HACKER Q&A
📣 eimrine

How to force yourself to read less content created in the last 24 hours?


I have had significant success in this direction - this month I read zero webpages in my mother language except for a few Youtube videos (without adblock for get suffering because of the poor time spending). Currently I spend an insane amount of time on HN which is not bad but when I have a long session with a book that seems like the second-best time I can ever do. The best is to do some practical stuff with heavy use of what I have read. But my observation is that practical activity is always easier because it is OK to do some mistakes in the real world which means poor work which always can be redo in another try, but it is never OK to do a poor learning because it means that I am not reading but I am just looking at an open book. But in my field any practical achievements become nothing if I do not learn more for escalating that practical result at a new level.

My question is how to learn more from books? And how to read less of anything except books? For example, I look at some programming book full of examples and I tell myself "meh, I do not feel like typing" and go to HN, while I really do not become a much better person from hanging on HN. My understanding of HN is that this is a great resource for hanging between some work sessions, not instead of ones. I become a better person when I type those examples, see an error, find the mistake causing that error, then modify what I have typed for earning a real understanding. That requires significantly more cognitive load than anything else in my life.

Sorry that I am not learning that programming book right now because I had drunk a little glass of wine which is a rare event, my problem is definitely not in having too much alcohol.


  👤 tuatoru Accepted Answer ✓
Perhaps there is a market for a proxy that delays everything by 24 hours.