Hours | Hacker News Reader

Hours

cutebouncingbunnies.wordpress.com

158 pointswaffle_ss38 comments

At time of writing, both root comments are looking for an automated solution, a bot.

Having done something like this a lot, it does not work for me to have a bot. The predictability and lack of social accountability (one should be honest) causes it to fail.

It also lacks a huge benefit:

It turns out that doing something "with" someone, despite a lack of collaboration, has significant social value. Even more so if you do it in the same room or at worst the same video conference.

For this reason I moved from the many tools that exist to do this with strangers to arranging an hour with a friend. This works exceptionally well and has strengthened my friendships despite us living in different cities (I am in a small* town); likely because it keeps us present, real, and approachable in each others minds.

*small by southern English standards; huge by the standards of the northern county I grew up in.

There was a marketing move a couple of years ago to try to make fishermen a little more relatable to the public in Japan. As part of that they introduced a wakeup service. The idea was that a fisherman would phone you from their cell phone out on the boat to wake you up. They had to give up the idea because it went viral and there was no way that the fishermen could handle the volume. But I think part of the appeal was that the fishermen would be taking time out of their job to wake you up. They would chat with you and ask you what you were going to do for the day, etc. So it made that same kind of social contract where you wouldn't dare go back to bed as it would waste the fisherman's time -- even though nobody would know.

That's genius. Where can I find out more about this campaign?

So true. Even a total stranger, I don't want to let them down or lie to them. Automated systems are completely unhelpful.

You could automate the pairing of total strangers.

It's called ChatRoulette. Not sure I'd want to find productivity partners with it though

There is actually a tool designed for this that I used for a while. I forget the name - but I did discover it through HN.

It was more active in the American core hours, but I stopped using it because I moved onto real friends and acquaintances. As I said, this has more benefits.

Darn, wish I knew the name of it. I'm in your former camp you describe.

This is exactly what Focusmate does (founder here).

If you check it out I'd love to know what you think!

Hey Taylor! Love your product! I get such a sense of achievement after every session, and I like to think that my Focusmate buddy does too. Big fan! It is curing my procrastination one session at a time

When I was training for a triathlon many years ago, my friend who was also training would text me and we would agree to meet at the gym for a morning swim a few times a month. At 5:30AM, of course! Every time the alarm went off, I cursed and cursed and made it out the door to drive to the gym, just in time. Neither of us never missed a swim date, and it was because we would never be able to live it down if either of us failed to fulfill the commitment.

It is one thing to go to the gym at 5:30AM. It is quite a different thing if your friend is expecting you to be there and they also got up early.

This is so effective.

I am not the type to spring up to rush to the gym at 6AM, but if I told a friend I will be there at 6AM, I will never miss it.

There's a website for this called Focusmate, which seems to have been around for at least two years going by past HN discussions: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=1&prefix=true&que...

I have not used it myself (and am not affiliated in any way); my only knowledge of it comes from reading a review/experience [1], and a more recent mention in a newsletter I follow (https://www.hillaryrettig.com/2020/03/30/focusmate-a-product...).

[1]: "I Let A Stranger Watch Me Work For A Day — And I've Never Been More Productive" (https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/focusmate-review-product...), HN discussion along expected lines: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19591227

The author of this post is Anne Ogborn, one of the most experienced Prolog programmers in the community. She happens to be hosting a beginners & advanced Prolog course[0] that's starting in a couple days (I've enrolled myself). I see 70 others in the slack channel so far. Highly recommend.

[0] https://twitter.com/AnnieTheObscure/status/12476035165514670...

One of the things that I like to do, is stop for a few days, from time to time, and write a article about my personal process, projects, whatever.

I find that it helps me to write better code, think about my designs, and make sure that I know my stuff.

I don’t care too much whether or not people actually read my stuff, but I always make an effort like I’m writing for a major publication.

I will also write “lessons”; regardless of whether or not there are “students.” I was taught that the best way to learn, is to teach.

https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/

I find teaching is much less effective without someone there to learn. Part of the benefit is getting asked about things you didn’t realize were important or things that are welded into your mental models. It helps me step back at least.

Writing things down and explaining them is always good practice. It’s harder to gloss over mistakes or bad assumptions when you switch modes from “thing I’m working on” to “thing in explaining”.

You are correct. I have found that people don't seem to like reading, these days. They prefer videos. The problem is, is that videos take a lot longer to do (effectively) than writing, and I have a face that was made for radio (and a voice that was made for silent films).

Also, I have been writing (and reading voraciously) pretty much my entire life (since I was a kid), so that's the medium I use.

Don't worry, we readers still exist. I avoid information presented in videos as much as I can in favor of written information.

I love how the first thing us social rejects here do is get an idea in our heads to make an artificial intelligence or a bot to replace the human interaction part.

The author is talking about accountability, which the folks at Beeminder have been blogging[0] and implementing[1] for a long time. Their premise is to "tread the yellow line" and you won't have to suffer the consequences, which is paying money each time you fail.

I used their app while preparing for an exam and I regret not using it earlier. I was initially put off by the fact that I will have to fork over money to a random company, but in reality, you don't have to pay if you never fall from the "yellow line". Additionally, they give multiple reminders so that money isn't snatched away from you, and their customer support helped me refund money for one time when I didn't log something that I did do.

This is an example of my logging the amount of hours studied [2]

[0] https://blog.beeminder.com/

[1] https://www.beeminder.com/

[2] https://www.beeminder.com/llllll/fg

A lot of people here find it hard to admit that humans aren't purely rational self-directed creatures and that social pressure works, even when you've set it up yourself.

Why are social pressures not rational and self-directed?

If it's possible to say "humans are rational self-directed creatures, so social pressure works" then you really haven't learned anything about human rationality by observing their response to social pressure.

This is true; I work better in an office environment because there is the perception of oversight. I mean I get to do my own priorities (mostly) but knowing I'm not doing it just for myself is a boost to my focus and productivity.

I wonder if the author really finds having a partner to be necessary. It sounds like this could be substituted with keeping a journal, recording what happens every hour. You'd get the bonus of having a written record of your day.

It’s a psychological trick because you promised this to someone else (as opposed to your future self).

Seems like a good one though obviously not every psychological trick works on everyone.

I worked at a company with an engineer who had a Perl script that prompted them to record what they were doing at random intervals through out the day.

When it came time for performance reviews, not only did it make for entertaining reading but it was easy to find all the small improvements they made that normally slip through the cracks.

Social pressure can be a really powerful motivator. Especially for someone who's competitive: imagine the partner getting a lot done, but you spent the whole hour distracted by reading the latest coronavirus news.

Sounds a lot like Pomodoro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique

I wasn’t brave enough to jump on with a stranger after checking out Focusmate. There are heaps of videos such as this: https://youtu.be/cPTRA1gIWak on YouTube. I found this really handy and got a productive session out of it. Would be even better with live stream.

Oxbridge has a "Tutorial/Supervisions system" where you and 2-3 other students meet with a faculty member every week, and you receive direct feedback and critiques on written assignments (typically essays).

I've never participated in these systems, but what's struck me about them is that you have to come prepared not only with a finished essay, but you have to explain and defend them like you would a thesis. In high frequency.

Hours reminded me of this, but on a much more informal level. In both, you have to come prepared (at least, in the Hours system it's to your benefit).

I really like the concept but I wonder if doing it with someone external to the company is a good idea for those of us with NDAs, confidentiality clauses and so on. Especially if it is done using a communication channel that hasn't been approved by the company.

I suppose you can keep the details vague enough if necessary, but if I was a spy, this is definitely something I would try to do with my target.

If I knew how to write bots this would be a fun side project: Create a virtual partner.

The domain seems narrow enough that it would be feasible to put together something effective enough to achieve the desired effect - focus.

I'm a hobbyist developer so am probably underestimating the effort.

The power of this technique is that there's a real person on the other side.

lot of tools these days to create bots without a lot of effort. slackbot was mentioned, check out google's dialogflow

You could write a small slackbot.

Similar product https://www.focusmate.com

I like this. As a founder I'm constantly multi-tasking. Getting "maker" time is virtually impossible. Having accountability in 1 hour increments is good. The key is the overhead of setting this up and communicating should be minimal compared to the task at hand, else it won't be efficient

There should be an IRC channel for this.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com