Web Article Procrastination (Webastination)

Does anyone else suffer from using “catching up” on news/articles as a means of avoiding starting work?

It seems so important to keep abreast of stuff (particularly things semi-related to work) that I easily convince myself I’m being productive. As an almost-as-pernicious side effect, I also end up leaving articles in open browser tabs to come back to, then feel guilt at never getting round to them, and an eventual feeling of overwhelm at the amount backed up.

Fortunately as a tech guy I thought - I know, I can solve this (or at least help)! So I built a really simple text-to-speech playlist to paste articles into (urls, pdfs) and close the tab, clearing my browser. It then reads them to me later - usually when out driving or walking (you can also open it on your phone browser with the same account). Plugging in the latest AI text-to-speech so as to sound less robotic was the clincher, and now I use it all the time. It’s not perfect, but you are welcome to use if you think it would also help you (it’s free). Enjoy!