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Comment by NY_hudson | Hacker News Reader

I'd say get rid of the Internet at home. That's the number one distraction. Personally, I can't read more than a paragraph online without jumping to another page...so just kill that beast. Here's an example...I have all the documentation I could ever want right on my hard drive, but I might spend a few frustrating hours surfing the web trying to figure out something out instead of looking at what I already have.

Some other ideas...have a pipeline and modest goals. Be happy if you read 45 minutes every day and don't think you need to read giant text books to learn. Find slim books! 150 pages max. But get really, really good books from the masters in your chosen field.

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I understand what you're saying, but the internet is the most enabling technology in history for learning.. to not use it at all because you might misuse it is throwing the baby out with the bathwater and doing yourself a serious disservice.

Avoiding procrastination is about discipline - if it's a problem, address the root cause, don't just chop off the leaves (sorry for the terrible analogy).

Compare it to say, quitting smoking. If you want to quit smoking, do you ban yourself from entering all places that sell cigarettes, and cut off contact with all your friends who smoke? Of course not! If you truly want to quit you ought to be able to go anywhere, do anything, talk to anyone, and still not smoke. It may not be pleasant but being able to do that == being able to truly control the problem.

This is only my personal take on things. For me, the internet is like water...you can find it anywhere...especially the library. In one hour at the library I can download all the webpages I need onto a usb stick. Generally, I go 4-5 months without having the net at home, 2-3 weeks with having a connection just to update my system and download a bunch of youtube videos ;-)

>If you want to quit smoking

Just poison your whole pack! But seriously, for those who don't want to deal with fixing their lack of discipline right now, I highly recommend SelfControl and its counterparts on other platforms. Block the procrastination-inducing parts of the internet like reddit and HN, keep all the important parts it's impossible to learn without, like StackOverflow.

(Restrict it for less and less each day, and maybe you'll find yourself weaning yourself off like cigarettes. I haven't made it that far yet.)

"If you want to quit smoking, do you ban yourself from entering all places that sell cigarettes, and cut off contact with all your friends who smoke?"

Yes, actually that's a great way to quit. Find out what triggers you and avoid it. Changing your environment is incredibly beneficial.

"It may not be pleasant but being able to do that == being able to truly control the problem"

Who cares about controlling the problem? It's not a drug addiction where a single relapse can ruin your life. If a simple environment change allows me to spend 2 hours learning each night instead of on hackernews... Well that's a win.

> Who cares about controlling the problem?

Well, if procrastination is liable to hinder you in buckling down to learn things, it's pretty important to find a way to really control it. Otherwise HN/the internet will be just be replaced by some other distraction offline.

How likely is it that your procrastination is really limited to whatever manifestations it currently has on the internet, rather than being a general problem you have to correct?

If it really is limited to certain sites, then getting offline or blocking those sites is a reasonable productivity hack, but otherwise you're just sidestepping the real issue and it'll only come back to bite you in other ways later, no matter how many times you change your environment.

Is it sidestepping an issue if a person needs a gym membership before they'll exercise? I really don't see a difference here. Environments play into disciplines directly and everyone has their own idea of the perfect space for any given activity.

Going without internet can be a great way to dim the lights and regain focus. It also eases your dependency on convenience and encourages you to plan ahead.

"Well, if procrastination"

I don't think procrastination is the problem with most people spending time on learning. Personally, I've found it is simply an issue with distraction/focus/energy/motivation like going to the gym.

I've spent an hour learning per work day for the last two years simply by going to the park after work and reading books/writing in my notebook. I've missed maybe a dozen days in the last year. Yet, if I get on my computer at home intending to study... i hardly ever end up doing anything useful.

What is the permanent fix then and also what is the root cause?

things are always in flux and one must seek a balance...there are no black and white answers, although engineers always want them ;-)

Recently a cosmic ray flipped a bit in my home laptop's configs. The wifi stopped working and I've been too lazy to fix it. My home network rack is far from my reading chair and has no seating nearby.

This has worked out surprisingly well!

Every so often I plug in, download some pages, and then unplug and go sit down to read. If I get an idea while reading I jot it down and go back to my reading. The next time I get up to go plug in, half the things I thought I wanted to look at are no longer interesting.

At work, unplugging is not an option. I do all my work inside VMs. In my main work VM I've edited /etc/hosts to block HN, Reddit, and other distractions. I have a separate VM that I use for personal mail and leisure browsing. When I'm not using this VM I shut it down and if I want to browse the web I have to boot it up again.

All this has done wonders for my focus while not being quite as drastic as cutting the cable.

> I'd say get rid of the Internet at home. That's the number one distraction.

Maybe- maybe not. For me, it was getting a 'third' place- somewhere that isn't work and isn't home. Work is for work, and home is for play.

There's a nice 24 hour diner (sans wi-fi, so I'm kinda in accord with you here) between me and work where I can have a serving of toast while clacking away on my laptop.

So my M-F schedule is work from 8-5, personal work from 5-7ish, and then home (or bar staggering) from 7 on.

Totally agree this is the way to go. Unfortunately, I'm a little too undisciplined and I need to take stricter measures on not having access at home.

Hey- you found what works for you. That is what is most important.

My comment was a bit of a knee-jerk reaction, I just wanted to present another option- especially for those that don't have the luxury of living alone like me!

I always thought about this too, I always want to learn more. But every time when I arrived home after work I was just not motivated to read/learn other new things that took longer than 5 minutes. I imagined if I was in prison I would learn so much and work out much more because you are confined and restricted to a certain space and only have a limited set of activities to do. So you make the most of your time; learn, read books, work out. You would come out a physically and mentally a much better person. But if you have freedom, you actually have too many choices you don't even want to take time to read or learn something new or go workout, human nature causes us to take the easy way out and turn on the TV or do something else considered entertainment and requiring little effort. It's hard to resist.

Great advice here. If you can't seem to bring yourself to get rid of Internet, you can use a tool to blacklist websites for a certain period of time. I personally use https://selfcontrolapp.com/

If you want to block access to only distracting parts of the Internet, I wrote an open-source Mac app that might help: SelfControl (http://selfcontrolapp.com)

> I have all the documentation I could ever want right on my hard drive

If you're on a Mac, Dash.app is a great way to read documentation, distraction free. No internet required (after you downloaded the docs you need).

> Id say get rid of the Internet at home.

So brave, don't think I can ever do that, I just use browser extensions like Leechblock to block certain website after a period of time to fight procrastination

I get what you're saying. Think of what I'm going to write as an addition to your comment for the person who asked this, and other interested parties. If you're into a project, you can do it locally on your computer without the Internet, by downloading the required documentation and 'technical prerequisites' needed for a minimum viable model of your project. Be it programming, book writing, video editing, etc. If you're patient enough to control the urge to look up the Internet real quick to skim through the breaking news, watch some viral video, scroll through twitter mentions or even HN discussions, then it's ok to stay connected, else you might want to temoporarily plug out the ethernet cable or disable the internet in a way that'd make it a little hassle for to turn it back on again. This way, you have no excuse for not starting the project and chances are you will begin. (I know the usefulness of the internet, but it's important to do these sort of stuff if you are distracted easily but want to get the job done) :)

right...that's exactly it...more is not always good. In fact, I've read that the human mind is primed to value new information regardless of whether it is better than what one already has.

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