I've noticed that there are extremely diminishing returns here. You get 95% of the benefit of HN in the first 20 minutes of skimming the front page and commenting, and the rest of the time is significantly less beneficial. Thus, I try to only visit it once or twice a day for ten minutes or so, and have reply notification to comments set up.
> and have reply notification to comments set up
How do you do that? That would probably cut my procrastination in half! HN used to be connected with some push notification startup and there was an option for it in profile, but it seems missing now.
Not OP, but I use HNNotify. http://hnnotify.com/
Yep, that's what I use too. It's a free service, and it breaks sometimes, but it's fantastic.
I fell for a trap here, because for me HN feels like improving. I spend my time here mostly on comment threads, and I learn something new every day, while refining my communication skills thanks to reading and participating in thoughtful discussions with many smart people that frequent this site.
Or at least that's how I rationalize to myself the immense amount of time I spend on this site.
I'm starting to classify it as my own interpretation of information diet. HN is like fast-food - very tasty, addicting, but nowhere near as healthy as reading a good book, or even a paper or a good article on some particular subject. I definitely don't want to remove fast-food from my life altogether, but it shouldn't be the main part of the diet.
I learn a lot here, but I think I could be more cost-effective wrt. amount of time I spend on this site. Still figuring out the right balance.