might be good for hn, I guess? I think the problem with voting on HN (and in general) is that people downvote things they disagree with rather than just spam and trolls, and they use upvoting to mean "I agree" rather than to mean "well written" or "you are contributing to the conversation".
of course, this gets into a deeper discussion... many people /want/ to only talk with people who agree with them. For most people, the 'groupthink' that results from voting moderation systems /improves their experience/
The original article is suggesting paid moderators. Personally, I think PG coming on here and setting social expectations (he dressed me down, once.) probably has more to do with hn being a tolerable place than anything else. Paid or not, having a 'community owner' who can designate things as unacceptable, either by having a large amount of social capital (as pg does) or by having access to the banhammer as a paid moderator would, I think, is more important than anything else when it comes to maintaining an online community.
tl;dr have a to-do list and always carry a pen or pencil.
(Pen seems better since there's less chance of putting holes in clothing or stabbing oneself.)
Not that I would recommend it. If I'm truly into my work then I'll have sufficient integrity and memory to operate intuitively, from a rapidly evolving mental to-do list.
If I want to achieve, better would be to have a to-don't list. It might include things like don't drink too much, eat too much, consume too much entertainment, porn, etc. This is what focus means: to gently exclude stuff.
That way vitality and creativity will flow into my work. Any other approach is implicitly enacting the theory that work/learning is painful. Which is false. Nobody is taking my cookies away; I'm switching to a different flavour. (They say a Zen master can see and feel the beauty in everything. That must include creative work.)
It seems to me that alcoholics, the obese, etc, have a certain thing in common with brilliant, creative achievers -- they know that the fun has to be here and now. We say to addicts who promise to quit soon that "tomorrow never comes". Why don't we say it to people who show us lists of goals? In reality the concepts of procrastination, time management, memory management, rewards, rule-based living, etc, aren't very helpful.
Just ask yourself "Am I really enjoying my time, or am I just procrastinating?"
For the former, go on and read Hacker News or play that flash game. For the latter, quit and do something worthwhile--either real work or at least real fun. (Of course just procrastinating and doing nothing really worthwhile can be fun every once in a while. But then at least admit it.)
Better is to try to identify one's mistakes. That's how progress is truly made.