Comment by unimpressive | Hacker News Reader

Comment by unimpressive | Hacker News Reader

1.) The average computer users fear of their own computer. It hurts me on a deep level (Deeper than just seeing a business opportunity.) to see the bicycle for the mind being marginalized in it's potential by people trying to sell things. (Microsoft, IBM, and co. Have probably done permanent damage to humanity by spreading the meme that computer knowledge is for 'nerds'. Whatever those are.) As we move further into the 21st century, and computers become ever more ubiquitous, it seems that computer knowledge becomes ever more scarce. (I'd have to run the numbers to be sure, but while the number of computer literate people has objectively gone up, I would think that the percentage of people with any sort of understanding deeper than the surface of point and click has gone down.)

I'm not even sure if it's a solvable problem. But if someone did it would be a great service to humanity.

2.) I'm 99% sure that this can't be solved by an external third party. But my 1% nagging doubt is enough to make me list it.

Quite simply, I have problems getting things done. It's not necessarily that I'm lazy, it's just that It takes more effort to figure out what I should be doing right now than it does to just keep procastinating on the same task. To-do lists help, but are ultimately inadequate. A pen and paper to-do list always seems to evade my attention when I try one. Writing it out in a text file usually works better, but it's still not a surefire thing. It's not necessarily that I need better to-do list software so much as it is that I need a better way to manage my time in a way that either:

A] I don't have to manually write down and erase tasks as I do them. Besides an erase shortcut I don't think that this is really feasible. Computers can't read my mind yet.

B] It will make or convince me to habitually update and read it in such a way that it's not annoying or somehow feels out of sync with my workflow.

Maybe I'm alone on this one, maybe I'm not. Maybe it's solvable, but I doubt it.

I'd just like to remind anyone who's read this far that not every problem is best solved by a start-up or business. If you feel strongly about anything in this thread you should at least consider the possibility of other methods of achieving your goals. (But being able to potentially make sizable sums of money while you do is a sweet bonus.)

Time Management: http://xkcd.com/876/

On serious note:

Problem: Help me manage what I need to do and motivate me to do it.

Issue with every possible solution: there can't be 1-shoe-fits-all.

There are various solutions proposed: 1. Have a "done" list - people get motivated by seeing what they get done and feel good about themseleves when they are reocrding what they have done, and feel bad when staring things they need to do .

2. Pair-wise to-do list. Randomly pair a user to a different user and they both use various means to motivate each other and provide means to help each other. This is social interaction and people feel some responsibility to get things done when they have someone to answer to, while others dont want to expose their private life.

3. Bombard the user with notifications on what needs to get done or give user with positive enforcement every hour, in order to motivate the user.

There are 2 issues to be addressed: Motivation and organization. If the data is not easily organizable, user dont feel like vesting. If user does not have anything motivating to do those actions, rather than procrastinating, your system is plain doomed.

Really like this post; articulating something I experience and something I see a TON of entrepreneurs quietly struggle with.

I share your intuition that it's not entirely a machine-ready problem; productivity tools (using that term WIDELY) have certainly improved, corrected in innovative ways for all of our typical human tendencies, and in some cases work really well for "some" people.

I've been consulting lately on a project focused on providing human coaching to this specific problem for big-thinking tech entrepreneurs. Also definitely not for everyone, but after chatting with a number of investors about how they might 'enhance' their influence on their portfolio founders, this was something that always seems to be a "lightbulb". It's most surprised me that entrepreneurs themselves seem to be very much interested in the idea: "Yes, if my investors provided me with a productivity/well-being coach I'd take full advantage".

Thoughts?

I'm far too young to be of any help demoing products for entrepreneurs. However, I think that this and other problems are near or on what I like to call the "Deviation barrier.".

Basically it goes like this: Theres certain problems that seem solvable from your perspective, but the real problem is that the way in which the problem manifests itself deviates largely enough from one person to the next that it makes any solution non-portable to someone else's instance of the problem. As computer science techniques get better I would wager that this barrier gets thinner. I know that if I spent enough time on it I could solve this problem for myself. But solving it in a way that would help others too? That's a tall order.

There's a lot of problems that right now are near or on the deviation barrier. I like to think that as that barrier hypothetically thins that computers will be able to help us with more unique aspects of our lives and account for individual quirks.

But talking right here right now; I'm not sure that you would be able to find effective productivity coaches. Feel free to prove me wrong on this.

I agree this is a problem that's near the "Deviation barrier". I also agree it's narrowing, and admit that what I was suggesting is a 'low-tech' solution. I suppose I was simply offering that I'm seeing empirical evidence that this is a pain point in a particular market that's large enough that people look willing to pay to try and fix it.

> I also agree it's narrowing, and admit that what I was suggesting is a 'low-tech' solution.

That's not in itself a reason to reject an idea. A lot of the time the best solution is decidedly "Low Tech". Thinking that added complexity has any correlation with the usefulness of a system is a fallacy.

(Example: http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Classic-WTF-Lock-and-Key.asp...)

It's not even that your idea is bad. It's not. I'm just skeptical of the availability of individuals who can make a difference without being out of the price range of just about anything that could be defined as a "startup". In fact, I'm skeptical of the availability of such individuals at any price range.

And I'm afraid that if you're serious about the idea that the onus is on you to figure these things out and prove their worth.

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