

Ask HN: Proposal for Managing the Addictiveness of This Site - gruseom

My partner and I were just talking about this business of how addictive HN is and how even certain industrious founders are struggling to balance it with other stuff. Turning the site off for a few hours a day seems a bit... heavy-handed. How about leveraging the power of shame instead? Here's our proposal:<p><pre><code>    Public Humiliation
</code></pre>
1. You can go to the Profile page and promise to be off the site for X hours.<p>2. During the X hours, your username is colored differently to show how virtuous you are.<p>3. If you break your promise, your username gets colored RED to publicly shame you and reveal your weakness to the world.<p>You could do it without #2, but I like that step. I think it would feel more like a game to see who else was playing. Also, seeing lots of people keeping their promises would nudge me in the same direction.
======
SwellJoe
It'll pass. It did for me, anyway. For about two or three months, I was here
_all the time_. I was clicking "override" on the procrastination page five or
ten times a day. But, it came from being unfocused about my work--I didn't
have a clear, and exciting, vision of where I was going or how to get there,
so I was putting off doing anything.

I did two things:

1\. Started working on music again (which always excites me, but I had to give
myself permission to take time off for something fun--I was wasting that time
dicking around on the Internet, anyway, so I might as well have something to
show for that time).

2\. Sat down one day and figured out the overarching vision for my company and
my development for the next week, month, and three months (don't think too far
ahead--it causes paralysis because the job looks too big). This triggered
several great ideas for big visible improvements in the product that don't
cost me much time or effort or money (outsourcing brain-dead tasks to cheap
labor, for example--for our website builder, for example, I just got 50 new
Open Source templates added for $149...this would have taken two or three full
days of my time, on a task that would make me nauseous with its tediousness,
but for the guy who did it, it was easily a couple of weeks normal wages).
Some of these ideas expanded my productivity dramatically, because it takes
the work off of my plate almost entirely, but it still gets done.

What I'm saying is that if spending your time _here_ is satisfying your
accomplishment receptors better than your own work, then you're probably doing
your own work wrong. You're treating the symptom rather than the disease.

Oh, and leave yourself something unfinished at the end of each day (this is
old hat for GTD people, but I never really paid attention to any of that
stuff). It actually works if you have something to do each day _instead_ of
going to HN first, you'll probably find you just keep doing things rather than
reading random crap on the Internet.

~~~
gruseom
You'll have to take my word for it, but we definitely have a clear and
exciting vision of where we're going and how to get there... of course we
could still be going about it wrong. But the main point of the post is just
that since a lot of people seem to have the same problem, maybe we could use
psychology to finesse it. Even if everybody just goes and browses some other
site, it would still be an interesting experiment.

~~~
nostrademons
How small are your tasks? I've found that once I've broken things down into
the "Okay, I can get that done in the next hour" level, I'd almost rather just
do it instead of saying I'll do it later. But if my tasks are "Okay, we'll get
this done in the next month", I'll be like "Eh, a month's a long time, I can
do it later."

------
gruseom
It's my fault for not being clearer, but you guys missed the point of the
post. I'm not asking for advice about procrastination issues (I have some, but
they're not that bad) and the general subject has been done to death already.

The point is that _given_ that a lot of people have this problem
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=446924>), here's a suggestion of
something new to try.

Of the comments that do address the specific proposal (of shame-based
noprocrast), there have been two objections. (1) Some people say they're not
influenced by anybody else's opinion, or shouldn't be. I call that self-
deception. (2) Others say it would be better to just stop procrastinating. Of
course it would. That's like prescribing "sleep" for insomnia.

I still think it's a cool idea that would make for a fun experiment.

Edit: by the way, while I've facetiously emphasized the shame aspect, I don't
think that's all there is to it. Lots of people have noticed that if you make
a public commitment to do something, you're more likely to follow through.
There's a lot of experimental data on that too.

------
sgk284
"noprocast" in the settings has been wonderful for me. The only thing I'd
change is add -1 karma when you click override :)

~~~
sielskr
_"noprocast" in the settings has been wonderful for me. The only thing I'd
change is add -1 karma when you click override_

How about it, PG? Will you give that "antifeature" a test?

------
pavelludiq
Like i care what people on the internet think. I am a pretty shameless person,
so this is a bad idea IN MY CASE. Maybe it will help other people, i don't
know.

The problem is more fundamental than that, procrastination seems to be a big
problem with a lot of people here on HN, including me. I've been searching for
answers and ways of countering it, i have thought a lot about the causes and
effects.

My conclusion is that it is not HN that is the problem, procrastination is
deeper that that, HN doesn't have anything unique that makes it addictive,
there are many activities that are addictive in the same way, and a lot of
them are offline, so its not an internet problem. Its a human problem. I have
found that i am more productive without internet though, but not that much, it
just takes me longer to find distractions.

------
rw
The problem for me is that stories are so time-sensitive. For example, there
are a _lot_ of good stories that never get to the front page, and if I want to
see them, I have to continually refresh the "new" page. I hate that, but it's
something I find myself doing.

~~~
nostrademons
<http://news.ycombinator.com/rss>

~~~
rw
Does that tell you how many upvotes and comments each story has received?
Certainly I could use that to continually poll the site and tell me.

~~~
Herring
Doesn't look like it does. That would be a good feature

------
tonystubblebine
I just edited my /etc/hosts to point this and most other procrastination sites
at localhost. The work day is for working. Now I have only two options at my
desk, either stare blankly or figure out the next task and do it. I unblock it
once a week or so to keep current.

~~~
nostrademons
You ever find yourself staring blankly? I've done that myself sometimes - it's
kinda depressing, that even with all distractions removed, I still can't bring
myself to do what I'm supposed to be doing.

~~~
Hexstream
On the other hand, I sometimes get a big moment of super-productive flow after
mostly staring blankly and doing nothing for like 20 minutes or more (or even
several episodes like this in the day). But those 20 minutes are indeed really
depressing so what usually happens is that I'll stare blankly a few minutes,
then get overrun by depression and just give up and land on HN or something
else unproductive, to "get my moral back up".

But I feel I could get really productive regularly if I just faced up that
fear more readily. I wonder if maybe the big depression that accompanies this
staring blankly and doing nothing is just my brain working in the background
and realizing the intricate details of my complex task, and I interrupt the
process when I'm just beginning to get real productive in the background.

Just a thought.

------
xenophanes
this is silly. to quote richard feynman, what do you care what other people
think?

~~~
gruseom
You think humans aren't affected by this kind of thing? Are you aware of the
myriads of data showing that we are? Even the people who think they aren't.
Probably _especially_ the people who think they aren't. Which is basically
everybody.

~~~
xenophanes
I accept that most people (including most people who deny it) care deeply what
other people think (in many but not all areas). Many people care so much about
it that they will sooner hurt their children than do something in public that
they think their neighbors disapprove of. A few bright lights such as Feynman
care what other people think only in a more limited fashion.

But so what? People can and should try to better themselves. Consider a person
who is pursuing the honorable goal of caring less about what other people. I
think he would not want to participate in your public humiliation plan; it
would harm his progress.

PS I also don't like to see people humiliated. I think being sensitive to
suffering, and not embracing plans to cause it, is a good trait too.

~~~
gruseom
_your public humiliation plan_

 _don't like to see people humiliated_

I hope your namesake had more of a sense of humor than this, or I'm going to
have to lower my opinion of the pre-Socratics.

~~~
xenophanes
Your plan relies on the fact that people _would_ find the "public humiliation"
unpleasant. Whatever you want to call it (I just repeated your words), being
unpleasant is an integral part of it.

------
quellhorst
How about a top losers list... users who are using the site the most every
day.

------
psyklic
I'd rest most of the blame with the people, not the site (no offense) -- if
you become "addicted" to this site, you'll probably become "addicted" to other
sites too.

------
mwerty
fwiw, I built a facebook app on this exact premise (shame):
<http://apps.facebook.com/friendlybets>

