
Ask HN: How do you manage time between working and “absorption”? - SergeyDruid
So it is Monday and as always I returned to my daily job refreshed by a restful weekend.<p>Pick up a coffee and <i>zap</i> work like hell.<p>I don&#x27;t feel the urge on Mondays on checking news here on HN, neither news&#x2F;posts&#x2F;tutorials on the 11 other websites which I follow everyday, by opening their tabs almost mechanically and reading them fast impulsively (after all, I&#x27;m at work).<p>The problem starts when I&#x27;m in mid-week, I probably check those websites every 30 minutes, trying to absorb new information.<p>So a few questions here:<p>1) How do you manage this urge of knowledge?<p>2) How do you manage then to balance work &#x2F; &quot;absorption&quot;?<p>3) How do you organize this new information? (personally I have 6 distinct categories [(H)news, generic articles, design inspiration, coding tutorials, design tutorials, new coding tools or technologies])<p>4) I&#x27;m alone here with this problem?<p>Thank you all in advance,<p>&#x2F;coffee finished
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onion2k
If I'm honest, I'm well aware of the fact that my motivation to spend time on
HN is not to learn things. The way I think is very much aligned with what goes
on on HN, so being here confirms my biases very nicely. HN doesn't challenge
the way I think so I enjoy being on here and feel quite relaxed about posting.
That's not to say I don't learn things, but when I do it's serendipitous
rather than intentional.

As such, it seems unlikely (to me) that anyone would be checking back here
every 30 minutes in order to find new information or inspiration. It's sounds
like you're avoiding something.

~~~
collyw
I don't think you necessarily learn things here, but I do find a lot of "I
should read more on that, it sounds useful".

------
kiechu
Hi.

I think it is common problem.

With HN and Reddit I got rule that I am reading the top 10 posts and that's
all. Not that bottom 20 wasn't worth reading, but there is no limit to
absorption if you don't make one.

Second trick is "Stay Focused" Chrome extension. You can add there your
favorite absorption sites and set time limit how much a day you can spend on
them. After you use your daily quota it shows you "Shouldn't you be working
page". Pro tip: change it for redirect to Google or your corporate page. You
don't want your boss seeing that page and having first thought: "So, he hasn't
been working!". It makes worse impression than seeing you actually reading
some tutorial.

For the procrastination enemies use Block Site Chrome extension to block them
completely.

At the end, I think it's ok to absorb reasonably in work. Your work is not
repetitive manual job. Once in a while, you have to give your brain a rest to
be productive. Unless it turns into procrastination (I bet it happens
sometimes) I think HN widens your horizons. It's not the same as bing bing and
sweet kitten photos - it pays back for your employer too and you need regular
breaks anyway.

~~~
SergeyDruid
Hi, thank you for the reply!

" _there is no limit to absorption if you don 't make one_" -excellent
suggestion

I cheked out "Stay Focused", very useful extension!

------
stevewillows
I keep a folder of daily bookmarks that I empty at the end of the day. During
my morning coffee / breakfast I look through reddit and HN and bookmark
anything that I'd want to read later. Over lunch, I read, and at night I read
anything left over / that still interests me. Naturally, I end up reading
other things, but I find this method establishes a priority for 'reading
time'.

Mind you, I've been in a rough schedule to control all types of information
since I work at home and have struggled with stopping work.

I do email / administrative tasks for the day for an hour. Out of that work I
have my to-do list for the day that is amended to the to-do list I compile at
the end of my day.

I work until 12:30, watch Star Trek TNG and read over lunch, give a brief
glance for any urgent emails. I then continue working til the end of day
(about 5pm) then check my emails again and add items to the next day's to-do
list.

If I'm home after dinner I'll catch up on reading, watch some shows and
contribute to different communities.

This isn't set in stone, but it's a rough pattern I've had for years. Before I
had this pattern I was spreading myself thin and it was causing a lot of
stress.

On slower days I will read more, but I still do my best to maintain the
bookmark and read later pattern.

~~~
calvinx
Yup. This is similar to what I do.

Following a pattern helps a lot.

------
iopq
I work from home and the lines are very blurred. I can code for 12 hours one
day, and then the next day do no coding at all. Then a few hours on the
weekend while the girlfriend is sleeping. Then I make a trip up to the office
once a week and put in a 16 hour day (including bullshitting and ping pong,
though) and sleep in.

I really like being focused on tasks rather than being busy at work. As long
as I accomplish things, there should be no issue about my productivity.

Suddenly, there is no procrastinating. It's just time I happen not to spend
working.

------
klibertp
I read somewhere that you should try to write a summary of everything you
read. This is supposed to help you realize how little _new_ information there
is and let you learn avoiding substance-less articles. Or something like that.
Can't find the source for this right now, anyone?

------
jaymzcampbell
One thing that helps me not feel I'm "loosing" out on some great posts I want
to read is using a kindle; I still open lots of articles up from HN or twitter
but just for a few minutes, if anything grabs my fancy I send it to Kindle,
then on the way home or when I'm lounging around with some dead time I can
catch up with everything.

(I'm using a chrome extension by klip.me:
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ipkfnchcgalnafehpg...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ipkfnchcgalnafehpglfbommidgmalan)).
I've never had a good experience with code on them, the formatting always
messes up, but for lengthy, 'discussion' pieces it's great.

~~~
SergeyDruid
Never had a Kindle, but I think the mechanics are similar to Pocket

------
solopreneur
Excellent question that probably affects all of us! Try to set a schedule
like: 30 minutes every morning and 30 minutes every evening. The most
difficult part is to stick to the rule :)

------
cel1ne
1\. Realize that not everything is equally important and you often can't tell
what is. Just relax and trust yourself to pick the right parts.

2\. I work at home, it depends on the day. Other people in offices check
Facebook half the time and stop working at friday noon. Why not read an
article in between.

3\. I use Chrome and my bookmark bar is organized as follows:

. folder "d" for "daily" -> my reading schedule is rightclicking this and
selecting "open all bookmarks". contains about 10 websites, now and then some
are added, sometimes I delete some. I don't read all of them all the time.

. folder "a" for "archive" -> general non-specific archive. things I like or
maybe want to see again at some unknown point in the far future go in there.
Every couple of weeks/months I check the stuff in there.

. some folders for topics or projects, also short abbreviation "mth" for math,
"ai" for ai, "ft" for "future", "arch" for architecture and so on. Unicode
Symbols as well. "♪" for piano-stuff.

Now the important part: These folders fill up about 15% of my bookmark bar. If
I see something and I want to read it, but don't have time right now, I add it
to the bookmark bar itself. If the bar starts to overflow and stays overflown
for a day or two, I start deleting or reading things in the bar. (Or throwing
it in the general archive). Works very well for me.

4\. No :).

~~~
SergeyDruid
Thanks for the answer,

I think that the key is that "not everything is equally important to me".

Regarding categories, I use a similar categorization, except for those you
call "a" (I call them "session_1" ,2, 3, etc..), I still have the first
folders from 2011, and some bookmarks are already dead! :D

------
jtcchan
There's nothing wrong with reading and absorbing new knowledge. It's doing it
_before_ you've done your important work. When you're done, you can (and
should) indulge in activities you find relaxing and beneficial. Helps us stay
informed and prevent burn out in the long run.

I ran into the same issue a year back and I ended up building a Chrome
extension that helps remind you of what you _should_ be doing every time you
open a new tab: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/dayboard-new-
tab-p...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/dayboard-new-tab-
page/kimodcegbhclamjcbifgfaldeengbgij)

It does other things like helping you plan daily, figure out what's worth
doing or not, help you cut down switching costs (i.e. when you do end up
getting distracted), single handle your tasks, etc - but that's icing on the
cake.

It's a different approach to extensions that block distracting sites, which
while useful, I think misses the point. (The point is to focus on what you
should be doing, not just block what you shouldn't be doing. Plus, there are
times I think it's appropriate to read HN, Reddit, FB, Twitter, Wikipedia
etc.)

Also, anecdotally, I can tell you a lot of my users fall in the same pattern
where they're most productive on Mondays but get progressively less productive
throughout the week. You're definitely not alone. I haven't dug into the data
and I have a relatively small sample but if you dig around, I'm sure there are
blog posts that talks about this already.

~~~
SergeyDruid
Thank you for linking the extension, I'll try it out!

At first glance I think that it can be more useful (for me) in the overall
daily/personal tasks instead of the work ones.

~~~
jtcchan
Cool - let me know how it works out! :)

------
DanielBMarkham
I have spent quite a bit of time on this over the past few years, mainly
because I know it's a problem for me and for many others.

Like any hacker, my plan is to build something. I've started off with a
personal news aggregation site that visits the places I normally go and
creates a "Newspaper" of plain-text articles I can read without all the
engagement/addiction/distraction stuff.

I find if nothing else, this allows me to consume a lot more! So I'm not sure
I'm solving it. But once I get that nailed, I'm going to do statistical text
analysis to reduce interesting articles to summaries. I find many times that
because I begin reading an article, I feel as if I should continue to the end.
If I had only a paragraph, with no easy way of continuing? (With perhaps a
"Save for later" button that would make the article available in four hours or
something) I'd probably drift a lot less.

This is a very tough problem. Many times I find myself reading some about some
obscure topic that does not make either an immediate or long-term positive
difference in my life. I fear for too many of us the internet is consuming us
instead of the other way around. Good luck!

------
petercooper
So this will be an unusual answer but.. I didn't manage it. I realized years
ago I was addicted to new knowledge, news, the flow of information, etc. and
have turned it into my day-to-day job/passion. If it makes a living for me,
it's OK, etc. Not viable for everyone, of course, but there's a whole industry
to work in for us die-hard info junkies ;-)

~~~
k__
How?

~~~
petercooper
I run a series of e-mail newsletters on topics I'm interested in and have
about 190k subscribers.

But that's only one tiny way, there are lots of people who do things like blog
about news full-time, run tumblelogs, industry analysts, etc.
[http://daringfireball.net/](http://daringfireball.net/) would be a top
example of one of these.
[http://www.loopinsight.com/](http://www.loopinsight.com/) are another. Lots
of podcasts, YouTubers, etc. Generally "indie media" I guess.

It's worth noting, however, that it's quite hard to make a good living in that
way and only a small percentage make it to an enviable position. It's
certainly a lot easier to make $100k+ per year as a full-time programmer than
as someone consuming/producing media.

------
mohas
I myself don't focus so much about keeping and organizing things that I read,
I check here in hacker news about two three times a day and had developed a
habit of reading only things that really really interests me (I became
addicted to HN at first). One more thing is that I don't need to really know
every detail about what I have read, I only need to know that such
technology/technique/etc. exits, when I need it or think that it might help, I
look it up in the internet, google will probably finds it if it was useful to
some people by the time I need it. I use often use books to gain moderate
knowledge about a topic and try to make a product or use what I have learned
in work, I think a good knowledge gaining strategy consists of a short term
topic buffer (like hacker news) and a log term one like reading books and
doing weekend projects.

------
abinavthakuri
This is something I've been dealing with myself. I'd use something like Pulp
or any other RSS reader and set up all the RSS feeds of all the sites that you
read. Here's an excellent source for RSS feeds of HN that I use -
[http://ashleyw.co.uk/project/hacker-news-
feeds](http://ashleyw.co.uk/project/hacker-news-feeds)

And then make the habit of only spending a set amount of time before or after
work for reading the feed. The plus point of using an RSS reader like Pulp is
that you get everything in one place and don't need to spend time loading up
every single site. It's hard to make the habit but you can surely do it
gradually.

I organise everything by categories just like you do. I don't have a set
guideline. I just make them up as I run on new kind of stuff.

------
spupy
Don't kid yourself, you aren't visiting HN/news/tutorials/whatever because of
some "urge of knowledge" or because of "absorption". People get bored all the
time; everyone has this problem, some people just deal with it more
effectively.

------
kasia
I see moments of "absortion" as a threat to my focus. Don't get me wrong, I
love to read news (hardware, programming, design, startups, marketing and
fashion..yes fashion.) but I don't want to waste my time on it. When you read
something, you need to make a use of it. So you need to have more time for
work. More time for testing and more time for being focused. I read "the
Internet" when I feel a little bit tired - usually in the afternoon. For me,
this is the best way to make use of power that you still have. When I'm doing
this in the morning, I just feel that I'm wasting my time and energy. I have a
few favs but usually want to read as much as I can and like to research for
some new sources.

------
wastedhours
I absorb perhaps more than I should, I use it as a kind of positive
procrastination from a not completely engaging job. I break it down similarly
to you, spend more time on SO style answers as it looks "codey" if anyone can
see my screen and answers my own (work or personal) coding Qs.

Midweek sounds about right for me too, it makes me think that actually a 4 day
work week, with Wednesdays off, might actually be a better working pattern,
but then, I am learning whilst browsing, so, there's pros and cons...

------
analog31
For me, it's procrastination, plain and simple.

In my better moments, I try to spend my procrastination time "doing"
something, so I load my computer with toys such as a new programming tool that
I want to learn, an evaluation board for a microcontroller, etc. I give myself
little projects. The cycle is complete when I begin to use one of those toys
for my regular job.

And to anybody monitoring my activities (which I always assume), it looks just
like work.

------
mark_l_watson
You are not "absorbing" vital technical knowledge so much as fighting boredom.

My suggestion: go for walks during your work day. When possible, bring someone
along from work that you need to discuss business with and make the walking
time productive. If you walk by yourself, take advantage of time away from the
computer to mentally step back and look at the "big picture" of what you are
working on.

------
paullth
1) by setting aside a little time, unless a deadline is looming.

2) 5-10 mins of distraction to 50-55 mins of work (~ish)

3) bookmarks folder (set of folders specific to lang: e.g Java/Ruby/Scale,
tools, architecture/infrastructure, project specific folders (i.e one project
needs NLP tech so it collects in a relevant folder), math, and finally
"interesting" for stuff I pretend I will need to refer back to

4) absolutely not

------
hoof_marks
I do meditation in the morning and go for work. Which is lot of concentration
on the computer. Mid day sometimes I see articles on HN, ma.tt etc. To relax.
In late evening look at these news sometimes on my tab.

I do have an issue with organizing imp websites for future reading, and am
looking for a good bookmarking app that syncs with all my computers!

~~~
SergeyDruid
Hi, thank you for your answer!

How do you started to do meditation? Maybe it coulde be a plus if I'd do this
in the morning!

------
6d0debc071
My work computer isn't connected to the internet. It saves on emails pinging
in throughout the day too, anyone who needs something right now can phone or
walk over.

------
scotty79
I think it stems mostly from the fact that the work we do (and our way of life
generally) is boring to the point of being tiresome for the brain.

Your brain gets tired of work and boredom, but it still strives to alleviate
the boredom. One of the easiest things you can do is read news and bite sized
portions of cool stuff. It triggers emotions especially in minds like ours.
The only easier thing I know is watching TV (YouTube) but it's less rewarding
for me so I only choose it when I'm too tired to read but not tired enough to
sleep.

I think what's most important is that reading internet the way we do it when
we feel the urge is worthless. You might think you learn stuff that can be
useful for you in the future, but for each thing that marvelously hits the
spot before you forget it (and that's like one for each 1000 things you've
read) there are 50 things that you learn as you go when you need them. You
might as well learn 51 then.

So you should be aware of confirmation bias when you try to justify reading
internet when you need a kick and don't have energy for anything else. The
rare instances when you used something you've learned beforehand on the
internet are not enough to justify treating reading internet any different
than any other form of recreation.

When you are aware of that, you may try to steer away yourself, when you are
too bored to work (and preferably bit earlier) to other forms of recreation.
Keep a bit of polymer clay at your desk and sculpt something when you are
bored. Have a piece of paper and pencil and draw something (preferably some
real object that's in your view than something from your head). Keep some
legos and stick them together in random but perhaps weirdly symmetric fashion
(don't over-think it). Play few levels of visually nice action game. Or just
take a piece of paper and tear it bit by bit into pile of tiny bits. You'll be
amazed of what's entertaining for your brain. Get up, walk around, go get
yourself coffee or whatever, stare through a window at trees and people. Or
just take a quick walk around your company building without any real purpose.
Play a bit with some puzzles. Answer some questions on stackoverflow. Touch
interesting 3d object with some textures. Jump few times. Basically do
anything that's not intellectually taxing but exposes you to various stimuli
you were lacking. Obviously try the things that are acceptable at your
company. If you see group of friends talking about something interesting join
in to listen (but make sure that it actually is interesting).

You can trick your brain into feeling that what you do is not that boring by
listening to the music as you do it. But use this trick like coffee, sparsely,
only when you need to focus but you can't take entertainment break.

On weekends and evenings you can still go on binges of reading, gaming,
exercising, watching TV, sleeping, socializing, creating whatever keeps your
brain non-bored.

One last thing, when you use sculpting or drawing as an entertainment please
remember that you are not an artist. You are not doing it to create something,
or like it, or be proud of it. You do it just to feed your senses for a while.
Quality of your output is totally irrelevant. If you start thinking about your
output you'll torch this activity as means of entertainment for yourself.

~~~
icemelt8
(Non - English speaker)

I loved your amazing reply. But can you please elaborate that why are you
suggesting to refrain from reading articles and do something else?

Is it because reading articles drains will power and not enough will power
left for doing actual work?

~~~
scotty79
Yes. Maybe not willpower ... but reading tires same parts of your brain that
you use for work as a software developer, so after session of reading you
won't be able to work very long because you end up less bored but still tired.
OP said that he has to read something every 30 minutes. That doesn't look
optimal.

Most important reason for me for striving to avoid reading internet is that I
fall back on this activity not because it's most efficient as means of getting
entertainment but just because it's easiest one to do. Same as eating
something sweet is easiest way to quench hunger. But not the most efficient or
healthy one when you are interested in the longer perspective.

Also, your body and parts of the brain that interface with the body have only
as much fun when you read as when you work so this also looks like there's a
room for some improvement in efficiency of entertainment.

