

Ask HN: Is there a 12-step program to cut down on reading HackerNews? - Floopsy

I think I'm addicted.
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staunch
Make yourself busy with _truly_ interesting things. HN is a cheap shot of
dopamine but there are far more potent sources. If you're procrastinating on
HN it's probably because you don't have yourself mind buried in something
engaging enough.

~~~
vasudhapande
I think you're right. When I'm not working on a challenging/interesting enough
project, I tend to spend most of my time on HN/Quora.

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s_henry_paulson
If you think you're browsing a particular site too much, here's what I do.

Block the site on your work computer. You can use any method you want, I just
edit my computer's host file, so the site won't load.

You can still access these websites on any other computer, your phone, your
tablet, or whatever, but then your work computer becomes used for work, and if
you want a distraction, pick up a different device.

I find the separation of work from easily accessible distractions quite
helpful.

~~~
freehunter
I actually do the exact opposite. Being one of the corporate workers on HN and
a non-programmer to boot, I browse the site at work while there's no work to
be done. In systems administration, we do get downtime where nothing is
happening. When something needs to get done, I cannot let HN distract me or I
lose my job, which is a pretty good incentive.

At home, however, I have HN, Facebook and reddit null-routed, only accessible
through my phone on 3G. Netflix and Amazon Prime Instant are only accessible
after 9pm and only on my HTPC in the living room according to my firewall
rules. There's no strong disincentive to me sitting at home browsing all day
instead of doing more productive things, so I create a barrier that keeps me
from visiting. I can easily reverse the block, but that's admitting defeat.

I guess after writing it out, it's not that different. The only difference is,
I have a corporate office and a bit of downtime here and there that I fill
with semi-work-related HN.

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junto
1\. Go to your HN profile page.

2\. Set noprocrast = yes

3\. Set maxvisit and minaway to your personal (dis)liking

HN will now stop you procrastinating.

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kaolinite
This made me chuckle but with so much interesting content, it really can be a
genuine problem. I found myself spending a bit too much time on HN so enabled
the maxvisit and minaway settings in my profile. I find that 20:20 is good
enough to break up my sessions.

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mrgreenfur
I will make a product to limit your reading. What would you pay for such a
service?

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duck
You can subscribe to <http://hackernewsletter.com>. I hear that it helps some
folks with the HN addiction.

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antidoh
Yes, but you get "Unknown or expired link." at step 9.

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hansy
Maybe start by removing all shortcuts, bookmarks to HN. Make it as
inconvenient as possible to access HN.

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cewawa
Put news.ycombinator.com in your /etc/hosts file, pointing to 127.0.0.1

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uvTwitch
Step 1: Stop browsing HackerNews.

