I think the word "Work" above would be better replaced with "Productivity". It's work/life balance, not productivity/life balance. Every hour I can't do what I want at the drop of a pin because I'm in a place, fulfilling an obligation for my company, or something else along those lines - it's work. If the company puts things like meetings in my way of completing my job in the number of hours I allot to my full time employment, that's their problem, not mine.
Sure, there are exceptions. I'm young and single so I have the luxury of putting in a few hours at home in the evenings if I need to when meeting a deadline. But I don't subtract 5 minutes from my "time spent working" when I check Hacker News while my code is compiling. Am I being productive? No. Am I working? Yes.
"But I don't subtract 5 minutes from my "time spent working" when I check Hacker News while my code is compiling. Am I being productive? No. Am I working? Yes."
I would count reading HN as inspirational and thus inclined to lead to better/more productivity/idea's etc. I can count numerous things on HN that lead me to being a better dev. I also used at a lot of interesting tools/tech that came up on HN and that would later fit/solve certain business requirements. So this surely did make me more productive.
I would say though this depends on your ability to filter, scan and retain information derived from articles that are often tl;dr.
Also this article in itself is misleading, so reading an article posted on HN on how to be more productive is not considered productive?
Sure, there are exceptions. I'm young and single so I have the luxury of putting in a few hours at home in the evenings if I need to when meeting a deadline. But I don't subtract 5 minutes from my "time spent working" when I check Hacker News while my code is compiling. Am I being productive? No. Am I working? Yes.