/r/programming, /r/python and /r/linux I read daily.
There are a handful of niche subreddits I follow as well (/r/futuresynth etc).
I stick an entry in the hosts file while I'm working as the temptation to just hit reddit to see what's happening is a little too high for comfort on boring days.
I block it using my hosts file and unblock it (and HN) about once a week. Then I look at the top content from that period of time and look at it all at once, then bookmark them (in a folder) and usually never click the bookmark again.
Facebook I'll check about once a month (also blocked in hosts).
I got into the habit of instinctively typing in "news." or "redd" into my browser as soon as I sat down, the lost productivity was too much and the hosts solution seems to work for me.
For PC games, I have to uninstall them. I'm actually glad games are 60 GB these days because it means I have at least 1 day to consider playing a game. If at any time I decide I don't want to waste 50 - 100 hours playing I can cancel the download and delete the files. Yes, I'm getting Google Fiber next year and this method will not be available because it will download in about 10 - 20 minutes. I'm looking into a time-delayed safe or the cheap plastic tubs with a timer for storing an SSD for those games.
My address bar knows me too well: "r" and "n" are enough for autocompletes. Reddit's blocked in hosts and HN is getting really close to going back.
Reddit pretty much ended the period of my life where I read books because that's where my reddit time came from. Since we're talking about years of my life that's a pretty big regret.
The largest, I think, community for the niche software that I create is located on reddit. So I use it to see what's going on in the community, help people, show my products and so on.
I had to ban myself from Reddit due to the addiction and timewasting. I'm pretty sure I'm happier and more productive for doing so. I still allow myself HN and Slashdot; they're lower volume so you can only waste so much time on them per day. I also recently cut out Facebook and Twitter - I used to go on them perhaps 4-5 times a day. It wasn't much time wasted, but cutting out the distraction has definitely given me a stronger sense of mindfulness and connection to my daily life.
Edit: I edited my /etc/hosts so that reddit.com resolves to localhost. You can still go on it if you want to, but it just gives you a few seconds to think "is this a good way to spend my time?".
Edit: Also worth noting you can often get good info on niche subjects from Reddit. Recently wanted tips on buying a GPU - straight to /r/BuildAPC. Wanted to learn to play a strategy game - /r/CrusaderKings sorted me out. I even once wanted to find a song I made years ago and lost; there was a fan subreddit for the band I was in and they had a repository of old unreleased tracks, including my own lost song!
Reddit can be a huge time waster if you let it be.
I am subscribed to a bunch of niche subreddits specific to my interests, and I cruise it a couple times a day. The benefit to less popular subreddits is that you don't need to check them a hundred times a day to see if they've changed. I don't read the big popular subreddits.
Once a day, usually in the evening for 10-15 mins, I'll cruise the top images on Imgur. That keeps me up to date on the memes so I can know what the kids are talking about.
So the question is really "how do you not let it waste too much time"? I'm unsure whether the question is loaded or not.
EDIT: here is a more constructive part of this comment, a more general technique to dealing with doing "useless" stuff in general:
Get a small notepad and a pen. Imagine that you have two hours of free time. Now before you're about to do something, write down what you are going to do. Not a plan of the two hours, but what you are going to do right now - like "wash the dishes", which might only take five minutes. The point here is to shake you out of whatever autopilot you are running on, and do things in a more intentional way. When you are done with the dishes, you might write "practice the guitar". After that, maybe "check the front page of proggit, and bookmark the interesting links for later" if you don't have time for that right now, or want to do it later.
Hopefully this will avoid habitual things like the other poster mentioned, like immediately opening a browser and going to proggit or HN once the computer is turned on (I do this too!).
And of course, this technique can be used whenever, not just in your free time. The two hour free time was just an example.
I check reddit a few times per day mostly because I'am a mod over there and want the subs to be clean but other than that I read /r/netsec a lot, very nice community with focus on quality.
Almost never share any content there but the few times I do I get really good feedback so next time I want to share something reddit will absolutely be the first place.
I mostly just use it for really specific topics (sports I follow, TV shows I watch, etc) where Reddit provides perhaps the largest discussion board for that topic. I've generally found that HN covers tech news better, and that most subreddits with less targeted focus just fill up with junk.
It's good to end the day on a positive note. I occasionally spend ten minutes on Reddit right as I get in bed. It doesn't take long to find something in the comments to give me a solid laugh.
I mostly visit niche subreddits. I like to get all my software development news from here instead. So I use reddit for whatever other interests I might have at the time. Basically whenever I have a new interest/hobby, I would spend a few days into that specific subreddit and absorb as much of the collected information as possible. These vary a lot so I might subscribe to some subreddits only for a few months and then go on to others.
Removed most of my subs and subscribed only to subs related to current learning. Reddit usage has gone down noticeably and when I procrastinate, I'm browsing subjects I need to learn about.
A year into college, I realized that there was nothing positive I was getting from Reddit. So, I blocked it using one of those productivity apps (which probably only just changed my hostfile) and told my friends that if they caught me on reddit, I had to give them $10.
I haven't browsed Reddit in a few years now, and I don't miss anything. I'm not saying that there isn't good content on Reddit, but I am saying that it's not worth the time I put into it.
This is beautiful and really functional (UI & UX).
This is now my homepage, so you've got your first contributor, at least. :)
I'm really glad you chose to serialise articles rather than attempt to cleverly aggregate them (it feels like there's less noise).
The many indicators (time to read, link to autosummary, articles/hour, tweet count, filetype indicator, ...) are crammed in without crowding anything out. :)
At this point I'm just listing off your site's features so hopefully more people will notice your link amongst the comments. ;)
When I visited your site the first time I was taken to a /welcome page where it listed Y, Reddit, and P as the "default" or what I assumed was the default
And without clicking anything on /welcome and just visiting the home page again reddit looks like a default!
Sorry, my mistake. It is a default source on the homepage. Bear in mind that all reddit items count as one source, even though they're curated from a number of subreddits.
Currently I have to write some code for every new source, partly for the extraction of articles but also to add it to the list of customizable ones etc. Unless they were limited to a standard format then it's hard to add new sources without getting stuck your hands wet. I am trying to add new sources, I added Computerphile this morning, I'll note down those two.
As far as duplication is concerned - yes, I've even had a go at implementing it. I was using the jaccard index to compare stories within the last 2 days. In the end I found it was hard to be confident enough about the match. I don't want to miss stories and so personally just put up with the noise.
The quality of the community on Reddit seems to have drastically declined in recent years. There is a dearth of bad information and the comments section seems to be headed towards Youtube levels of hostility... This isn't just in mainstream reddits, it's also prevalent in the niche technical topics. After seeing enough information that was blatantly wrong and wasting time sifting through comments debating the validity of said wrong information I unfavorited reddit and haven't looked back.
Maybe use it as a time waster but avoid it as a resource for useful information.
I subscribe to a variety of non-default reddits: /r/programming, /r/python, /r/android, /r/programmerhumor, /r/gaming, /r/truegaming.
I'm also a mod of /r/science and /r/askscience.
I enjoy a few extra ones, such as /r/askhistory, /r/cleveland, and /r/daystrominstitute (star trek discussion), but usually browse them once every week or so. Other than that, my interaction with reddit has decreased over the years. I could say the same about Twitter and Facebook too.
I follow certain specific subject matter with it. My particular interests include (but are not limited to r/formula1, r/cars, r/guns, r/karting, and any game subreddit I may be interested in...
Everything else is short-term, quick-look entertainment (r/gifs, r/funny, r/pics, r/mildlyinteresting, etc).
I have a couple of Zapier zaps set up to alert me of hot posts in a couple of niche subreddits. I use these alert mostly to inform my thinking and content for a blog I'm working on. It helps me decide what content will add value as I can see the type of questions people are asking, and it allows me to promote my blog as I can reference it in comments / answers.
Most of my interaction with Reddit is driven by these alerts.
64 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 99.1 ms ] threadThere are a handful of niche subreddits I follow as well (/r/futuresynth etc).
I stick an entry in the hosts file while I'm working as the temptation to just hit reddit to see what's happening is a little too high for comfort on boring days.
Facebook I'll check about once a month (also blocked in hosts).
I got into the habit of instinctively typing in "news." or "redd" into my browser as soon as I sat down, the lost productivity was too much and the hosts solution seems to work for me.
For PC games, I have to uninstall them. I'm actually glad games are 60 GB these days because it means I have at least 1 day to consider playing a game. If at any time I decide I don't want to waste 50 - 100 hours playing I can cancel the download and delete the files. Yes, I'm getting Google Fiber next year and this method will not be available because it will download in about 10 - 20 minutes. I'm looking into a time-delayed safe or the cheap plastic tubs with a timer for storing an SSD for those games.
Reddit pretty much ended the period of my life where I read books because that's where my reddit time came from. Since we're talking about years of my life that's a pretty big regret.
Otherwise I only use reddit as a time waster.
Edit: I edited my /etc/hosts so that reddit.com resolves to localhost. You can still go on it if you want to, but it just gives you a few seconds to think "is this a good way to spend my time?".
Edit: Also worth noting you can often get good info on niche subjects from Reddit. Recently wanted tips on buying a GPU - straight to /r/BuildAPC. Wanted to learn to play a strategy game - /r/CrusaderKings sorted me out. I even once wanted to find a song I made years ago and lost; there was a fan subreddit for the band I was in and they had a repository of old unreleased tracks, including my own lost song!
I am subscribed to a bunch of niche subreddits specific to my interests, and I cruise it a couple times a day. The benefit to less popular subreddits is that you don't need to check them a hundred times a day to see if they've changed. I don't read the big popular subreddits.
Once a day, usually in the evening for 10-15 mins, I'll cruise the top images on Imgur. That keeps me up to date on the memes so I can know what the kids are talking about.
So the question is really "how do you not let it waste too much time"? I'm unsure whether the question is loaded or not.
EDIT: here is a more constructive part of this comment, a more general technique to dealing with doing "useless" stuff in general:
Get a small notepad and a pen. Imagine that you have two hours of free time. Now before you're about to do something, write down what you are going to do. Not a plan of the two hours, but what you are going to do right now - like "wash the dishes", which might only take five minutes. The point here is to shake you out of whatever autopilot you are running on, and do things in a more intentional way. When you are done with the dishes, you might write "practice the guitar". After that, maybe "check the front page of proggit, and bookmark the interesting links for later" if you don't have time for that right now, or want to do it later.
Hopefully this will avoid habitual things like the other poster mentioned, like immediately opening a browser and going to proggit or HN once the computer is turned on (I do this too!).
And of course, this technique can be used whenever, not just in your free time. The two hour free time was just an example.
Almost never share any content there but the few times I do I get really good feedback so next time I want to share something reddit will absolutely be the first place.
Therefore I use Reddit for cats and memes once a day. Anything else and you really should start considering finding another tool.
2. Browse "all" and have a laugh.
3. Repeat 1 and 2 compulsively every 30m to 1h.
Edit: Who am I kidding. Step 3 is every 30 seconds.
Edit 2: That being said, I NEVER browse Reddit at work. Well, except on my own data on the loo.
/r/artificial, /r/cambodia, /r/cellular_automata, /r/ClassicMetal, /r/compling, /r/compsci, /r/conspiracy, /r/crypto, /r/dailyprogrammer, /r/devops, /r/django, /r/EndlessWar, /r/Entrepreneur, /r/futurebeats, /r/iamverysmart, /r/LanguageTechnology, /r/linguistics, /r/MachineLearning, /r/mathrock, /r/musictheory, /r/noip, /r/noiserock, /r/opensource, /r/programming, /r/programminghorror, /r/Python, /r/redditdev, /r/startup, /r/Vaporwave, /r/web_design, /r/webdev, /r/whatstheword, /r/wikipedia
Mostly music and technology. I also periodically block reddit in my hosts file.
I haven't browsed Reddit in a few years now, and I don't miss anything. I'm not saying that there isn't good content on Reddit, but I am saying that it's not worth the time I put into it.
The current criteria are: /r/programming top 10, /r/dataisbeautiful top 5, /r/Technology top story, /r/science/' top story 1
The site's http://www.serializer.io if you want to check it out.
EDIT: code is here: https://github.com/charlieegan3/serializer
This is now my homepage, so you've got your first contributor, at least. :)
I'm really glad you chose to serialise articles rather than attempt to cleverly aggregate them (it feels like there's less noise).
The many indicators (time to read, link to autosummary, articles/hour, tweet count, filetype indicator, ...) are crammed in without crowding anything out. :)
At this point I'm just listing off your site's features so hopefully more people will notice your link amongst the comments. ;)
Reddit isn't a source on the homepage, it's one of the custom ones.
EDIT: my bad, reddit IS a source on the homepage. oops.
And without clicking anything on /welcome and just visiting the home page again reddit looks like a default!
Sorry for the confusion.
Is there a way to add custom sources? For example: http://www.datatau.com/, https://soylentnews.org/ or any number of other aggregation sites
Also, sometimes Ars and HN will cover the same story or HN will link Ars; have you considered a duplicate detection system?
As far as duplication is concerned - yes, I've even had a go at implementing it. I was using the jaccard index to compare stories within the last 2 days. In the end I found it was hard to be confident enough about the match. I don't want to miss stories and so personally just put up with the noise.
Maybe use it as a time waster but avoid it as a resource for useful information.
I'm also a mod of /r/science and /r/askscience.
I enjoy a few extra ones, such as /r/askhistory, /r/cleveland, and /r/daystrominstitute (star trek discussion), but usually browse them once every week or so. Other than that, my interaction with reddit has decreased over the years. I could say the same about Twitter and Facebook too.
Everything else is short-term, quick-look entertainment (r/gifs, r/funny, r/pics, r/mildlyinteresting, etc).
Most of my interaction with Reddit is driven by these alerts.