People commonly use the word “procrastination” to describe what they do on the Internet. It seems to me too mild to describe what’s happening as merely not-doing-work. We don’t call it procrastination when someone gets drunk instead of working.
People commonly use the word “procrastination” to describe what they do on the Internet. It seems to me too mild to describe what’s happening as merely not-doing-work. We don’t call it procrastination when someone gets drunk instead of working.
What exactly would Paul Graham call reading Paul Graham essays online when I should be working?
It depends what your work is. If you’re doing data entry then surfing the net is lazy. If you’re driving a train and surfing the net on your phone then that’s irresponsible.
MBlume may be referring to the “noprocrast” feature:
the latest version of Hacker News has a feature to let you limit your use of the site. There are three new fields in your profile, noprocrast, maxvisit, and minaway. (You can edit your profile by clicking on your username.) Noprocrast is turned off by default. If you turn it on by setting it to “yes,” you’ll only be allowed to visit the site for maxvisit minutes at a time, with gaps of minaway minutes in between. The defaults are 20 and 180, which would let you view the site for 20 minutes at a time, and then not allow you back in for 3 hours. You can override noprocrast if you want, in which case your visit clock starts over at zero.
Other possible features would include disabling links and replying in some way—for certain times of the day, or requiring the user to type a long string to access them each time.
When it comes to learning on the internet (including, as wedrifid mentions, reading Graham’s essays, but excluding e.g. porn and celebrity gossip), I’d say It’s a lot less harmful and risky than being drunk, and probably helpful in a lot of ways. It’s certainly not making huge strides toward accomplishing your life’s goals, but it seems like a stretch to compare it to getting drunk.
-- Paul Graham
What exactly would Paul Graham call reading Paul Graham essays online when I should be working?
Perhaps the answer to that question lies in one or more of the following Paul Graham essays:
Disconnecting Distraction
Good and Bad Procrastination
P.S.: Bwahahahaha!
I’m thinking either “lazy” or “irresponsible”.
The question of which is kind of still there, though. Procrastination is lazy, but getting drunk at work is irresponsible.
It depends what your work is. If you’re doing data entry then surfing the net is lazy. If you’re driving a train and surfing the net on your phone then that’s irresponsible.
Okay, that quote has me upvoting and closing my LessWrong browser.
And this just reminded me to check the time and realise i was 40 minutes late for logging into work (cough) LessWrong as memetic hazard!
PG has added specific hacks to HN to help people who don’t want it to become a memetic hazard. Is it possible we should do the same to LW?
I find HN to be a stream of excessively tasty brain candy. What particular hacks are you thinking of? Is there a list?
MBlume may be referring to the “noprocrast” feature:
Best wishes, the Less Wrong Reference Desk.
Other possible features would include disabling links and replying in some way—for certain times of the day, or requiring the user to type a long string to access them each time.
When it comes to learning on the internet (including, as wedrifid mentions, reading Graham’s essays, but excluding e.g. porn and celebrity gossip), I’d say It’s a lot less harmful and risky than being drunk, and probably helpful in a lot of ways. It’s certainly not making huge strides toward accomplishing your life’s goals, but it seems like a stretch to compare it to getting drunk.
I think PG’s analogy referred to addictiveness, not harmfulness.
Is it bad if you’re addicted to good things?
If it’s getting in the way of other stuff you want/need to do, then yes. Otherwise probably no.
No, but in this case the addiction makes you worse off because surfing the net is worse than doing productive work.
What if I’m surfing the net for tips on how to increase my own productivity?