quiet

A simple package to disconnect from the online world for a while, possibly reconnecting later. Any interruptions or distractions which occur once the command is run are guaranteed to be local.

disconnection

M-x quiet will disconnect from the network, optionally reconnecting after a certain time.

the function quiet can be used anywhere in emacs where a lack of network access could be seen as a feature, e.g. as a mode-hook (or with defadvice) to your preferred distraction free writing environment.

reconnection

M-x quiet-reconnect will manually reconnect to the network, however you can enable a timer to automatically reconnect by setting quiet-timer to a number of minutes. e.g. (setq quiet-timer 60) will enable quiet to reconnect after one hour. if quiet-timer is set to 0 it won't reconnect automatically.

network interfaces

you may want to customize or setq quiet-disconnect and quiet-connect to the appropriate shell commands to turn your network (or single interface) on or off.

• MacOS (current default). networksetup -setairportpower airport {on,off}
• GNU/Linux. ifup wlan0 and ifdown wlan0
• *BSD. service netif {stop, start}

further

• Mihaly Csikszentmihályi (1990). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Harper & Row. ISBN 9780060162535
• The Myth of Monotasking. https://hbr.org/2011/11/the-myth-of-monotasking/