Show HN: Anyword.cc – A simple exercise to get you unstuck | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Anyword.cc – A simple exercise to get you unstuck

anyword.cc

7 pointspatrickz7 comments

The post took 30 paragraphs (most are a single sentence) to get to the point, which is to recommend the Morning Pages exercise. It can be summarised as[1] “filling three sides of paper with words, stream of consciousness-style, first thing every day”.

They go on to say you “can do all your writing anytime, anywhere on this website, as long as you have a computer and access to internet”, that their metric is 750 words instead of 3 pages, and they require an account to use the service. I don’t see why you wouldn’t just do it in any semi-competent text editor, without needing an internet connection or another online account.

Finally, they end by suggesting the “don’t break the chain” productivity method[2], saying “it is inspired by a productivity trick invented by Jerry Seinfeld. You can google it for more detail”. If you google it, you might be quick to find out from the horse’s mouth that’s a common misconception, as Seinfeld did not create the system[3].

[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/oct/03/morning...

[2]: https://lifehacker.com/jerry-seinfelds-productivity-secret-2...

[3]: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1ujvrg/jerry_seinfeld...

Hi, thank you for the comment. For "I don’t see why you wouldn’t just do it in any semi-competent text editor", I have explanation. I used to write with Pages (text editor) with my MacBook. After doing it for almost half year, I found that it is quite inconvenient. First, it is not private since my wife will use my computer so she mights see those files contains my private thoughts. This makes me unable to let go of myself while I am writing. Secondly, after saving hundreds of files, I found it is hard to navigate and review the journals I've written in the past. Of cause, there is something called Evernote, but there's no word counter. Then I realized I need something better, or at least suitable for my need, so I built this app. I don't know if anyone will use, but I know I will use it everyday myself. Haha.

Did you look at Draft or Notion? I’d encourage you to give them a look (if only to see what your competitors look like)

To the points you mentioned above (word counter, privacy, etc)…

I do a similar exercise, but using Draft (https://draftin.com). Draft has a word counter, and is private.

Another option I’ve been exploring for this type of exercise is Notion (notion.so). The nice thing about Notion is it can replace Evernote, Draft, and Trello for me, is private, and works on desktop (native), web, and mobile (native). You can also create a calendar view where you can see your progress building your Seinfeld chain of consecutive days of writing.

Anyway…

Congrats on launching! Now the real work begins. :)

I’m on mobile, and from what I could tell, this is all online - i.e. no desktop client.

If I sign up for this service and use it, where is my data stored? How safe is it? What will you do with all this deeply personal information? Do you plan to monetize it somehow?

Again - this is deeply personal information. I applaud your effort, but personally I would never use this, given the information on the website. I would also advise my friends and family to steer clear. Do you plan to monetize off the personal information? Is it fully encrypted in storage and transit? It would certainly help if you called out this information. Maybe you do - I just don’t see it on mobile.

Thanks for the thoughts. No I won't monetize off any of the personal information., and I will never do that. And I am not Facebook, I am just an ordinary guy who try to build a tiny tool that I can use myself to improve my life. Again, as I said, I am not Facebook, so there's no social networking or any real identity required for the users. You only identity is the username that you make up. If you really concern about it, you can also use a new email address and so on. And yes, I used the best practices I can learn to secure the site with Django framework and https and so on.

UI seems pretty broken on mobile (no comment on the actual idea as I wasn’t able to read it properly)

It is not designed for the mobile. So please use your laptop. haha.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com