I have four medium sized projects which I consider extremely distasteful on my plate for the next two weeks. These are things I simply can't stand doing, but need to finish in order to move on to better stuff. Since my company is more like a DHH company than Facebook, I can't really afford to pay someone else to do this stuff. (+1 for outside capital!)
Anyway, I've noticed that whenever I have to do work stuff I don't want to do, the amount of time I spend doing random internet things goes WAY up. HN just happens to be the procrastination drug of the moment. Anyone else suffer from this problem?
p.s. the no procrastination flag doesn't help when there is that prominent "override" button.
But you should really eliminate the source of pain so you can get back to reading HN guilt-free (if that's possible).
BTW they sound more like short projects if it's only two weeks (unless they're larger projects crammed into a two-week timeframe!).