Hacker News at the first sight seems like a very simple tool with many links, but it’s actually a forest of many valuable insights and discussions. It loads up pretty fast and there are no ads, no side banners to distract you, just a list with many posts.
It’s no surprise that it is so famous, as it resembles a place where developers from all over the world get to interact with each other. Of course, as in any other place on the internet, there can be trolls that can make you feel bad, or express some harsh criticism or even trolls, but aside from that, it’s actually a really great place, especially for the discussions that are shared in there.
As such, it is also an easy to use tool that can be used while procrastinating. You may be facing a difficult bug, or something is not working with your IDE and you just want to quickly get outside that current frustration and visit Hacker News.
Yeah, it can help sometimes getting outside that rut in which you may have been stuck for a couple of hours, but it also can actually be a great source of distraction, especially because you can justify it as “I’m just interested in staying up-to-date with all the latest things that are happening.”
A “just checking in” session intended to be for 2 minutes can turn into 20, or even more. That’s how you end up beating yourself up later on and simply want to go back and really work on your task that is pressing right now.
No procrastination feature
There is actually an option in HackerNews for users that are logged in that I only got to learn about from a comment recently.
It basically is supposed to help you not procrastinate.
Once you turn it on, you can set up the maximum amount of time in minutes you want to be able to visit open up HackerNews again. You can also choose the time period between each visit so that you do not stop checking it very often. Yes, you get to set that up, but we are sometimes not aware that we waste a lot of our time unconsciously doing things that we are not supposed to do.
Here is a preview of how it looks like when you try to open it up when the number of minutes you set up between your visits has not passed:
It’s something really simple and easy, but that I haven’t see anyone else mentioning it.
I hope this helps you become more productive.
Happy hacking!
