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Just my own experience to speak from: My use of HN is escapism, not curiosity or FOMO. I turn to it when I'm too mentally worn out to do any of the things that
by smeej 3y ago
Just my own experience to speak from: My use of HN is escapism, not curiosity or FOMO. I turn to it when I'm too mentally worn out to do any of the things that belong on my own plate, or when I'm avoiding them for some other reason.
There are worse choices, but I'm sure there are also better ones. At the end of your day, look back at the moments you pulled up HN and see if you can figure out what was going on then that you mentally wanted to escape from, and what alternatives you had.
Like for me today, I'm under the weather and was too dizzy to make it to my other commitment this evening. I already took a nap, and it's too early to go to bed unless I want to wake up at 3. My head is largely full of clouds, so anything else I'd be doing right now is even less useful than this. I'm pretty OK with it in this circumstance, because the opportunity cost is so low.
That said, this is also my last comment for the evening.
- loveparade 3y agoThis, and it applies not just to HN but all distractions. I have periods where I cycle through various distractions. Sometimes I don't visit HN for a few weeks, but I instead visit a reddit community that I discovered. Then I drop reddit for a few weeks and replace it with Twitter. Then I replace Twitter with playing a game instead. It's not because any of these are particularly interesting or useful, it's because I want to escape from whatever else I'm supposed be doing, which most of the time is boring work.