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Stop looking at HN and go work that thing you promised yourself you'd work on

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Stop looking at HN and go work that thing you promised yourself you'd work on

#51

Post by semi-extrinsic »

kaolinite wrote: post #41

I've drastically cut my HN time in the past few months by following this one weird trick: Add "news.ycombinator.com##td.subtext" following to your Adblock/uBlock custom filters. You still get to read the articles and keep up with tech news, but you don't end up in comment threads (unless it's an Ask HN/etc, hence why I'm commenting now). Occasionally I load up HN in a different browser if I want to take a break and r…

I make sure to only browse HN, youtube, social media etc. on my phone. I don't have my various accounts logged in on the desktop. This way I can take a 5 minute HN/whatever break and actually go back to work again after 5 mins. Even my subconcious knows being on my phone is not working.

Re: Stop looking at HN and go work that thing you promised yourself you'd work on

#54

Post by mattgibson »

kaolinite wrote: post #41

I've drastically cut my HN time in the past few months by following this one weird trick: Add "news.ycombinator.com##td.subtext" following to your Adblock/uBlock custom filters. You still get to read the articles and keep up with tech news, but you don't end up in comment threads (unless it's an Ask HN/etc, hence why I'm commenting now). Occasionally I load up HN in a different browser if I want to take a break and r…

> There's lots of great content in the comments, but it's also a fantastic way to waste time.

But I learn more from the comments than from the articles!

Re: Stop looking at HN and go work that thing you promised yourself you'd work on

#56

Post by Killswitch »

kaolinite wrote: post #41

I've drastically cut my HN time in the past few months by following this one weird trick: Add "news.ycombinator.com##td.subtext" following to your Adblock/uBlock custom filters. You still get to read the articles and keep up with tech news, but you don't end up in comment threads (unless it's an Ask HN/etc, hence why I'm commenting now). Occasionally I load up HN in a different browser if I want to take a break and r…

I do similar, but mainly by looking at comment count. Typically higher posts have large comments, and I just don't have the energy to read all those comments.

Re: Stop looking at HN and go work that thing you promised yourself you'd work on

#58

Post by johndevor »

miguelrochefort wrote: post #39

12 years ago, I have decided that I would forever change the way people communicate. Today, nothing has been done. I'm struggling to get people to relate to this need for a better communication system and language. I am convinced that this is very important, but I fail to get the positive feedback I've always expected. Should I ignore people and blindly trust my guts? Taking on such a massive task is very difficult f…

Can't you prototype something small and gather feedback?

Re: Stop looking at HN and go work that thing you promised yourself you'd work on

#59

Post by antaviana »

guelo wrote: post #6

I'm just here because my compile times are slow. 3 hours later… after 12 tweets, reading 6 articles, filing a GitHub issue, and watching a show on Netflix… what was I building?

At our company back in the time we chose to prioritize Delphi as the development language of choice because of compile times (the alternative competing was C++).

Too bad the Delphi team was not able to find a business model that was able to scale their user base (probably some kind of subscription at the price range of JetBrains subscription was needed). Now are now looking back into C++ (and its much longer compile times).

Re: Stop looking at HN and go work that thing you promised yourself you'd work on

#60

Post by justifier »

i'll give you a recent anecdote

i was working on a project where i needed to convert linear motion into rotational motion

i was working through some schemes and though functional by design they were failing in the real world scenarios i was building for

frustrated i sat down for a break and doped up on some hn for a bit

this post came up:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10714048

i clicked through and was surprised by how much i enjoyed the lists found within,

so i clicked on the portrait in the corner to learn more about the person putting the lists together

this led me to this page:

http://www.staff.science.uu.nl/~hooft101/

an almost goofy early web days personal page of this nobel prize winning physicist

while scrolling though the personal page, clicking on random things and skimming through them, i came across an animation in the 'unpublished works' section

i looked at it for a second and thought.. is that a rotational motion being converted into a linear motion?

i searched for 'Peaucellier–Lipkin linkage' and found this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D30iFxhJTQA

and there it was, linear to rotational motion and much more robust than the other efforts i was attempting

i built it and it worked

i've since designed out the need for the conversion but it was an important step along the way in the build

i'd err away from the charge to 'get to work' and suggest one instead: 'enjoy yourself'

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