I had some issues with a sort of generalized need to frequently check updates like this in the past. Maybe a noteworthy world event, maybe just national signing

I had some issues with a sort of generalized need to frequently check updates like this in the past. Maybe a noteworthy world event, maybe just national signing day for some NCAA sport or a pro draft, an argument on some phpBB forum. Breaking it was largely a matter of not having access. I was in the Army a while and often not engaged in work where you can shift attention all that easily or safely. Then when I got out, I was doing mostly classified work from a SCIF where I had no Internet access at my primary workstation. Just having that sort of small effort barrier was enough. I lived without a constant info dump update feed scrawling through my eyeballs for many years and realized it made no difference and I did not need that. It's not that I now watch or read no news ever, but infrequently, mostly on weekends. I still kind of care about sports but not nearly as much. Hacker News is the only site I still visit where I can comment and receive feedback, but I make no effort whatsoever to see if anyone has replied to try and reply back. If you find you can't do it through sheer willpower alone, there are plenty of ways to more or less simulate an airgap. Various browser extensions can block sites during work hours. If you find yourself turning it off all the time, you can make it harder on yourself by keeping a set of firewall rules at your router or DNS rules at a filtering provider that takes more than a click or two to turn off. If you're using company issued workstations from an office and they don't block the sites you find yourself wasting time on and don't allow you to install extensions or configure your own DNS, those won't work. A less drastic possibility is listening to news via radio as a constant background noise type of thing, or possibly even a television feed. At least that way you can still work while receiving updates. It should be less addictive since it's non-interactive and the feed is not algorithmically curated to be maximally addictive to you personally.