It's so hard today to constantly remind oneself how much that crap influences our experience. It's an incessant poisoning of the well. To me the habit I need to check most often is reading comments. If I read comments first I engage less critically with the content, as I've already formed some opinion and seem to know what it's about. If I read comments after I'm generally appalled and confused by the responses and remind myself again to never read comments.
I used to read HN comments first to determine if the article is worth reading. However, if I read the article first, I have the same experience as you where I'm very surprised how other people interpreted the article. Every once in a while there is some enlightenment.
