I think I get to scan most of the content on HN that way. It's not my objective, but it happens.
Does anyone else do that?
A few years back I measured the times (mapped on a schedule) I spent surfing HN, and the numbers showed it's more like rest than procrastination.
At the time I was trying to put a finger on a really difficult workaholism -> exhaustion tendency. I thought I was probably wasting time here, being inefficient, maybe even addicted in some way, but by the numbers it was better described as a recovery function.
And like a lot of recovery-related functions, being here is almost never the objective I have in mind. Like you, I mindlessly type it in. Recovery is the objective my body seems to have in mind, and places like this can be really effective means, for example when they generally support my preferred ways of looking at things. A lot of other places do not do that quite as well.
(A weird topic by itself, given the echo chamber effect, but as long as you know about it...)
Feel free to check out my HN reader: https://www.thnr.net . (Red question mark in upper left corner is the “about” page.)
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