4 ms·

Poll: Does the amount of time that you spend on HN hurt your productivity?

14 points by solipsist 16y ago

A follow-up to the poll posted earlier today (1/10/11): http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2090191

michaelty 16y ago
Yup. But HN is sooooo fun, Dad...
jcr 16y ago
Turn on the 'noprocrast' option [1] in your account settings. [1] http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
- david_shaw 16y ago
  Hey, I never actually knew what those away options were for. Cheers, thanks for the tip! ... but please don't tell my boss.
- roadnottaken 16y ago
  I tried that once but I couldn't handle it. It was like being locked out of my house, it was terrible.
david_shaw 16y ago
I think that the temporary loss in productivity due to a few minutes reading instead of coding is more than compensated by the inspiration and intellectual stimulation that I often feel while participating at HN.
johnswamps 16y ago
Yes and no. I spend a lot of time on HN because it's one of the best places to spend my time when I'm not being productive and in that sense it does hurt my productivity. But if HN didn't exist I'd just be spending the time on other sites instead (like reddit).
yan 16y ago
Yes it absolutely does, and I don't see a way to solve it or if I even should be solving it. It doesn't get in the way of my work, but I can't help to scan the front page every 30-60 minutes or load the front page on my phone at an idle moment.
beoba 16y ago
I just skim the rss when I'm taking a break. This usually only lasts a few seconds unless something actually looks interesting, plus there's a clear indication of what's new and what isn't (constant reposts aside).
ryan-allen 16y ago
For a second there I thought the two options were 'Yes' and 'Yes'.
samic 16y ago
No, because it gives me ideas and helps me to know what others are doing
PilotPirx 16y ago
It compensates for that by giving me a lot of new insights.
pg 16y ago
I know I've asked this before, but is there anything I can do to make HN less of a productivity hit? Slow it down in some way perhaps?
- niyazpk 16y ago
  Pay per use? :)
  - zaatar 16y ago
    No. Please.
    - netcan 16y ago
      How about optional pay per use? Like a sin jar.
- Zev 16y ago
  Maybe a counter at the top of the page (karma, counter) to show how much time someone has spent on HN in the past (day, week, #{interval}) guilt-trip (some) people into spending less time on the site? Or with the number of times they've opened up a page to HN? // edit: This is a social/mental problem, not a technical one. I'd be surprised if a complicated change did anything to fix it. Noprocrast works because its simple. Changing algorithms around isn't as obvious, any behavior changes as a result would probably be much more subtle to observe.
- ahuibers 16y ago
  Make it so that comments don't need to be made right away (to get upvote exposure) to be in the top 10 or 20. Maybe you could normalize each upvote by the number of views per unit time (view rate). You could measure success by trying to increase the average age of the top 10 comments (age = time since article was posted).
- solipsist 16y ago
  As a few people have already pointed out, a lot of our time is spent consuming the content and not necessarily creating it. Reading the comments is probably the biggest productivity hit for me. The reason for that is that you can quickly get stuck reading long threads of discussions - especially on the more popular articles. While this is great, maybe try making only the top 5 or 10 comments visible by default, and then giving the user a 'See More' button that would show the rest of the comments. You could also only show the first and second level comments in the default mode, which would add to the simplicity and make it less of a productivity hit. It would be interesting to see people's reaction to this feature if you ever decided to implement it.
Zev 16y ago
Not too much of a time sink for me. When in the office, I only really go on HN when I want to get away from the task at hand for a moment. This is either because I'm stuck on a problem, or just finished something big and need a quick break. Either way, I wasn't going to be writing code in the next few minutes.
jarin 16y ago
It does take away from actual billable hours, but between HN and Google Reader (my two major timesinks), I learn new things or discover new products/services that end up being very valuable to myself or my clients (or at least just stretch the ol' brain muscle a bit). One thing my clients have said they love about me that they can present me with a tough problem and I always have some service bookmarked that will solve it. So yeah it's distracting, but it's at least somewhat productive distraction. Edit: At least that's how I justify it
TomOfTTB 16y ago
I think it's more valuable than other ways I might waste time. That said there's another advantage that I think is more important. I'm passionate about technology. The people who work for me like technology but aren't as passionate as I am. So I require a half hour of HN time of them every day and I've found it makes them much better employees. Conversations around the office focus on technology rather than "what you did last night" and everyone is better in touch with future trends (something that many code jockeys tend to ignore)
- solipsist 16y ago
  How can I sign up? You sound like a great boss!
risotto 16y ago
I've been feeling that the Internet hurts my mental health. Filling my brain with HN, Reddit, DrudgeReport, Twitter, Facebook, email, chat, etc., is exhausting. And this is on top of the massive amounts of code I digest when I am being productive. New libraries to learn, more of my teammates code to decipher, new specs to write, new architectures to understand. It's really exhausting, and my short term memory for things like names and social events is shot to shit. If I can't get a brunch appointment in my email inbox, I will forget it. I'm not complaining too loudly -- I'm never bored, and I'm happy and successful in my career. But I'm just feeling more and more like my brain is full and every new piece of information pushes out something else, but there's still endless more information to absorb. It's giving me more and more pause these days.
rwhitman 16y ago
The challenge is that though its a timesink, HN doesn't feel like a timesink, because its educational and for the most part work-related... All I know is if I billed for the time I've spent on HN they would owe me close to $50k ;)
harry 16y ago
I need breaks from what I'm working on - and this site fills that need. There's only so much I will get done in a day and this unquenched optimism & productivity that is common here is simply not something I do. I end up thinking back to something I read here months & years later, thus cementing it's leisure value above reddit, fukung and twitter.
pgathogo 16y ago
YES! Am addicted, completely! How can i stop, please help.
yoshiks 16y ago
No, as it is my decision to visit the site, or to close the window. It's not HN but myself which hurts my productivity if I can say I have...
pmarin 16y ago
Actually what hurts my productivity is after spend some time in HN. My mind is cluttered with different ideas from the articles which I have read that is more difficult to focus on the task at hand.

14 points by solipsist 16y ago

A follow-up to the poll posted earlier today (1/10/11): http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2090191

michaelty 16y ago

Yup. But HN is sooooo fun, Dad...

jcr 16y ago

Turn on the 'noprocrast' option [1] in your account settings. [1] http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

david_shaw 16y ago
Hey, I never actually knew what those away options were for. Cheers, thanks for the tip! ... but please don't tell my boss.
roadnottaken 16y ago
I tried that once but I couldn't handle it. It was like being locked out of my house, it was terrible.

david_shaw 16y ago

I think that the temporary loss in productivity due to a few minutes reading instead of coding is more than compensated by the inspiration and intellectual stimulation that I often feel while participating at HN.

johnswamps 16y ago

Yes and no. I spend a lot of time on HN because it's one of the best places to spend my time when I'm not being productive and in that sense it does hurt my productivity. But if HN didn't exist I'd just be spending the time on other sites instead (like reddit).

yan 16y ago

Yes it absolutely does, and I don't see a way to solve it or if I even should be solving it. It doesn't get in the way of my work, but I can't help to scan the front page every 30-60 minutes or load the front page on my phone at an idle moment.

beoba 16y ago

I just skim the rss when I'm taking a break. This usually only lasts a few seconds unless something actually looks interesting, plus there's a clear indication of what's new and what isn't (constant reposts aside).

ryan-allen 16y ago

For a second there I thought the two options were 'Yes' and 'Yes'.

samic 16y ago

No, because it gives me ideas and helps me to know what others are doing

PilotPirx 16y ago

It compensates for that by giving me a lot of new insights.

pg 16y ago

I know I've asked this before, but is there anything I can do to make HN less of a productivity hit? Slow it down in some way perhaps?

niyazpk 16y ago
Pay per use? :)
- zaatar 16y ago
  No. Please.
  - netcan 16y ago
    How about optional pay per use? Like a sin jar.
Zev 16y ago
Maybe a counter at the top of the page (karma, counter) to show how much time someone has spent on HN in the past (day, week, #{interval}) guilt-trip (some) people into spending less time on the site? Or with the number of times they've opened up a page to HN? // edit: This is a social/mental problem, not a technical one. I'd be surprised if a complicated change did anything to fix it. Noprocrast works because its simple. Changing algorithms around isn't as obvious, any behavior changes as a result would probably be much more subtle to observe.
ahuibers 16y ago
Make it so that comments don't need to be made right away (to get upvote exposure) to be in the top 10 or 20. Maybe you could normalize each upvote by the number of views per unit time (view rate). You could measure success by trying to increase the average age of the top 10 comments (age = time since article was posted).
solipsist 16y ago
As a few people have already pointed out, a lot of our time is spent consuming the content and not necessarily creating it. Reading the comments is probably the biggest productivity hit for me. The reason for that is that you can quickly get stuck reading long threads of discussions - especially on the more popular articles. While this is great, maybe try making only the top 5 or 10 comments visible by default, and then giving the user a 'See More' button that would show the rest of the comments. You could also only show the first and second level comments in the default mode, which would add to the simplicity and make it less of a productivity hit. It would be interesting to see people's reaction to this feature if you ever decided to implement it.

Zev 16y ago

Not too much of a time sink for me. When in the office, I only really go on HN when I want to get away from the task at hand for a moment. This is either because I'm stuck on a problem, or just finished something big and need a quick break. Either way, I wasn't going to be writing code in the next few minutes.

jarin 16y ago

It does take away from actual billable hours, but between HN and Google Reader (my two major timesinks), I learn new things or discover new products/services that end up being very valuable to myself or my clients (or at least just stretch the ol' brain muscle a bit). One thing my clients have said they love about me that they can present me with a tough problem and I always have some service bookmarked that will solve it. So yeah it's distracting, but it's at least somewhat productive distraction. Edit: At least that's how I justify it

TomOfTTB 16y ago

I think it's more valuable than other ways I might waste time. That said there's another advantage that I think is more important. I'm passionate about technology. The people who work for me like technology but aren't as passionate as I am. So I require a half hour of HN time of them every day and I've found it makes them much better employees. Conversations around the office focus on technology rather than "what you did last night" and everyone is better in touch with future trends (something that many code jockeys tend to ignore)

solipsist 16y ago
How can I sign up? You sound like a great boss!

risotto 16y ago

I've been feeling that the Internet hurts my mental health. Filling my brain with HN, Reddit, DrudgeReport, Twitter, Facebook, email, chat, etc., is exhausting. And this is on top of the massive amounts of code I digest when I am being productive. New libraries to learn, more of my teammates code to decipher, new specs to write, new architectures to understand. It's really exhausting, and my short term memory for things like names and social events is shot to shit. If I can't get a brunch appointment in my email inbox, I will forget it. I'm not complaining too loudly -- I'm never bored, and I'm happy and successful in my career. But I'm just feeling more and more like my brain is full and every new piece of information pushes out something else, but there's still endless more information to absorb. It's giving me more and more pause these days.

rwhitman 16y ago

The challenge is that though its a timesink, HN doesn't feel like a timesink, because its educational and for the most part work-related... All I know is if I billed for the time I've spent on HN they would owe me close to $50k ;)

harry 16y ago

I need breaks from what I'm working on - and this site fills that need. There's only so much I will get done in a day and this unquenched optimism & productivity that is common here is simply not something I do. I end up thinking back to something I read here months & years later, thus cementing it's leisure value above reddit, fukung and twitter.

pgathogo 16y ago

YES! Am addicted, completely! How can i stop, please help.

yoshiks 16y ago

No, as it is my decision to visit the site, or to close the window. It's not HN but myself which hurts my productivity if I can say I have...

pmarin 16y ago

Actually what hurts my productivity is after spend some time in HN. My mind is cluttered with different ideas from the articles which I have read that is more difficult to focus on the task at hand.