Show HN: I made this to get up on time, or do good | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: I made this to get up on time, or do good

getupordie.com

30 pointsIEA00120 comments

You would like to work on this other side project, get fitter, read, volunteer,… in 2019? Same here. And I know first-hand it can be challenging to make time.

A great first step is to beat the charm of the snooze button in the morning. Get up on time, to have more time. And that’s how I came up with ‘Get up or die’.

How it works: 1. Set a time to get up 2. Get reminder messages in the morning, like a friend is chasing you 3. Get up on time – or donate $3.00 to a charitable organisation

So you either get up, or you do good. Win-win.

Would love to hear your thoughts on the current simple implementation. Also - to which charity shall donations go to?

Thank you. :)

quick question - how does it verify that you actually got up, instead of me just hitting the "I got up button" and going back to bed?

hi @allthatisrael - great question. currently, the service is entirely trust-based. thought of extending the functionality in the future to include e.g. a photo challenge (in the sense of submitting a picture of your breakfast for instance). but more validation needed if that's appealing to users - and there would be still an element of trust.

how would you go about this? ideas welcome :)

I'd do something like this: have the user load up X dollars upfront. When they set the time they want to wake up, configure it such that if they don't hit a button on your site within half an hour from their wake up time, the money automatically deducts.

@mds101: Yes - the current sequence of messages allows for about 30min after the set wake-up time. Brainsync.

And I like the idea to add a balance. Would also limit the amount of partial / dummy records being submitted. Some people are cautious about giving their cc details to new services like this though, see e.g. wozmirek's comment further up. Any ideas how to give these users more confidence in the early days?

@mds101: I've added a $10 balance request for first donations if users get up late. Will monitor acceptance level and look forward to additional feedback!

Use geolocation on the phone and get the user to hook in their credit card number for automatic donations ;)

Give 'em a real kick up the ass

That's the 'no mercy' approach! ;) But you're right - there is room for improvement to make the user journey shorter and more convenient (e.g. automatic donations). Will consider for next iterations!

@all: Thanks for trialling 'Get up or die'. There is currently an issue with delivering text messages to some of you. This looks to be related to country codes, e.g. messages to China, Indonesia, Thailand and Hungary are affected. Checking with the provider - please hang in there. If anyone has experience with sending text messages to these country codes using Twilio, please let me know. THanks

Solved - anyone with the same issue with Twilio, check out setting geo permissions on https://www.twilio.com/console/sms/settings/geo-permissions

I like the idea, however, it's not very applicable to me personally since I don't have problems getting up on time. I would, however, be interested in a similar approach (give money to charity if you fail a resolution) for other things like reading, working out or something similar, so there's an idea you can maybe improve upon :)

Try out beeminder maybe

Nothing to do with charity but there’s this: https://gofuckingdoit.com

Yep, big fan also of Pieter's other services / sites!

Excellent, thanks @zlatsic!

Just subscribed. A bit worried there's no more explanation behind it (also giving out my phone number and email, ummmm, okaaaay). I don't think I'd try it if you would have asked me for cc details though ;)

It's early days, bear with me. :) What are the key questions you think the current site / implementation leaves open?

Regarding donations - any thoughts welcome to which charity they shall go to: https://twitter.com/GetUpOrDie/status/1080870052382035968

Lemme try it for a week and I'll get back to you with some better feedback :)

How do I unsubscribe from both email and SMS?

Please help!

All sorted as per separate chat - thanks for trialling and your feedback!

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