNS, I’ve successfully conquered a bothersome habit for 138 consecutive days!

Conclusion

NextDNS exceeded my expectations as a content blocker and helped me break a longstanding bad habit. Its affordability, user-friendliness, reliability, and bonus features make it a must-have for improving your online experience and taking control of digital habits. I highly recommend trying NextDNS!

The book has changed the way I think about technical debt and how to communicate it upwards. It provides sound advice on various topics, including how to fight tech debt, schedule maintenance work, and communicate with stakeholders. I have not come across any other book that provides this much credible advice on the topic of technical debt without exclusively catering to a particular audience.

Takeaways

Fixing the wrong thing is bad, but leaving an unfinished attempt at fixing it is worse. Incomplete initiatives lead to confusing, poorly documented, and difficult-to-maintain systems. If you’re intervening early enough that the team hasn’t made significant changes yet, it’s advisable to halt their efforts.

Occasional outages and system issues, particularly if they’re resolved quickly and efficiently, can actually increase user trust and confidence.

Future-proofing systems doesn’t entail building them to avoid the need for redesigns or migrations, as that’s impossible. Instead, it means constructing and, more importantly, maintaining systems to prevent lengthy modernization projects that disrupt normal operations. The key to future-proofing is to make migrations and redesigns routine tasks that don’t require a significant effort.

The more often engineers perform a task, the better they become at it, and the more likely they are to remember that they need to do it and plan accordingly.

It’s not necessary to design for scale until you have the scale you need.

We are more productive when we can devote more time to work tasks. When we finish work tasks, any leftover time can be devoted to reducing our technical debt.

Legacy systems may seem like dead-end work to many software engineers, but the truth is that systems that aren’t used get shut down. Working on legacy systems is vital because they control millions of people’s lives in countless ways. It’s not janitorial work, but rather that of a battlefield surgeon. It has been an immense privilege to work among them.