No, because it gives me ideas and helps me to know what others are doing
Poll: Does the amount of time that you spend on HN hurt your productivity?
11–20 of 36 posts
Re: Poll: Does the amount of time that you spend on HN hurt your productivity?
#12It compensates for that by giving me a lot of new insights.
Re: Poll: Does the amount of time that you spend on HN hurt your productivity?
#13I know I've asked this before, but is there anything I can do to make HN less of a productivity hit? Slow it down in some way perhaps?
Re: Poll: Does the amount of time that you spend on HN hurt your productivity?
#14Not too much of a time sink for me. When in the office, I only really go on HN when I want to get away from the task at hand for a moment. This is either because I'm stuck on a problem, or just finished something big and need a quick break. Either way, I wasn't going to be writing code in the next few minutes.
Re: Poll: Does the amount of time that you spend on HN hurt your productivity?
#15It does take away from actual billable hours, but between HN and Google Reader (my two major timesinks), I learn new things or discover new products/services that end up being very valuable to myself or my clients (or at least just stretch the ol' brain muscle a bit).
One thing my clients have said they love about me that they can present me with a tough problem and I always have some service bookmarked that will solve it.
So yeah it's distracting, but it's at least somewhat productive distraction.
Edit: At least that's how I justify it
Re: Poll: Does the amount of time that you spend on HN hurt your productivity?
#16I think it's more valuable than other ways I might waste time. That said there's another advantage that I think is more important.
I'm passionate about technology. The people who work for me like technology but aren't as passionate as I am. So I require a half hour of HN time of them every day and I've found it makes them much better employees. Conversations around the office focus on technology rather than "what you did last night" and everyone is better in touch with future trends (something that many code jockeys tend to ignore)
Re: Poll: Does the amount of time that you spend on HN hurt your productivity?
#17I know I've asked this before, but is there anything I can do to make HN less of a productivity hit? Slow it down in some way perhaps?
Pay per use? :)
Re: Poll: Does the amount of time that you spend on HN hurt your productivity?
#18I know I've asked this before, but is there anything I can do to make HN less of a productivity hit? Slow it down in some way perhaps?
Maybe a counter at the top of the page (karma, counter) to show how much time someone has spent on HN in the past (day, week, #{interval}) guilt-trip (some) people into spending less time on the site? Or with the number of times they've opened up a page to HN?
// edit: This is a social/mental problem, not a technical one. I'd be surprised if a complicated change did anything to fix it. Noprocrast works because its simple. Changing algorithms around isn't as obvious, any behavior changes as a result would probably be much more subtle to observe.
Re: Poll: Does the amount of time that you spend on HN hurt your productivity?
#19I think it's more valuable than other ways I might waste time. That said there's another advantage that I think is more important. I'm passionate about technology. The people who work for me like technology but aren't as passionate as I am. So I require a half hour of HN time of them every day and I've found it makes them much better employees. Conversations around the office focus on technology rather than "what you…
How can I sign up? You sound like a great boss!