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> I've recently been finding it really hard to concentrate on my work I've overcome my Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter problems, but I can't seem to shake Hacker
by Veen 10y ago
> I've recently been finding it really hard to concentrate on my work
I've overcome my Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter problems, but I can't seem to shake Hacker News.
- ythn 10y agoI've rationalized somehow that HN is okay because the content is relevant, insightful, etc.
- sotojuan 10y agoIt's not impossible. I went from a hourly checker to only checking it twice a week. You just need to practice self control and realize most tech news aren't interesting or useful to know.
- AstroJetson 10y agoInterested to know how long your twice a week sessions are and how far you go back in the pages? I come twice a day for 10 mins and then once a week going back to article 90. Total time for the week is just under 3 hours, but I feel I've learned something.
- II2II 10y agoIt may also be a question of how you use sites like HN. I've found that this site is useful for learning when I simply click on the headlines and ignore the comments. Yes, the comments are informative. On the other hand, I have found that reading comments is a behaviour that I have adopted to procratinate (rather than to gain deeper insight).
- erichocean 10y agoI primarily visit HN for the comments. My usage is as follows: 1. Scan headlines for a topic I'm interested in, say, geometric algebra. 2. Rapidly scan the comments for people linking to other media (books, blog posts, libraries, etc.) that are related to geometric algebra. I get vastly superior pointers to useful material this way than any other approach I've tried, and I'm extremely good at research anyway.
- pault 10y agoIt's dangerous to go alone. Take this: https://news.ycombinator.com/best https://news.ycombinator.com/best
- erichocean 10y agoIt's hilarious that HN conflates popularity with "best". So even at HN, the most addictive content is considered to have the highest value. Seems…topical.
- striking 10y agoThe way this usually works, at least in comment threads, is that usually upvotes end up being stronger than downvotes. So the most popular thought in the community ends up at the top of the page... and then usually, the most popular counter-argument is its highest child. It's interesting to see HN debate itself. The asymmetrical karma allocation can be a really interesting factor.
- dang 10y agoThe name of that page goes back close to ten years, when HN was created. That was a time when lots of people had more faith in social forum upvoting than they/we do now.
- pault 10y agoHi dang, I could swear I once saw a list of front pages with different algos, but now I can't find it for the life of me. Also, is there a "most commented" or "controversial" page?
- sotojuan 10y agoAbout half an hour on Sunday mornings and 10~ mins the second session, but I'm slowly making that as close to 0 as possible. One thing that's helping is Lobsters. Lobsters is super slow so if I do make a full switch from HN to that I only need to check it a handful of times a week. But to me, it's not so much about how much time I spend on the time but rather the why. I simply don't get as much value out of HN as I think I do. Most news are irrelevant and unimportant, and I haven't really learned anything too insightful like others said they have (sadly). Simply put, tech news boards apparently just aren't for me.
- tinbucket 10y agoWhat is Lobsters? I'm curious about the thing that's helped you wean yourself off tech news, but googling it hasn't helped.
- tcrews 10y agoI can relate to that and part of it is probably because we don't want to be left out, we don't want to miss the latest technology that will make us obsolete, etc. 1) Reading HN all the time creates a false sense that things are moving much faster than they really are. 2) I'd suggesting reading "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck" and it'll remind you your time is finite https://www.amazon.com/Subtle-Art-Not-Giving-Counterintuitive/dp/0062457713 https://www.amazon.com/Subtle-Art-Not-Giving-Counterintuitiv...
- bogomipz 10y agoI couldn't help but see an irony in the Amazon description for this book considering the subject being discussed :) "In this generation-defining self-help guide, a superstar blogger cuts through the crap to show us how to stop trying to be "positive" all the time so that we can truly become better, happier people." That being said this looks interesting and I am going to give this a read. Thanks for the tip!
- tcrews 10y agoIndeed. The book is really good in the first half. The second half is a mishmash of common sense advice, but I still found it useful.
- sean_patel 10y agoAbsolutely no need to buy the book. Just read his original blog post that is more or less a TLDR; version of this bloated Amazon book. It made a huge difference in my work life. Everytime I found myself in a dumb user or arrogant dev or inept manager type situation (in meetings or emails or face-2-face), I would think back to this blog post and instantly feel better. Mark Manson "THE SUBTLE ART OF NOT GIVING A F_CK" (12 minute read) => https://markmanson.net/not-giving-a-fuck https://markmanson.net/not-giving-a-fuck
- ppgn 10y agoThanks for the TLDR!
- 10y ago
- hashtagMERKY 10y agoIf I'm honest, I'm exactly the same: I'm on HN right now to avoid my matlab coursework. While HN doesn't feel like it's designed for distraction in the same way FB and Twitter are, it does seem to have the same effect: there's a reliable, constant stream of content that's vaguely stimulating. I think this is the combination that's so addictive. It feels as though your brain enters a lower energy state where content is being fed into it with minimum effort. Something about the lack of required energy to find and consume content seems to be what makes it powerful.
- gurkendoktor 10y agoHN also has the noprocrast settings. I've set the parameters to enforce an optional habit of reading HN once a day (usually after work). It works quite well.
- hjnilsson 10y agoFor this reason, I always end up reading HN and Reddit after work. I'm usually mentally exhausted and need half an hour or so of nothing mentally taxing to recover. I imagine other things might fill this role for different people.
- afarrell 10y agoI use https://freedom.to/ https://freedom.to/ to block HN on my phone and laptop when I need to.
- rashkov 10y agoThanks for the recommendation, but why is it a subscription service? Does it work like a vpn or something where they host servers to support this kind of traffic blocking?
- Jonovono 10y agoYa, that's how they are able to block websites on your phone. You go through their VPN.
- apancik 10y agoWhat I found is that blocking completely works less than just delaying the page for a bit with something like https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/waitblock/kcnjfeppclpdinikcljfjigoongebpkh https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/waitblock/kcnjfepp... That way I have enough time to think and question whether I really want to open the page I was about to open, and I don't disable the whole thing if I actually need to visit it.
- douche 10y agoMy favorite is: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/go-fucking-work/hibmkkpfegfiinilnlabbfnjcopdiiig?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/go-fucking-work/hi...
- mysterypie 10y agoThe actual inventor of Hacker News, Paul Graham, hasn't commented for over a year: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=pg https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=pg Considering that he was very very active on HN in the past (karma 155077), I wonder what his reasoning is to cut back?
- fabiandesimone 10y agoWell, the quality of the discussions on HN have taken a dive dramatically since about a year and a half. So maybe he just doesn't feel theres much to comment these days.
- nicky0 10y agoThey said that a year and a half ago.
- jabl 10y agoA year and a half? Hmm, I think that's about the time I've been more active on HN. Sorry about that.
- psyc 10y agoConcern over the decline of HN reached a head ~5.5 years ago.
- golergka 10y agoHas it? I've seen comments such as this for a few years now, but I didn't notice the decline myself.
- aswanson 10y agoSome of the political arguments would -never- have been tolerated in the early years. Users and moderators would have quickly suppressed them...but they seem to have infested the forum since then.
- 10y ago
- neom 10y ago+1 - Deleted everything else but HN is sooo good and I can trick myself into it being relevant because it's mostly about the future. :\
- djsumdog 10y agoI use Google/FB just for the IM. I rarely ever read status updates. But when I get frustrated on a problem or am knee deep in technical debt, you can be I'll flip over to Hacker News.
- satysin 10y agoI have quit FB a few times but the reality is that FB Messenger is the main IM platform for many because it works so well going from mobile and computer. I don't use or care for any other features of Facebook. I also don't bother with Twitter anymore. I still have an account but don't ever open it. Instagram and Snapchat are rather boring for me also. So while I like social I don't really care for the media.
- sunnyps 10y agoYou can use FB messenger even after deactivating your FB account. But there are still things that can cause you to reactivate your account e.g. accessing two factor settings.
- Reedx 10y agoSame here. Although I never got pulled in by Facebook and only a little with Twitter, I did with Reddit and especially Hacker News. HN is the one where I find myself checking several times/day and I constantly have 20+ HN tabs. The pattern is something like this: 1) "Oh, interesting topic!" 2) Open in a tab 3) Read existing comments & the link (I don't always do the latter, admittedly) 4) Come back N hours later, read new comments 5) Repeat #4 over a day or two 6) Close tab unless I haven't read the link yet. If I haven't, then they tend to stick around until I do or send it off into OneTab for ultimate procrastination.
- tedmiston 10y agoI have replaced (2) with Shift-Click, which is Add to Reading List on a story link in Safari. It works better to preserve attention for me. I end up not reading 90%+ of what sounded interesting from the front page on first glance.
- craftandhustle 10y agoI follow a very similar pattern here on HN. One thing I've been thinking about lately is that I always read the comments first and only sometimes visit the link. The links act as topics that allow for discussion more than an end/reward in and of themselves (like on reddit for example). I'm always interested in hearing domain expertise, anecdotes, opinions, etc from the HN crowd which is, admittedly, much different than my active social circle.
- Reedx 10y agoSpot on. That's a good way of looking at it - that the links act as topics. The comments are definitely the main value proposition (and addiction) for me. This was true with Slashdot as well, now that I think about it. Back in the day it had the same draw for the same reasons. Though I think HN is a better version, since it doesn't have a few editors driving it like /. did, which was often frustrating.
- brokenmasonjars 10y agoI don't think I'm as addicted to HN. I use to be pretty bad with facebook and ...oh god..sigh..myspace..but I think there was a point sometime in 2009 where I just felt my use had to be curtailed. Reddit naturally replaced facebook and I was pretty addicted to that as well. Reddit was probably the most difficult to curtail mainly because as I was earning my phd I belonged to some subs on the specific topics I was studying and found the stuff being posted to be relative to what I was studying. Post-PhD and what not, I use a new account there and don't really post much. I prefer to check in later in the day along with HN to catch some of the interesting reads and read up on the responses in the comments. But usually that's only after I've taken my lunesta and am winding down for bed.
- aswanson 10y agoThe problem with hn is that it's likely to get past your primary defenses and justify itself by telling you the information provided is useful and relevant. Also, the conversations are likely to engage you at a higher level and the many of the arguments require laying out your case like a legal team to be taken seriously.
- enraged_camel 10y agoIt is useful and relevant. However, just because something is good for you doesn't mean it can't be used as a distraction from another task.
- themoat 10y agoAbsolutely. There are lots of good, interesting, and useful things to spend time on, but that doesn't mean they are always the right use of my time right now.
- aswanson 10y agoNo argument here, hence my constaclicking.
- m_fayer 10y agoThat's exactly the problem. If I'm in "work mode" I'm after the thrill of tackling a meaty challenge. Then I don't procrastinate. But when I'm dealing with some tedious dependency hell/build glitches/other slow boring BS, I go looking for my intellectual thrill and before I know it, hello HN.
- igravious 10y agoThis has been me for ever so long. Started with /. , with me to this day in the guise of HN and others. The slightest cognitive lull then muscle memory and habit brings me back to the tech news feed.
- ionwake 10y agoIt barely works but the reason I built www.sagebump.com was not be distracted by a need to visit different social media sites. It also condenses the best to only a handful, so in theory one would only need to spend around 15 mins to get the best of ones own custom feeds, then spend the rest of the day coding. I have only posted this as I believe it is relevant otherwise let me know and I will remove this post. Thanks.
- b3b0p 10y agoI have the same problem. I found editing my hosts files helps. 127.0.0.1 news.ycombinator.com When or if I try to go to HN I get an error in my browser and instantly reminded. Then I get back to work. One time I went 6 months without visiting HN.
- ricardobeat 10y agoHN offers this functionality itself. Go to your profile, enable 'noprocrast' and customize the intervals.
- b3b0p 10y agoThis only works if I am logged in though. Thanks for pointing it out though as I completely forgot about it.
- mohsinr 10y agoDidn't know this. Thanks a ton for this. Awesome I just enabled it. Oh funny thing I found I was wrong about showdead setting there... I had assumed if I wanted myself to be declared dead/offline I could set my profile to show dead.. lol
- behnamoh 10y ago> Oh funny thing I found I was wrong about showdead setting there... I had assumed if I wanted myself to be declared dead/offline I could set my profile to show dead.. lol What's its functionality?
- tlb 10y agoWhen showdead is on, you see killed comments. Mostly spam and trolls. Only recommended for moderators.
- icebraining 10y agoEveryone's a moderator after gaining a bit of karma, since you can update and vouch for comments. It seems to be getting better, but there's still a few people getting hellbanned by what I can only consider a mistake.
- diegoperini 10y agoSame here. HN is addictive, but also insanely useful in some cases which makes it hard to leave like any other mentioned site there. I literally owe many of my succesful professional decisions to researches that initally started here. I find some interesting article, read the comments first, then the article, then the comments again. In the middle of this flow, I decide whether it is worthy to save to my Pocket account. Those things in my Pocket quite often become kickstarters for things that I eventually adopt using or learning. I see no way of giving up such opportunity. Why would anyone do that? (That is a serious question that I really wish there exists a convincing answer)
- 762236 10y agoYou've just given a good justification for staying up to date with trade news.
- WA 10y agoHave you checked if the articles in your Pocket share something, for example upvotes or number of comments? Because then you could browse the top posts only once per week. Either via Hckrnews [1] or use the curated Hacker Newsletter [2]. [1]: http://hckrnews.com/ http://hckrnews.com/ [2]: http://www.hackernewsletter.com/ http://www.hackernewsletter.com/
- duck 10y agoThanks for mentioning Hacker Newsletter! I hear from several subscribers a week (currently have almost 40k) that mention it has helped them cure/control their HN addiction. :)
- sjayasinghe 10y agoI'm getting an access denied error when trying to subscribe
- duck 10y agoSorry to hear that. It seems to be working fine based on the couple hundred others that have signed up this evening, so maybe try again? If that doesn't work, hit me up via email (listed in my profile) and I'll see what I can do!
- kazinator 10y agoHacker News isn't social networking. Look, you have no friend list. No private message box. No feeds are pouring into your account. If you post something inane, you're punished by anonymous strangers.
- nickpsecurity 10y agoNot quite. It's mostly not social media but there are similarities. There's a friends list here for sure where certain topics or people attract either similar or the same people. A small community effect happens there in the sub-threads. There's no private messaging but anyone posting an email or contact option will get messages if their posts are worthwhile. Anyone with HN Replies commenting a lot will have a pile of posts in their inbox on topics of interest. The last requirement mostly doesn't apply to decent members of the community but the sketchy ones dodge with with throwaways on a regular basis. So, a bit closer to underlying mechanics of social networking in practice than it would seem on surface. Enough to get a similar participation high. That's on top of the knowledge expansion we use to justify the other high coming from the fact that we just enjoy reading this stuff. ;)
- nicky0 10y agoAn I alone in never looking at usernames? I only read the content of each comment. I only look at the username to track a back-and-forth between two users and even then it's pretty much an opaque token to me. Might as well be a random string.
- nickpsecurity 10y agoYour unconscious mind will see them. I don't know how much effect that has. I did consider helping people eliminate bias by creating a HN client that replaces the names with random ones on a per-thread basis. Any replies get substituted with real name when sent to actual site. Also some filtering options.
- TeMPOraL 10y agoIt is a sorta social networking though. A pull instead of push one, yes, but you do have feeds for people. Also, I recognize you and 'nickpsecurity by names already, by the very virtue of being a frequent visitor (and commenter), so it's not like totally anonymous - you get to talk to the same people over many discussion threads :).
- zilchers 10y agoHacker News doesn't have the churn that means other news sites are always different when you visit them...perhaps you could call that a downside, but I actually really like that aspect.
- astrange 10y agoWorryingly, every time I've checked the admin news updates threads on Reddit, users are complaining that the front page changes too slowly. It does only seem to update about once a day. The comments are seriously addictive; I wish there was a way to hide 90% of them to make it easier to stop reading.
- tlb 10y agoYou might try setting the noprocrast flag in your profile. By default, after 20 minutes it'll enforce a 3-hour break.
- regularfry 10y agoHelpfully providing us with an example of survivor bias, though!
- r00fus 10y agoIt may seem trivial, but during the US primary season I had to modify my /etc/hosts file to block several political sites for my own sanity. Yes, I can very easily `sudo vi /etc/hosts` to undo, but I never did. Helps that I could really pull it up on my iPhone if I needed, but this way I could focus when I needed to, and if I was on my mobile I was clearly doing other stuff. HN is problematic because signal/noise ratio is relatively high.
- chaosphere2112 10y agoMy old strategy for this involved a cronjob to update my host file every five minutes, so I could edit the file and read for a few minutes when I legitimately was waiting on something to compile, but would get yanked away from the browser black hole and back to work in a reasonable amount of time. Then I got a better job, and now I feel a lot less compulsion to sit and read the internet.
- greggman 10y agoI've blocked HN in my /etc/hosts on my laptop. I also recently blocked it on my phone. I can still read it in a VM on my laptop but at least I have to make a conscious decision to view it where as before I blocked them I'd literally type `n` and chrome would auto complete to `news.ycombinator.com` and I'd be 20-30 minutes in before I realized I never consciously decided to start reading. I have similar problems with the net in general. This happens to me all too often. I decide to do something like take a shower. I walk to the shower and turn it on letting it heat up. I remember something that I want to remind myself to do. I walk over to the computer to type in a reminder. Before I even start typing the reminder something on the screen distracts me. 5-15 minutes go by. I go back to the shower and just before getting in I realize I never typed the reminder. So, I walk over to the computer to type the reminder and the same thing happens again. This type of thing has happened on more than one occasion. For example I'm walking out of the house, at the door I remember something tiny I want to do on the computer (send a mail, write a reminder, ...) same things happen as above.
- wuschel 10y agoTo me, this loss of control looks like a very classic addiction pattern. As a suggestion, try to get in touch with a Internet/computer addiction specialist.
- wuschel 10y agoNot sure why the downvotes. It was an opinion, and actually not a disinformed one due to experience in my circle of friends. I did not want to sounds paternalistic in any way.
- greggman 10y agoThank you for the concern. You might be right. I guess I assume addition means I can't go without without withdrawals but I know I can go without just fine (long vacations) etc.. so at least at the moment I just look at it as being distracted easily (like a child ;P)
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- sjg007 10y agoI'm making an AI to recommend articles so you can check it once a day or get email alerts for ones you want to comment on. Downside is you have to train it.
- sean_patel 10y agoHow far are you? Beta site link?
- majewsky 10y agoWill it be able to do something like "send me articles about Ruby on Rails, but only if the author hates Rails"? :)
- Kronopath 10y agoHere's a friendly reminder that the "noprocrast" options in your profile exist. From the FAQ at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html: > If you turn it on you'll only be allowed to visit the site for maxvisit minutes at a time, with gaps of minaway minutes in between. The defaults are 20 and 180, which would let you view the site for 20 minutes at a time, and then not allow you back in for 3 hours. You can set it to something more extreme, like maxvisit=60 minaway=720, and then it'll only allow you a one-hour session every twelve hours, which in practice usually means you can only go here once per day. Doing this turns HN from a distraction to something you have to consciously choose to visit.
- conradfr 10y agoIt worked for me, until I got a smartphone ;)
- timje1 10y agoI just simply changed my bookmarks to point to https://news.ycombinator.com/over?points=280 https://news.ycombinator.com/over?points=280 - which gets shaken up by a couple of new stories per day, but doesn't actually change enough to justify visiting every hour.
- spaceknarf 10y agoI only visit https://news.ycombinator.com/best https://news.ycombinator.com/best . The articles there don't change every time you press F5.