I spend a fair amount of time consuming content from various sources - feeds, HN, twitter, reddit - dedicatedly and in between activities. While obviously a personal commentary, I was interested in why I end up spending so much time - despite understanding full well that I had a ton of other activities I could productively engage in, and what could I do to overcome it.<p>My theory is that random reinforcement is the culprit, at least in my case. I'll find a few gems once in a while, unpredictably, and I'll be scanning my sources looking for the next gem.<p>My proposed solution is to create personal cyclical patterns of consumption, so that users are only exposed to new content at regular cycles chosen by them - increasing the predictability of finding great content, and reducing the addiction. This is somewhat similar to the noprocrast option in HN, but I'm imagining a broader user controlled layer between the content creation and content consumption, and possible native integration within a site's features.<p>I wanted to get some quick thoughts from the community on this? Does this affect you? Do you think such a solution would be helpful? I would be happy to flesh this idea out in more detail and discuss more if there's interest in the community.<p>Thanks for your thoughts!
I'm interested in this. Random reinforcement definitely had an effect on me in the past. The hardest part is IMHO recognising the problem. I once read an article about how games were made addictive using random reinforcement. After that I could spot the behaviour in my own online activities and I cut back. I now check e-mail and news sites only three times a day on set hours instead of all day long (once in the morning, once at lunch and once at the end of the day).<p>But, I have never had to use technical solutions to help me with this. Once I understood the problem and could spot it, changing my behaviour and sticking with it wasn't hard for me. But it took a while before I really understood the problem.
I agree with you. One very simple technical solution that I used a few months back was to use a firefox addon which blocks my facebook, orkut, twitter for 15 minutes after I have used it for 15 minutes . Will that work for you?