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I don't think I had ever fully internalized how often I open this site throughout the day. Finish a task? HN. Got frustrated/stuck on a problem? HN break. Waiti
by joshstrange 4y ago
I don't think I had ever fully internalized how often I open this site throughout the day. Finish a task? HN. Got frustrated/stuck on a problem? HN break. Waiting for something to install/upload/compile/etc? HN.
Needless to say I opened a new tab, typed "n", and hit enter countless times today before my brain caught up with my muscle memory.
- agnos 4y agoWow, I've never realized just how often I do this. There's some sort of a reward pathway in my brain connecting my right index finger to seeing that orange bar and lines of text.
- pmoleri 4y agoThat used to happen to me with Slashdot too. I'm so happy that today I didn't even realize HN was down, I think I tried once, it didn't load and went do something else, I assumed it was some local DNS or internet issue.
- bragr 4y agonoprocrast exists for a reason :)
- slategruen 4y agoDoes it work even when you're logged out?
- timeon 4y agoEven if it did. Second browser will help with the urge. But it can help anyway. Some people just need the reminder.
- m4tthumphrey 4y agoI realised this today too. I imagine pretty much all of us are the same!
- beckingz 4y agoMakes you appreciate the noprocrast mode feature.
- m4tthumphrey 4y agoTried it once, never again!
- function_seven 4y agoI've been meaning to try that feature. Will probably check it out next week.
- Dnguyen 4y agoI see what you did there! haha
- beckingz 4y agoYeah the delirium tremens are rough.
- divbzero 4y agoI set the delay to 1 minute: Short enough that I can wait if I really need to read a thread, but long enough to nudge me back to my primary task if I’m just browsing.
- BbzzbB 4y agoCTRL-SHIFT-n (or -p) -> n -> ENTER
- grepfru_it 4y agoAh the elusive PorN method
- BbzzbB 4y agoMy Firefox on Manjaro defaulted to CTRL-SHIFT-p to open an incognito window, took me a minute to unlearn CTRL-SHIFT-n, but I figured I can't have the only PC with that hotkey.
- robrorcroptrer 4y agoAmen.
- Mixtape 4y agoI was in almost the exact same position all day. What made it worse though was the fact that this happened right in the middle of my attempts at curbing my browsing habits. Once my app timers for Reddit is Fun, Instagram, and Twitter were up, it was time for HN... except there was no HN. What that meant is that I was reaching for a stimulus and then not getting it, the same way that an alcoholic wouldn't feel satisfied by, say, a can of soda. It was weird to experience, but very enlightening. It both made me realize how subconsciously my addiction is reinforced and reaffirmed to me that it is, in fact, an addiction. I'm not going to stop using HN of course, but I'm definitely going to be more aware of how I use it (e.g. passively vs. intentionally) from now on.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- avidphantasm 4y agoI picked a bad day to stop using Twitter.
- GekkePrutser 4y agoAs far as addictions go, I find HN actually one that delivers actual knowledge. Literally every day I read something I didn't know before. Unlike on Facebook that just tries to serve me with more of the stuff I have already seen. I like wasting time on HN because it's time not actually wasted :) And don't get me started on Twitter... Sure there are some gems on twitter but I have to wade through 1000s of tweets of pure nonsense to see them. No thanks. If it's something really great someone will post a link on HN anyway :)
- PebblesRox 4y agoI find it valuable in moderation but some days I spend way too much time on it; past the point of diminishing returns. There's also an opportunity cost of what I could be doing with a lot of the time, which often would leave me feeling better than mindless HN reading.
- christophilus 4y agoYep. Same. It says a lot about the quality of HN, I think. Also, I can't remember the last time it was down. For a while, I thought there must be something wrong with my internet connection or DNS config or something.
- devonbleak 4y agoMight have tried to curl it from a production system just to make sure it wasn't my internet.
- joncp 4y agoIndeed. I find that it's so reliable and fast that I use it to check my internet connection. If I can't hit HN, then something's wrong on my end.
- 40four 4y agoI assumed at first there was a problem with my mobile data connection, before I realized it was actually HN :)
- huevosabio 4y agoSame here. I thought the my internet was down or I was too far from the router. HN being down was my last thought.
- andrepd 4y agoI use example.com for that purpose :p
- chrisshroba 4y agoI legitimately thought my internet was down for thirty minutes until I decided to try google.
- the_af 4y agoSame. HN is how I check my internet connection is working. Took me a while to realize the problem wasn't my connection...
- Overtonwindow 4y agoHN is where I get the bulk of my news and information about current thinking. I visit maybe several dozen times a day.
- teeceetime2 4y agowent out of my way to leave lurk mode and log in just so I could say "100% same experience for me"
- xoa 4y agoI reference back to it for a lot of info too, which I guess I should probably load more of into my own notes database. But still today there were a bunch of saved comments I wanted to re-read as reference multiple times, definitely noticeable to miss it. Or alternatively if I'd grabbed the URLs for everything I'm assuming the wayback machine probably archives this pretty well. Perils of depending on the HNcloud service :).
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- smcl 4y agoThis happened last couple of times I switched laptops - my old habit to visit "guardian.co.uk" by typing "guar" and hitting enter no longer works because I've now accidentally searched too many times for "guar" :D
- johnnymellor 4y agoYou can make the omnibox forget about URLs and search terms you've used a lot by selecting them with the down key then pressing Shift+Delete (https://superuser.com/a/189334 https://superuser.com/a/189334).
- sokoloff 4y agoNote that that doesn’t seem to work if you have a bookmark with that content (as it seems to find the bookmark, which is reasonable behavior but caught me out when I was trying to change the URL to an internal tool and didn’t realize why it wasn’t working to delete the auto-complete).
- GekkePrutser 4y agoNice, doesn't seem to work on firefox though, guess it's chrome only?
- lemoncookiechip 4y agoSame experience through out the day.
- cheesewhizemacs 4y ago> Needless to say I opened a new tab, typed "n", and hit enter countless times today before my brain caught up with my muscle memory. I do this too, and it's because this site is an addictive slot machine just like every other social networking site. I actually really hate this website, but I'm here almost every day, because I can't seem to break the habit. Neat. It's probably because I have a common impulse control / executive functioning disorder, and the way the front page works exploits some bug in my brain. Reddit does this to me too. I also hate Reddit.
- autoexec 4y ago> I actually really hate this website Why hate this site? Because it contains interesting/useful content often enough to make you come back? That'd be a weird reason to hate the site. I too have a common impulse control/executive functioning disorder, but I don't hate the things that it makes me vulnerable to. If I were feeling resentful, I'd have to put the blame on my condition. I don't have to ask why you hate reddit, the valid reasons for hating reddit are myriad
- bbkane 4y agoOthers have mentioned browser add-ons / DNS providers who can limit/blacklist sites. Maybe try one of those? The thing that's worked best for me though is leaving my phone in another room for a while or taking a walk without it.
- msrenee 4y agoIf it helps, I wouldn't say it's a disorder since it appears that basically everyone has a habit like this. It's probably a byproduct of some kind of adaptive advantage, but I don't have it in me to speculate exactly what at the moment. The only variable is what exactly you do automatically. Nowadays, everyone has their app or web page. Before smartphones and the internet being available everywhere, I remember my mentor talking about quitting cigarettes. This was shortly after the non-smoking section of the restaurant became the whole restaurant. She said that part of why it was so hard to quit was that even when she meant to cut back, she'd still find herself a third of the way through a cigarette before she realized that she'd lit one. I tear at the skin next to my fingernails in addition to opening HN (which was what I switched to when it became painfully obvious that Reddit was both bad for me and run by bad people). I moved my ebook app to the first screen on my phone and moved this app to a spot where I wasn't used to finding it. I figured it might get me to read more. What actually happened is that I started absent-mindedly swiping to the second screen and opening up the app. It's a pretty universal issue. Companies are just getting better at using it to their advantage.
- LoveMortuus 4y agoOhh... I thought my phone was just being weird because I use an AdBlock that works through VPN and it sometimes breaks stuff...
- taylodl 4y agoYeah. HN has become an important part of my workflow. Glad to know I'm not the only one!