Excellent advice. I solved 80% part of the problem two days ago by simply blocking news.yc at the hosts file level on my main machine. My laptop is now my news.yc machine. It is hilarious to have PG publish the same solution two days later. :)
I tried the noprocrast setting on this site. Reading between the lines of his essay, I surmise that PG, like me, has evolved around noprocrast. My lizard brain has figured out how to click the override button before my conscious mind can notice.
Most of the rest of the stuff I read is a few dozen blogs. They update through RSS, and there are few enough of them (and I skim quickly enough) that they aren't a big time sink. It's news.yc -- which tends to embroil me in writing -- that's the sink.
Of course, there are worse ways to waste time than news.yc. Sometimes you need to tell yourself that.
I tried the noprocrast setting on this site. Reading between the lines of his essay, I surmise that PG, like me, has evolved around noprocrast. My lizard brain has figured out how to click the override button before my conscious mind can notice.
Most of the rest of the stuff I read is a few dozen blogs. They update through RSS, and there are few enough of them (and I skim quickly enough) that they aren't a big time sink. It's news.yc -- which tends to embroil me in writing -- that's the sink.
Of course, there are worse ways to waste time than news.yc. Sometimes you need to tell yourself that.