Ask HN: How do you use your computer intentionally/deliberately?

[rajlego]

Currently I'm trying to sort out my life, partially with meditation, partially with thinking/writing and partially with some reading. Computer is pretty helpful for the latter two but I also end up using it a lot to watch anime or spend time on discord. I don't mind this - if I don't relax with the internet I'll end up messing around some other way naturally.

But it bothers me how little awareness I have while using my computer. A lot of times I'll be doing something like using twitter and I won't even be enjoying it - I'm just trying to burn time. If I snapped out of it and checked in with myself for 20 seconds, I bet at least half the time I could find something I'd both enjoy doing more and that's marginally useful. But it's really hard to do this without just blocking most of the internet and I don't want to do that.

What do you guys do to deal with your computer useage?

[damnesian]

Little coding projects, image manipulation with python libraries, LAMP (with sqlite) to catalog and serve music on the local network, analyzing my own text- blog contents, social media posts- looking for patterns- basically treating myself as an experiment and trying suck data out of my detritus for possible writing projects. Oh, also listening to shortwave radio and making simple multitrack audio recordings of my musical ideas.

It beats doing what you are talking about- dead scrolling random internet stuff just to "burn hours" (I've heard that before but still, what a sad sentiment).

[082349872349872]

I don't scroll anymore.

Entertainment —including HN— is pulled via RSS and presented as a list of plaintext, from which I actively select. The browser is open as long as I am actively searching (via engine or within-page search) for something, but if I find myself scrolling around passively, I close it.

[rajlego]

How do you find HN via RSS less distracting than the site itself?

[h2odragon]

i use my window managers "workspace" feature.

Everyday idle time suckers go on the first workspace, the second only has actual "work". I'll switch to the 2nd workspace and try to have discipline about switching back to the "nonwork" workspace.