The Hacker News Trap

Mar 12, 2026

I think I’m probably not alone in that I sometimes fall into the trap of scrolling on Hacker News and Lobsters while procrastinating, since reading about technical blog posts and articles feels more productive than other forms of procrastination, but still has essentially no positive impact on my life (as opposed to working on any of my half-finished personal projects or working through a textbook).

However, I’ve found a solution! Whenever I find a semi-interesting article or website, I’ll save it to my bookmarks so I can “read it later”. But now, I use procrastination to my advantage and simply never go back to read it. So I’ve been able to reduce my 30-60 minute Hacker News reading sessions down to 5-10 minutes of skimming and bookmarking.