In other words: Never own ducks.

You seem to imply that people primarely comment to get an orange highlight. I don't think the majority of users are that stupid.

Give people a status symbol and they invariably try to attain it.

I'm amazed that you would have a karma system, special colored status indicators, and yet people would still claim that it doesn't affect user behavior.

That's the point, guys. If the karma/colored system didn't affect user behavior, it wouldn't be there

Create a game, and people will play it as a game. Put a number next to someone or a color and people will change behavior to change the color/number. Especially hacker/gamer/competitive males, which are clearly represented pretty well here at HN.

Depends on technological developments. Why should the individual survival machine care about the adaptability of the species as a whole?

Why would you use a antiprocrastionation feature with a giant loophole? The override made the feature useless. Now it works and I am going to use it.

PG correcting this flaw has absolutely nothing to do with him "being your mother".

"Hey aaron, what do you think of this comment on HN?" Sorry, I can't read it until tomorrow =/

I used it as a guilt trip, not as an effective tool.

If you only need a reminder just set minaway to 1.

Well, how about: Not being a leech?

Tyler Cowen on reading fast:

"The best way to read quickly is to read lots. And lots. And to have started a long time ago."

http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2006/12...

The paradox of anti-procrastination: You cannot outsmart yourself.

Maybe some sort of monetary incentive would help. Here's an idea:

RescueTime could hold some of your money hostage each month (say $20, or whatever is significant enough you'd like it back) and if you don't meet your goals that money gets donated to charity at the end of the month.

Though it's probably best to eliminate the root cause of the procrastination.

Re. monetary incentive: https://www.stickk.com/

Good idea! Noprocrast with override option is (for me) about as effective as hiding the ice cream beneath a bag of frozen peas would be for a kid.

You could limit the max length of minaway to prevent people from accidentally blocking the site forever. I think max is about 190 years at moment (although if a singularity occured that could become a relevant timespan for procrastinators).

The problem with the override option is that it is a weak barrier. It takes a split second to click it and after two or three times it becomes a habit to override.

A good solution would force the user to become acutely aware of what he is about to do and give him time to regain enough discipline to stop.

Perhaps it would help if the user were forced to watch a video about procrastination or answer a series of relevant or time consuming questions before proceeding to override noprocrast.

Exactly.

I used to use noprocrast until I got in the habit of using override. Now I uncomment a line to my /etc/hosts file that points news.yc to another IP. It works a lot better because if I go to news.yc while the IP is redirected, my browser caches the IP and I can't access the site, so I have to remember to unblock it before I try to access it. This forces me to think about what I'm doing.