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Comment by Ilasky | Hacker News Reader

I’m working on making body doubling a more main stream approach to accomplishing everyday tasks.

Body doubling is known within the ADHD community and entails performing a task in the presence of another. More details here: https://www.healthline.com/health/adhd/body-double-adhd

It helps to engage motivation by using another person as the proxy. I wrote a bit about how I think it works here: https://doubleapp.xyz/blog/body-doubling-proxy

The technique goes way beyond just ADHD applications for executive functions and is something we tend to do anyways, e.g., running with a friend, studying in a group, etc.

It solves an issue for myself and I truly want to help others with the approach by making a way to stay accountable through the help of others.

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I am so happy to finally have a term for this phenomenon! I find it really hard to explain to friends and co-workers why I prefer to work in pairs, up until now I've been describing it as something along the lines of a motivational feedback loop, but your description of it being a proxy for your own motivation is quite good and I'm going to have to steal that going forward! Thank you!

I’m glad you found it helpful!

+1 I've never encountered this term but absolutely recognise the effect although I don't have ADHD myself.

Ever since school where I was wholly unable to revise or do homework anywhere but the library (where others would be doing the same), and all the way to today where I tell my partner "I'll do the washing up if you stay in the kitchen"! Doesn't really matter if she talks to me, the task is just hugely more bearable in her physical presence.

This is great! I have ADHD and find this helps a lot. A YouTuber I follow has a two hour video called "Work with me" of just him working at his desk with music playing. When I first saw it, I laughed. But then one day I was having trouble staying focused, remembered the video and put it on my TV and I found it to be surprisingly effective! Unreasonably so! So good luck with your project! You're on to something.

https://youtu.be/vEqJAReXiN4

I've checked out the video but I got really distracted instead. Maybe I am not the target audience of this video but to stay on topic and expand on the same theme, I came across this video [1] that's probably more effective in extracting productivity gains from you than that video and I reckon it's less distracting as well:

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RGEo2Kohb8

(4 Hours of Asian Mum to Help You Focus on Practising/Studying/Working)

Fellow ADHD here. A while back I downloaded a bunch of "Day in the Life" videos off YouTube of people accomplishing the type of productive stuff I need to do everyday then I used iMovie to splice together the best relevant parts starting with getting out of bed, going through the day and ending at night with getting back into bed. Now when I hit a rough patch where I can't accomplish anything I just start the video as soon as I wake up and follow along, going through the motions. This has had the greatest impact on me actually getting things done than anything else I've ever tried.

Can you share to see what you mean by the edits?

Neat! I look forward to seeing more - For a long time I found myself saying absurd things like "i work better in distracting environments" or "It's easier to have a clean house with roomates to clutter it up".

What really was happening was that I respond well to body doubling. (Never diagnosed with any sort of executive functioning disorder, but I suspect that's more because I never went and got diagnosed than me lacking one).

Cool idea.

Thanks! I had similar thoughts as well. For whatever reason, having others around in coffee shops or bars seemed to give me the energy to focus on actually working. A very counterintuitive result for sure!

I've never heard of body doubling before but you got me to Google it and that's very interesting phenomena. I definitely do better at some tasks when there's someone around with me even if they're not directly participating.

Wow that's nifty! Some ADHD friends of mine joke that it'd be awesome to have a ADHDer house cleaning or chores "swap" service. We suck at cleaning our own places but will spend hours cleaning a friends house.

I've never had luck actually doing a "lets get together and do X chore" event though. Well aside from homework and study sessions in university. It'd be awesome if this app helps with actually doing that for everyday life tasks.

Thanks for sharing, I've signed up for the waitlist. I never knew there was a name for this concept, but I realized that I've been doing this for a long time. I've set up some pair programming sessions just so I could get the motivation to work through a boring or difficult task. I'm a solo founder who works from home, so it would be good to spend some more time with people as well (even if it's online.) I'm not sure if I'm ready to go back to a coworking space though. Maybe after I get my next booster shot.

I've also noticed that weekly accountability meetings don't seem to work well for me. I joined a group where we would meet once a week to share our progress and discuss goals for the next week. I realized that this didn't seem to help with procrastination or focus, and I was just feeling additional pressure and guilt when I wasn't able to achieve my goals. Working with (or next to) someone in real time is a very different experience.

Isn't that a bit like rubber duck debugging ?

I also find pair work to be very special on many levels (intellectually, emotionally,. logistically). I wish there was more theory on this

Exactly! Pair programming is definitely within the realm of tasks we have in mind for Double.

I didn't know about body doubling so in the mean time let me ask you some things:

- do you consider the friendly competition aspect (seeing someone do a task revives inspiration, desire, confidence, motivation to do it, when the other is tired you feel happy to fill the role)

- the emotional bond from sharing: sharing any task is often a strong bond (even just carrying a load), pain and success

- the intellectual benefits: a bit like the first point but searching for solutions gets much much cheaper with a peer. You can validate point of view / theories, feel less emotional pain from doubts it the other doesn't know too

I had more topics but I forgot

These are all amazing points.

In my opinion, they all fall under the category of a body doubling effect. Your second and third points strike a particular chord for me as well. I wrote a bit about why my cofounder and I are creating Double rather than doing it alone. In essence, we are cofounding because seeing the other person also trying their best and going through the rough parts with me drives me to keep going. (It's a quick read here: https://doubleapp.xyz/blog/dont-sleep-in-the-mud ).

Amazing. Have you ever considered the effect at large ? In education or workplace ?

I see so much misery that could be replaced by joy, insight, friendship..

Absolutely - one of the most common forms of body doubling that a lot of people have experienced has been studying with others. An emerging trend has also been, as others in the thread have linked, "study with me" videos.

Interesting. A lot of study group I joined dried out. But maybe there are better ways.

I have no discipline of the superego variety— but when I realize I will let someone else down, I become motivated and focused. I’m learning Linear Algebra now by working with a self-described ADHD colleague. We are 150 pages in and actually doing the homework.

I wrote about an approach called “Bold Boast” in my book on coping with my particular mentality (which led me to quit high school, but also led, a few years later, to managing a team at Apple). I feel like everyone else has a powerboat, but I am forced to sail by the wind.

Anyway Bold Boast means you publicly commit to achieving a learning or teaching goal that involves a presentation or visible product.

(see Secrets of a Buccaneer-Scholar, which I believe you find pirated online here and there)

> I have no discipline of the superego variety— but when I realize I will let someone else down, I become motivated

I think that's superegoic, you're doing something because you should, and you'll beat yourself up morally if you don't. Rather than egoic, doing it because you want to for your own gratification.

You can look at it that way. I suppose another way to say it is that I can’t seem to get motivated about letting myself down, but I can about other people.

I don't know if I have ADHD or not, and I don't think so because I'm sometimes able to focus for hours if it's really an end-of-the-world type of situation, but just having someone passively working next to me is 100% useless.

My girlfriend is always working next to me, and that doesn't prevent me from getting distracted every few minutes.

The only thing it helps is for stuff like cleaning the house where the problem is not focus but motivation, and we will be doing the same thing together.

There’s still a lot to be learned about body doubling and why/how it works so it definitely varies from person to person.

I’m in the same boat that house chores need someone there doing the same thing, rather than just their presence.

One of the things we’re playing around with is different user experiences for different tasks (e.g., computer work vs house chores). It’d be great to hear what you’ve tried when it comes to focusing on work and how it went!

thank you for this! It describes me very well. I'd say having someone next to me even makes me more anxious.

that sounds like hyperfocus, which is absolutely part of ADHD.

One of the main symptoms of ADHD is nearly self destructive procrastination often leading to hyperfocus at the last minute because of that looming deadline you avoided that whole time.

TL;DR: ADHD isn't what people think it is. It's worth learning about, even if you don't have it. This YouTube channel is very clear and informative: https://youtube.com/c/HowtoADHD

ADHD is a disastrously wrong name for the disorder. There is no deficit in attention, and hyperactivity is only as common as inattentiveness, and neither of the two is a primary symptom.

Executive dysfunction is the primary aspect of ADHD. Poor working (short term) memory is the second.

We get distracted because we can't choose where to put our focus. We miss important details in conversations because we tried to listen while also thinking about something else, and lost both details to a mental stack overflow. We get hyperactive because we are understimulated and can't be intentionally calm. We don't do homework or wash dishes or finish projects because we can't intentionally get started on anything.

What makes this different from Focusmate.com?

Great question!

Focusmate is a great product centered around virtual co-working and work productivity, whereas Double will not be centered around co-working, but for everyday tasks (which can include co-working). As a result, we are designing the experience to be tailored towards the everyday experiences rather than a co-working product used for everyday task.

Essentially, we want to expand the scope of tasks you can double up to do together and provide a better UX for those diverse tasks.

Nice, afaik focusmate is used for every day tasks, but not much. What do you want to do different? I Used focusmate for a week or so but It stopped helping me at all once novelty wore off ( same as every adhd/ procrastination tool yet)

Task-specific Double communities and interfaces will be the primary difference between Double and competitors. For instance, not all tasks are best, or preferable, when you are on video (e.g., exercising/running).

Additionally, we are building Double with the ethos that you don't need to always "crush it", but doing a little bit is okay too. We want to help you build the habits you'd like to see a little step at a time (one of our key inspirations is Tiny Habits).

Are these body double volunteers active part of the ADHD community?

I can see how this can set you apart from the competition as you have already an active and enthusiastic members among the community doing their best to help each other since they share the same background and life experience.

Double will be matching people with others that are performing similar tasks. In this way, we will be able to foster communities of people that have similar goals.

Down the line, we do have ideas on incorporating “hosting” a Double to help give a sense of service and further reinforce the community aspect as well.

I got it.

Can you tell me please why opted for this esoteric and non mainstream term and not for a more common one like "companion" and the likes?

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