It might help to substitute "ignorance" instead of "innocence" in your essay. To be innocent primarily means to 'do no harm' not "to be ignorant" of the truth. I think many parents keep their kids ignorant (of evil) because they think it will help keep them innocent (free of the sin of committing evil). As you imply, for a time, this seems right, but eventually you need controlled exposure to toxins (ethical, etc.) to learn how to protect your self.

Nostrademon's comment about making work more fun than the distraction seems right.

<... only thing that seems to work for me is to make whatever I'm working on significantly more fun than what I should be doing>

My latest STRATEGY is to move my work (writing and elearning game design) into the cloud since that's where I live anyway. I have 5+ private blogs (all connected of course, through WordPress dashboard) that I use to manage content (categories are king, tags are pointless since I don't want publicity) and as a place to do my real work (planning, designing, collating, editing, researching) and keep a record of my progress... and SO FAR I'm effortlessly spending most of my hours in this artificial work-world I've created and much much less time on the wild untamed Net.