Using HN isn't bad. Just use a stopwatch and timer on your phone. The human brain wasn't meant to do deep work (like programming) for hours and hours. So what

Using HN isn't bad. Just use a stopwatch and timer on your phone. The human brain wasn't meant to do deep work (like programming) for hours and hours. So what I do is set a stopwatch on my phone. if it's been 30-45 min and my mind is wandering, I spend 5-10 minutes on HN, Reddit, etc then go back to work. (The stopwatch is because if you're nearly done with something an alarm can zap you out of it, whereas it's not jarring to get interrupted from browsing /r/aww. Plus you can use the "lap" function to monitor both the length of a sprint + total working time for the day) I have found can accomplish much more deep work this way than if I wait until I feel I couldn't write one single more line of code. I also maintain a list of "projects" - things I'd find fun to do. I break the projects into steps, and estimate how long they'd take. So when I have downtime or free time, I can pull up a project and work a bit, note my progress. This helps with not feeling like I'm flailing around from one thing to the next without finishing anything. All of these moving parts come together to create a flow that allows me to work on side projects to expand my knowledge without feeling stressed or burdened.