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Do you read HackerNews all day and never actually do anything?

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Re: Do you read HackerNews all day and never actually do anything?

#91

Post by raphar »

alex_c wrote: post #80

I've never been at the stage where I don't do _anything_, but I'm often frustrated that I don't do _enough_. I went through a stage of spending way too much time on Reddit - on the order of 4-5 hours a day. This has been discussed often, but it can be crippling - as soon as you hit the tiniest mental roadblock, you switch your browser to Reddit, next thing you know it's 20 minutes later and not only is your roadblock…

very good chrome equivalent:

StayFocusd https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/laankejkbhbdhmip...

Re: Do you read HackerNews all day and never actually do anything?

#92

Post by puredemo »

alex_c wrote: post #80

I've never been at the stage where I don't do _anything_, but I'm often frustrated that I don't do _enough_. I went through a stage of spending way too much time on Reddit - on the order of 4-5 hours a day. This has been discussed often, but it can be crippling - as soon as you hit the tiniest mental roadblock, you switch your browser to Reddit, next thing you know it's 20 minutes later and not only is your roadblock…

LeechBlock is awesome. It actually includes wildcard blocking of subdomains as well -- that's extremely helpful to me (sadly I've found myself visiting de.reddit.com when the site was blocked in my hostfile.)

I also love the custom redirect. Great addon.

Re: Do you read HackerNews all day and never actually do anything?

#93

Post by 9ec4c12949a4f3 »

puredemo wrote: post #92
alex_c wrote: post #80

I've never been at the stage where I don't do _anything_, but I'm often frustrated that I don't do _enough_. I went through a stage of spending way too much time on Reddit - on the order of 4-5 hours a day. This has been discussed often, but it can be crippling - as soon as you hit the tiniest mental roadblock, you switch your browser to Reddit, next thing you know it's 20 minutes later and not only is your roadblock…

LeechBlock is awesome. It actually includes wildcard blocking of subdomains as well -- that's extremely helpful to me (sadly I've found myself visiting de.reddit.com when the site was blocked in my hostfile.) I also love the custom redirect. Great addon.

Just installed "Chrome Nanny" after reading this. Maybe everyone will hear less of me soon? Hahaha. :)

Re: Do you read HackerNews all day and never actually do anything?

#94

Post by noarchy »

melling wrote: post #48

HN should put a little entrepreneur badge next to your name for having shipped a product. That would motivate some people.

I like to equate these sorts of ideas with the "grinds" that one sees in MMORPGS. We have reputation grinds on places like HN already, where you gain special privileges based on your point total (actually, it is your average now, right?). So do we want to add more of these things? Instead of talking about gaming the system, it will actually be a game.

Re: Do you read HackerNews all day and never actually do anything?

#95

Post by _urga »

Ben Franklin has a saying "experience keeps a dear school but a fool will learn at no other". In other words, seek wisdom and experience vicariously, and as Isaac Newton said, "stand on the shoulders of giants". The word vicarious means "experienced in the imagination through the feelings or actions of another person".

But there's a cost to vicarious experience when we start to derive feelings of fulfillment ("being in the game") from success stories at the neglect of reaching for our own. A telltale sign is when people start calling Steve Jobs "Jobs" or Bob Dylan "Dylan", as if they know them. Don't live in the movies. The real world is a better movie.

There's a Biblical saying that goes something like this "the Kingdom of Heaven is not a matter of talk, but of power". The earthly realm is certainly no different. Use vicarious experience to gain wisdom, not to trigger endorphins. Keep your head down, your mouth shut, and get on with your own business.

Re: Do you read HackerNews all day and never actually do anything?

#96

Post by gruseom »

reemrevnivek wrote: post #67
edw519 wrote: post #62

Simple hack: 2 computers, one for work and one for the internet. Different workstations, preferably in different rooms. It's a lot harder to get up off your ass than to hit alt-tab. Harness that laziness to your advantage.

Impressive that you not only had the wherewithal to do this, but also are not being lazy by moving yourself to the other room to post this comment. Seriously, though, how do you make yourself sit down at the work computer?

Find more interesting work.

Re: Do you read HackerNews all day and never actually do anything?

#97

Post by jseifer »

The best thing I've found for distractions is a program called "Concentrate" on OS X. You can set time to block certain classifications of sites, such as social networks. I do the pomodoro technique which is 25 minutes code, 5 minute break alternations. You'd be surprised that you get just about the same amount of HN time in your 5 minute allotments.

I did a blog post about it here: http://jasonseifer.com/2010/02/08/using-concentrate-for-pomo....

Re: Do you read HackerNews all day and never actually do anything?

#98

Post by LordLandon »

Two ideas:

A large part of the reason HN is so distracting, is that usually, when you read it, you look at the front page and open everything that looks interesting in new tabs. So when you're using your browser for something productive, you see a tab open that you haven't had a chance to read, and you want to go read it. Solution? Firefox profiles. Start firefox with firefox -P work --no-remote, and use that for all your work related things, while your should-read-later-eventually-maybe tabs stay happily open in another profile.

Second idea,

  echo "127.0.0.1" `sqlite3 ~/.mozilla/firefox/*default/places.sqlite "select url from moz_places order by -visit_count limit 100" | cut -d/ -f 3|sort -u| tr "\n" " "` | sudo tee -a /etc/hosts
Maybe HN isn't your only distraction, and this saves you having to figure it out.

Re: Do you read HackerNews all day and never actually do anything?

#99

Post by abyssknight »

Yes, a little. I have a day job, and unfortunately am unable to break away from that to join the entrepreneurial pool. Like you, I have a background littered with technical acumen and actually helped with a few start ups. I enjoyed it, but the instability just isn't for me right now.

I still do things and make things, but they aren't start ups. Some are school projects, others are for my day job, and some are just for fun. I read HN because there are great people with interesting opinions on stories I want to read.

That said, I feel the same way. I want to break out and do things. I get that feeling sometimes, and it hurts to feel trapped, but then my paycheck goes through and I log my 40 hours and go home.

Re: Do you read HackerNews all day and never actually do anything?

#100

Post by pyre »

melling wrote: post #48

HN should put a little entrepreneur badge next to your name for having shipped a product. That would motivate some people.

That's a great idea, but how do you define 'product' though? Plenty of people here work on things that are really just tech demos, which don't necessarily have an audience beyond, "Look at this cool thing I was able to do." E.g. that color-picker/slider thing that changed the colors are you moved the mouse (and the scroll wheel changed the contrast). I wouldn't necessarily call it a 'product,' but I would qualify the time spent making it as productive.
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