" I "solved" my own problem by just routing every distraction as it arrived into a look-at-later list. Then when later arrived I'd scan through, decide what was actually worth following up on and just delete the rest. If you do this then you will realise how unimportant most of those distractions were."

Good idea. Frankly when I come on HN or reddit I may scan through and open a ton of tabs. But then as I go through the tabs I'll close many since they no longer seem as important