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Ask HN: How do you avoid distractions like HN?
I am a student and work part time on my own projects. Because I am self-employed and have no real schedule, I sometimes find it hard to concentrate on my work. I sit down with the intention of programming, but very soon end up with tabs open on Hacker News, StackOverflow, and Planet Django. Even when I am concentrated on my programming, I sometimes regress and start reading interesting articles if they are related to my current project or programming language. In part, this is due to the fact that I spend a lot of time on Google looking up programming questions.
In order to overcome my distraction, I use "mediums" to trick myself into focusing. I have found that having a cup of coffee on the desk will put me in the right mindset, because I always use coffee when working. This works well, but I don't enjoy being dependent on hacks like this.
Do you have any tips for becoming and remaining productive?
- diamondsea 16y agoI set it up as an RSS feed and read it on my iPhone in idle times in Google Reader. I've also found that I seem to need at least one distraction, so if I play some good music (I seem to work best to Queensryche or Eminem) that keeps the "I want a distraction" part of my brain happy and the rest of it can focus on getting things done.