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Ask HN: Am I addicted to HackerNews?

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Re: Ask HN: Am I addicted to HackerNews?

#31

Post by malmsteen »

adrianmsmith wrote: post #15

Wikipedia defines addiction as "a brain disorder characterized by compulsive engagement in rewarding stimuli, despite adverse consequences" I think it's important to realize that addiction is not just doing something often (e.g. we all drink water often, that's not addicition). It has to have a detrimental consequence in your life for to be addiction. Is your checking of HN causing you some problems? For me, I think,…

losing time doing something better. time is the most valuable ressource. so yeah it's detrimental

Re: Ask HN: Am I addicted to HackerNews?

#33

Post by j_s »

Anyone willing to list additional summary tools for those hoping to reduce their time on the site?

minimum point threshold: https://twitter.com/newsyc100

daily: http://www.daemonology.net/hn-daily/ | http://www.hntoplinks.com/ (configurable duration)

weekly: http://www.hackernewsletter.com/ | http://www.daemonology.net/hn-weekly-show/ | http://www.daemonology.net/hn-weekly-ask/

weekly, ultra-cynical edition: self-censoring to avoid a "violation of the prime directive" (with 68 patrons!)

--

[semi-obligatory self-promotional spam]

If there's enough interest, I will record an "Unofficial HN Audio Summary" commutecast and also link anyone else doing it.

https://goo.gl/forms/554KT5a19xprN4Mx2

Re: Ask HN: Am I addicted to HackerNews?

#34

Post by rpeden »

I think that 10-15 times a day is quite normal for a large chunk of frequent visitors.

Instead of worrying about the frequency, perhaps try to turn it into a positive thing. Try to make it a rule that whenever you visit HN, you also add a constructive comment on a story.

Show/Ask HN submissions that don't have many comments can be a great place to do this. Try to thoughtfully answer someone's question, or check out the project they've shared with the world and offer your thoughts and some encouragement.

By turning your HN visits into HN contributions, you'd be both helping yourself grow and contributing to the community. When you go out of your way to write thoughtful responses, you'll often find that they serve as good starting points for blog posts, if blogging is your thing (or you've been meaning to start a blog for years and years, but feel like you never have any good ideas). Your HN responses can serve as great writing prompts.

Re: Ask HN: Am I addicted to HackerNews?

#36

Post by newbear »

Dealing with the same issue and was thinking of deleting. I consume a lot of content and learn a lot from but I don't feel myself retaining the information. Maybe I am subconsciously? As such, I think it contributes more to anxiety which leads to stress etc. than being a benefit to my life. Do others feel the same? Does the vast amount of interesting content and curiousisty to want to consume it all make you anxious? I like the comment about retraining idle time, so instead of hackernews something else ... but I'm addicted.

Re: Ask HN: Am I addicted to HackerNews?

#38

Post by foobarchu »

mozillas wrote: post #26
staticelf wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everytime I compile and it takes longer than usual I check HN. Sometimes I forget to check the new build and 20 minutes have passed.

Is there no way to add a notification when the build is finished? In my case, for python scripts that take a little more time to run, I add a `tput bel` at the end of the script. By doing this iTerm gives me a visual and a gentle sound notification that things are ready.

For a little more obvious notification, I like noti.

https://github.com/variadico/noti

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