HN Explorer

Ask HN: What's the best way to limit daily news consumption?

32 points by init-mtx ↗ HN
Right now I mainly browse reddit (endlessly), HN, have a few RSS feeds I follow and then check google news from time to time for major events.

All in all the time committed is huge and surfing reddit is a waste of time.

I came upon a recommendation here called Hacker News Digest http://www.hndigest.com/ which really transformed the way I read HN. It gives me 30 of the top posts everyday and that's enough for me. I mostly learn from HN so it's great.

I'd love for there to be something like this to exist for the rest of the web. Maybe just rss an rss aggregator that limits your consumption daily.

Does anybody have any ideas? Trying to take control but still stay informed

39 comments

[ 1.5 ms ] story [ 98.4 ms ] thread
butwhy
I don't see how you're going to find a "best of" for reddit. There are so many subreddits that everyone will be different. Although the frontpage of reddit already seems to give you an overview of all the top content in the subreddits you're subscribed to, if you're logged in. Just limit yourself to the frontpage, I guess.
init-mtx
Reddit can be done via the rss of the subreddit. Each has it's own.
butwhy
So what? It would display the same thing as going to reddit, which is what op wants to avoid.
mark_l_watson
I probably spend too much time on HN and Reddit, but I think I have better control over domestic, international, and economic news: I try to use just a few high quality sources.

First, I subscibe to Catherine Austin Fitts's Solari Report which yields a very good alternative view of how the economy, global power, etc. work.

Secondly, if a news story interests me then I go to news.google.com and read the same story as published in two or three different countries. There is a ton of bias in what material is covered in USA news sources.

maneesh
re: getting control of the habit: The best way to break a bad habit is through aversive conditioning ==> Electric shock classical conditioning.

I discovered how effective electric shock was a few years ago and created an electric shock wristband called Pavlok (pavlok.com). Here are 21 studies on the efficacy of shock for bad habits: http://pavlok.com/blog/21-scientific-studies-on-electric-sho...

I actually built a chrome extension that does this automatically. Get the pavlok, pair it with your phone, and download the chrome extension. You can add in a list of blacksites. If you access a blacksite, your wristband will vibrate, then shock you, to train away the unwanted behavior.

superflit
Not sure if you are masochist or a genius.

But I think you are a GENIUS and have a good product.

Please do a IndieGOGO campaign.

eswat
Instead of going through all these aggregators and digests, I just follow the links and news that my tribes - whether IRL, IRC or Slack – share. They act as my curators and since we all have similar interests I trust that most things they post will be worth my time to consume.

If you can get some curators to do this for you, then you can start blocking these sites from your /etc/hosts and not look back.

the_watcher
I use Twitter for this, but that requires an investment in curating your Twitter stream/lists.
petercooper
Drill down to the key topics you need to stay on top of, find reputable sources for those, then try and kill the rest (or at least leave it to your spare time, using your phone in bed, whatever).

We do stuff like Hacker News Digest but for numerous programming related areas, such as http://javascriptweekly.com/ http://rubyweekly.com/ http://dbweekly.com/ (and several other) and 240,000 people trust us with this each week now. There are many great folks doing similar things in other niches, however.

noir_lord 

    127.0.0.1    www.reddit.com reddit.com i.reddit.com
In /etc/hosts works for me, the conscious effort required to remove it reminds me not to.
butwhy
Just download reddit locally to circumvent having to remove it.
kkl
It seems that changing your local DNS settings seems like a rather trivial barrier to get around but this technique is pretty useful. For me, procrastination is a subconscious habit and routing your time-sinks to "purple.com" is really eye-opening. Instead of just mindlessly typing in "reddit.com" and wasting 30 minutes before you realize it, you now get an immediate indicator of your intentions.
100k
I do this as well. I still check news, but the affirmative effort required limits consumption. It's not as advanced as some solutions but it's enough to keep me from getting distracted most of the time.

I wish I could easily block my personal email without blocking my work email, though (I use Gmail for both).

Also, using Pocket has been good for me. If I see something interesting on HN during work hours, I'll add it to Pocket and read it later.

lgas
Willpower.
Adaptive
The most accurate answer in the thread, though too brief and thus will be easily dismissed. In the interest of fleshing out this answer in such a way as to make it useful:

For those interested in why this is the most accurate answer, go read "Willpower" by Baumeister.

http://www.amazon.com/Willpower-Rediscovering-Greatest-Human...

I am always surprised, though shouldn't be I suppose, that the first answer for so many people is some completely externalized solution (e.g. blockers, network disconnection, etc.).

There are tools that can help you to create habits, but you must be aware of the role that self-regulation plays in ongoing maintenance of these habits, otherwise the moment the tools or support infrastructures you've put in place are gone, your habits will revert.

Don't make your self control reliant on app updates.

alimoeeny
Willpower is a finite resource, I'd rather use it as little as possible and keep it for more important matters.

So ideally, in cases that you know before hand that you are going to need your willpower, like reading HN, you'd be better off arranging your life so that you don't have the option to spend as much time, and reserve your willpower for cases you cannot predict or control.

ams6110
I stopped watching/reading all forms of news including television, newspapers, Google News, Yahoo, whatever. Trust me, you won't miss anything.
nanidin
A good way to get started (for me) was to quantify how much time I was actually wasting. I started using RescueTime[0] and realized how many hours I was wasting on sites like Reddit and HN. Just being able to see that was a good motivator - but it wasn't enough on its own. I then started using StayFocusd[1] to limit my time on sites that don't contribute to my happyness/etc.

After a couple weeks of StayFocusd, I was very rarely spending more than my allotted one hour from 8am-7pm on those sites. And I realized. I'm not missing out on anything. I have spent 10 hours less browsing those sites in the last week and I don't feel like I've missed out on anything. Instead, I had 10 more hours of my life to do things like read books, exercise, and get things done.

[0] https://www.rescuetime.com/

[1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stayfocusd/laankej...

mitchty
I will vouch for this method. Measure how much time you are spending and then decide if its worth the effort.

I personally found I was wasting 1-2 hours a day on news alone. That just isn't a productive use of time.

Another piece of advice, for the next month change nothing, write down what crazy crap is high on the news chain. Look back at the months "news". It is highly likely you will find that most of it is just fluff at best and needless, and I mean this word, propaganda.

Right now I only tend to look at news sites on Fridays and then only for a day to catch up with what happened in general. Past that not dealing with news daily has made me a much less cynical person.

pakled_engineer
http://matt.might.net/articles/productivity-tips-hints-hacks...

http://matt.might.net/articles/cripple-your-technology/

He blocks reddit and other time sinkholes, uses a tablet or phone to waste time on those sites as you can put it down or move it out of your workspace if you don't want to be distracted.

the_watcher
Limiting consumption to tablet/smartphone is actually a really good idea, especially if you use a service like Pocket for saving things you'd get more value out of on desktop. I might try this. The only limitation is participating in Reddit comments and HN comments is a lot more difficult on a tablet or phone (although that might be a feature).
borgia
I fell into a habit of wasting significant amounts of time reading HN and Reddit. I found that I drastically cut back when I installed Mind The Time for Firefox[1]. Seeing the sheer amount of time I was spending on various sites brought about a feeling of shame and I've worked to prevent it happening again since.

I've cut back on reading Reddit as it's just a total junk source and waste of time now. I still spend a little time every day reading HN as it's of higher quality and generally offers something of substance. Then I skim The Guardian and The Telegraph once or twice per day to keep up with the general news.

I also found a site called SkimFeed[2], I believe I first found it on here actually, which I use pretty heavily for skimming through the headlines.

[1]https://addons.mozilla.org/En-us/firefox/addon/mind-the-time...

[2]http://skimfeed.com/

init-mtx
skimfeed is just what I am looking for. Just I'd want it to pull my own sources.
nextweek2
I trim the fat every now an again, everything is read via Feedly and I have it on my phone to really quick scanning over whilst doing menial things like eating breakfast or traveling. Marking interesting stuff for reading later.

The major time saver is really not reading or replying to comments. Hackernews is the opposite to that rule where most of the time the comments are more insightful than the article.

Think of it in term of signal to noise ratio. How much good information have you gained and how much did you have to wade through to get there. Comments sections on websites are usually high noise. Reddit is no exception in my experience. There might be microcosms of insight but finding them is too hard.

the_watcher
Another good tip - periodically looking at where you are spending your time reading and cutting those that are just taking up your time (ESPN headlines Twitter was one for me - anything noteworthy to me gets to me through sites/channels I follow for more specific reasons) will make a difference. It's tough to use this strategy for Reddit and HN though.
soneil
A large part of my 'solution' has to be to listen to the radio for non-tech news. It's become part of my "don't stare into screens right before you want to go to sleep" ritual, with a nice side-effect of helping me regulate my bedtime.

Pick a source you're comfortable with (being british, I listen to the bbc world service - it's quite international but with a british bias, which suits me fine). Listen to it on their schedule, not yours (no podcasts, live broadcasts). This way you get a 30 minute summary, select few comments from people with basic literacy, with no "you might also be interested in", no sidebars, no opening a few tangents in tabs, etc.

hnarayanan
I find that separating this process into two steps:

1. Finding things to read, and

2. Reading them

really works for me.

I spend some time most mornings trawling through my feeds, HN etc. and queue up what I want to read to my read-it-later app of choice (Readability). I then get on with my day doing normal work. Later, usually late evenings, I catch up on the reading I've queued up for the day.

This way, I tend to stick to just the original list of things I've queued up to read, and only get to refresh the queue the next morning. This, by design, prevents the temptation to recursively chase down all links and related content to whatever I'm reading, which I find eliminates the biggest cause of the time sink.

tdkl
I'd suggest Rescuetime and Stayfocusd, but it seems to me that perhaps something bigger is missing. Do you have a clear goal and purpose in life ? Are your days/weeks/months/years planned and thought through where you want to go ?

Someone who does, doesn't waste time reading mindlessly. He allots daily time for news, keeps a limited set of resources for that and picks intentionally the topics he will only benefit from. Learning to read/skim faster is also a nice tool for that.

upstill
While this is more tactical than strategic, I've saved untold thousands of reading hours by firmly avoiding three kinds of stories: 1) predictions of the future (which are almost always wrong, especially when proffered by experts), 2) opinionated evaluations (especially by experts), which only rarely offer any insight, and 3) anything else that will expire in a week or a month. Almost everything about an upcoming election will be worthless very soon; this is a surprisingly broad category.

Notice that these three categories are all interesting, but with very low information value. You can train yourself to detect a high interest/information ratio and turn away when it goes off.

neillimaye
Good call. What are some headlines that scream these categories?
the_watcher
Big change for me was finally making the switch from RSS to Twitter. I didn't really do it consciously, I just found myself checking my RSS feeds less when I was busy, as getting through a lot of outdated news while still not missing the stuff I'm interested in took a lot of time. At the same time, I found myself continuing to check Twitter and Facebook for social conversation purposes, but finding that most of the things I found interesting when I finally got around to checking my RSS feeds were pieces I'd already found via Twitter or Facebook or just a coworker shooting it out. I've now completely stopped checking my RSS feeds after moving the few sites on there I didn't already follow on Twitter. I haven't noticed that I've missed anything I would have otherwise caught (anecdotal, but measured by how often links sent to me by friends or mentioned in conversation are ones I didn't see), and the time I spend on news has cratered.
the_watcher
Also, if you are like me and use pinned tabs for the sites you find yourself on the most, close the HN and Reddit tabs. I spend time on both sites, but not having them pinned makes the decision to visit them an active one, rather than (psychologically) constant browsing.

Also, related to switching to Twitter (this applies to Reddit too) - either make the investment in lists, mute people who don't tweet anything you are interested in that you are hesitant to unfollow, or be rigorous in curating who you follow. The noise of Twitter is by far the most common reason I hear for not using Twitter to replace RSS, but it's something you can pretty easily address in 30 minutes.

the_watcher
Startup Digest is another useful one if you prefer the email digest system.
whichfawkes
Find something you enjoy more than reddit, and which entices you to spend your free time more meaningfully.

I used to browse reddit excessively, but then I realized how much more I like HN, and started reading some more books and getting more exercise.

I still check reddit occasionally, (I have multi-reddits set up to aggregate the few things I care about), but I get tired of it pretty quickly because I'd rather be reading a book or going outside, or reading HN.

I like HN more, but my time on here naturally comes to an end when I've seen the 1-3 interesting things on the front page that I might want to read. After I've seen the things that are most interesting, it's more worth my time to do something else.

PeterWhittaker
Don't read reddit. Or at least read very little.

I have very few news sites in the folder I "open all in tabs" every morning: Google News, /. (I'm nostalgic, it's not terribly useful), HN (via hckrnews.com with Link Visitor to mark as read), and reddit.com/r/science (plus Environment Canada, Michael Geist, and XKCD).

I check those most mornings, then check /. and hckrnews a few times a day.

Sometimes I want more, but I've learned to resist that want. Between HN and Google News, I encounter most of the things I need to know. And, of course, I see news stories in my FB feed, shared by friends, mostly dross, but some few nuggets.

And I never go beyond the first page of any of those (except /., I tend to work back to the last story seen, but that takes very little time).

Imperfect heuristic for validating the I encounter most of the things I need to know statement: Never, not once, has my life been affected in any meaningful way by a story with which I was unfamiliar, I have rarely been surprised professionally by unfamiliar news (I am a security consultant) and never with any impact (interesting, I will look that up and get back to you).

We are all here likely to be voracious readers, curious beyond measure. We. Do. Not. Need. To. Know. Everything. Your brain is likely already full.

As someone else mentioned, willpower helps too, and if you don't have willpower, get a hobby you like, and then start examining how much of your hobby time you spend reading news that has little/no impact on your life.

Note: I have never used RSS, have a twitter account but hardly ever go there, rarely listen to radio news and never watch TV news. I do not seek to optimize the amount of information I consume, I seek for and seem to have found "pretty darned good enough".

ThrustVectoring
Trigger-action planning. (Official literature calls it "Implementation Intentions", but that's a terrible name).

The gist of it is to tie a particular sensory experience to a particular action you want to take. Putting a pull-up bar on your bedroom door is a great example - then, every time you go through the door, you can exercise with the pull-up bar. For reddit, you can either trigger off of "opening a reddit tab" or scrolling to the bottom of the current page, and close the tab when that happens.

Another approach is to figure out what you get out of browsing reddit, and finding better ways of getting the same stuff. Odds are it's a combination of a low-risk activity, encountering novel information, and a strategy for not doing things that you "should" do but don't want to. If you're reliably getting safe and interesting information from a reading list and procrastinating through exercise, then you may well find that you've solved the urge to visit reddit.

rnc
Leechblock(Firefox add-on) did the job for me; you can make the websites available only for some amount of time per day/week and then they'll be blocked. The effect of this after a while was that I lost interest on reading news endlessly. In the general case, I think that first you need some tools that force you to change your behaviour; after a while it becomes a habit and you won't need then anymore.
gkelly
I built a twitter bot that tweets the top HN stories from 24 hours ago. I like to visit it on Monday to catch up after the weekend. It's a lot less content than the RSS feed.

https://twitter.com/icymihn