distract-overflow is a tiny Chrome extension for hiding distracting elements from Stack Exchange network pages while retaining elements related to the topic at hand. Combined with an ad blocker, question pages look like this:

distract-overflow hides the following sidebar elements:

• Hot Network Questions
• Hire Me
• Community Bulletin
• Newsletter
• Chat

Note that the entire sidebar is not removed. Because they often prove useful in getting helpful answers, the Related Questions, Related Tags, and Favorite Tags elements are retained.

In the future, distract-overflow will be available via the Chrome Web Store. Until then, this procedure can be used to install it for free using developer mode:

• Open Chrome and navigate to chrome://extensions/
• Check the box for developer mode in the top right corner
• Press the Load unpacked extension... button
• Select your distract-overflow directory
• Enjoy!