Comment by bjenik | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bjenik | Hacker News Reader

Background story:

I'm currently working on a ToDo-App for the iPhone. The problem is, I'm not really working on it. Instead, I created all social media accounts I could potentially need for the app (if I hopefully finish it sometime). In addition to this, I rebuilt my personal website, redid my résumé and a lot of other stuff (like this side project). In fact I was quite productive - but not on the task I should do.

To sum it up: Instead of working on a big task I got a lot of smaller ones done. So to get something done you obviously just need something bigger to procrastinate on. That's what this project is about.

Now I'm really interested in your opinions - do you think this could work?

(PS: English is not my first language - if there are any mistakes on the website please tell me)

"I'm currently working on a ToDo-App for the iPhone. The problem is, I'm not really working on it."

LOL

I think you're definitely on to something. I've thought about a kind of "procrastination redirector" where you have, say, a list of "bad activities" and a corresponding list of "good activities".

For a simple example, you could change your hosts file so that news.ycombinator.com redirects to a tutorial for whatever new language/framework you've been dying to try.

You could come up with a neural-linguistic-reprogramming-esque way of getting yourself to do just about anything: "Sitting on the couch? Why not walk one lap around the house?"

Voila: a machine that nags the shit out of you.

I like the idea, and I actually think it could work. I wouldn't be very happy paying a fee, but if I paid $100 that's returned to me if I succeed or lost if I fail, without any other fees, I'd be quite tempted.

As a web service though there's no reason for me to use it. Your competition is me giving $100 to a friend I trust. I'm not sure how you'd overcome that.

I think they pick the task for you. Leastways, that's what it seemed like from the pitch...

I think what many people actually need is mentoring that forces them to break these big tasks down into tasks they either know how to do, can learn how to do or delegate.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com