mklepaczewski

Is it really faster though? I’ve built PoC of something similar and a test game to check how much faster it was to use keyboard. To my surprise mouse was consistently faster ( by a lot).

It depends on the context and the system you’re working with. In some systems, an hour may last 3599, 3600 or 3601 seconds (due to the leap second), a minute may be 59,60 or 61 seconds. Even a second is not always a „true” second.

There’s no single time unit that works for all situations.

You seem to assume that a day always has 24 hours. Common (but not only) non-24h day lengths are: - 23 hours - 25 hours - 24 hours 1 second - 23 hours 59 minutes 59 seconds

You could assume that a day isn't exactly 24 hours, but it's close-ish to 24 hours. Nope, not even close.

And that assumes that we can treat an hour as a precise measure of time (we can't). On some systems, even a second is not a precise measure of time (second smearing).

To make things worse, those are "simple" edge cases.

Time is hard. I'm not sure if I can make any statement about time that is true.

You don’t need the other person to be in the same room - a video call works just fine. In fact, it can be even better for productivity since there's less chit-chat.

I work every day with people addicted to YouTube. A WorkMode client shared this approach; we tested it with a small group. Anecdotal but consistent - it works surprisingly well, cuts usage sharply, and seems to hold up long-term.

Everything you wrote is true, but this is not how it works in practice. Usually, the person running the blog uses WordPress, and doesn't know about caching. They add a few plugins that significantly increase response time and make the response dynamic (for example, CSRF nonces). Add to that some "static" AJAX requests (which usually are POSTs and not cacheable), and it all adds up.

I wouldn't bet on an average dev being able to set up and configure nginx + Cloudflare correctly.

Course you’ll need your http headers set correctly, but you needed that anyway for cloudflare

Not if you don't use CF to cache "dynamic" content.

User would have to enable caching in CF and the response from the server would have to be cacheable for CF for caching to kick in.

62.5ms for a non-cached request? In my experience that’s really fast response time for a blog even on a dedicated bare-metal server.

Your comment could use a better tone, but I do agree that, especially with the difficulties that people are having finding a job these days, there has been elevated interest in ADHD and thus there are more attempts to prey on people with genuine issues

When you say “prey,” what kinds of products or services do you have in mind? I’ve seen some pretty dubious offerings, but I believe most creators genuinely want to help fellow ADHDers. Whether those solutions continue to work after the initial novelty wears off is another question.

I assume that scrolling through productivity feed of friends is less engaging than scrolling through social media content designed and tailored to you to spend as much time on it as possible.

The app has other features to help with focus and to jumpstart productivity.

I haven’t checked the app, I just saw screenshots. In my opinion the leaderboard is a bad idea, especially global one. It will be unachievable by vast majority of your users, and may lead to toxic behaviours such as working for 12h/day. It will also remind others how bad their productivity is, possibly causing more stress and self-blaming.

Think about something else than gamification. In my experience and the experience of our users (https://workmode.net/) gamification very quickly stops to work.

I wish you all the best as I know how devastating procrastination may be. Stay productive:-)

No need to be snarky. If it helps someone be more productive then it’s a win, even if they spend 50% scrolling and 50% working.

I haven’t checked the app, but the description says it uses social accountability, focus music and gamification. I’m sure it’s the right combination for some people, even if only for a while (in my experience gamification works only short term).

Delaying action is sometimes useful. Procrastination is never useful. The deliberate decision to postpone something because it's beneficial is very different from postponing something because we prefer to read HN.

procrastination is healthy and stops premature projects from getting copied and ruined.

I disagree. By definition, procrastination means delaying or avoiding actions you should be taking, which is inherently unhealthy. If you're not doing what you ought to, it's counterproductive.

Often, people confuse procrastination with: - resting, - relaxing while playing games, - doing nothing, - giving themselves time to cool of when they have a new idea.

These activities can be beneficial. For instance, after a stressful week, taking time to relax isn’t procrastination—it’s prioritizing mental health. Likewise, if your body needs sleep, getting rest is necessary, not a delay of important tasks. This is what you should be doing.

Even delaying action is sometimes exactly what we should be doing. If I have a billion-dollar idea that demands a significant investment of time, effort, or money, it's crucial to give myself space to think about the idea, and to cool off. That’s not procrastination—it’s a deliberate, thoughtful strategy.

Putting me on the list by my full name was unexpected and unwelcome. I immediately wanted to delete the account.

Not providing an option to delete the account was another unwelcome surprise.

I added a goal but it doesn't show up in the "Manage goals" tab.

Navigation is broken on mobile (Chrome, Android), it overflows its container.

The leader board failed to load at least once.

The idea to use full name is a good one as it provides extra accountability, but you should ask for permission to do it. You should also explain, that using full name increases the chances of success.

Please remove my account. I wanted to provide feedback, but I'm not otherwise interested in goal tracking.

Who do you consider to be your target audience? Who's your client?

No. Procrastinators will unconsiusly use these tasks as an excuse to pause work. Getting something to drink, looking for a music etc. removes these common excuses, so that the only thing left to do is work.

Many procrastinators have ADHD, and they often dehydrate.

Choosing a proper music is a good way to stay productive. The music depends on your condition and type of work. If you're sleepy you'll benefit from listening to something that gets you moving - for example you shake your leg, head, or do any other minor movement while listening to the music.

Some items on that list are very short and don't need much mental effort, e.g "How long will I work on the task?" Most people use 30-90 intervals of work and choosing it is a knee-jerk reaction (nothing wrong with that). Also, it's good to have a deadline for each task in case it blows up.

I disagree. Both books suck for procrastinators/people with ADHD. Most of them won't finish reading these books. People should watch a 10/20-minute introduction to developing a habit on YouTube instead.

These books are written to sell, not to be read by the target audience. They're far too long, and their structure is bad. For dozens of pages, there is no actionable advice. The reader loses interest by that time, and the book lands on Tsundoku tower. I suspect short self-help books don't sell well, so each book must have 200+ pages, even if it sets up the reader for failure.

From your experience, what tips or practices would you suggest to stay disciplined?

Don’t ask others what helped them—it doesn’t matter. People procrastinate for very different reasons. It’s like asking what others did to stop their headaches. Just because they also suffer from headaches doesn't mean you should implement their solution.

One of the first steps is identifying what you feel when you procrastinate. What triggers it? Is it decision paralysis, fear of failure, a sense that you deserve more from life, or the urge to treat yourself? Perhaps your challenge is getting started, or maybe you’re simply overworked.

The solution depends on why you procrastinate. Techniques that focus on organizing work can help with decision paralysis or lack of vision but might be useless if your issue is task initiation or maintaining focus for long periods (in which case, tools like the Pomodoro Technique or timeboxing could be effective). On the other hand, neither of these approaches will work for hedonistic procrastinators, but strategies like making bets with friends or body doubling might yield excellent results.

Source: Helping people overcome procrastination is my job.

Well, yeah. Companies store a lot of information in spreadsheets. CRM, financial info or really anything. People need to access it from their phones when the data is urgently needed.

Teenagers are allowed to take high interest loan? Where? I think in Poland it would be possible for every parent to refuse repay such a loan.

I've seen too many bugs with PHP static typing for it to be worth it in mature systems.

Can you elaborate? What kind of bugs? Can you give some examples? I'm scratching my head because I'm not sure if I ever experienced such a bug.

No, nobody has ever complained about it (and yes, we did ask). When we first started, we were really concerned about it, so we tried to move as little as possible, avoid hand gestures, and so on. However, it turned out to be a non-issue.

Fun fact: I’d estimate that 50% of users don’t even look at their Productivity Partner while they work. WorkMode runs in another tab, and users rarely switch back to it. They don’t need to see us - they just need to know we’re watching. I’m in that group.

I do the same, but I think it's because we were taught to be polite and to conduct conversations in a certain way.

Do you put effort into being polite when ChatGPT makes a mistake and you correct it? Do you try to soften the blow to avoid hurting its "feelings"? Do you feel bad if you respond impolitely? I don't.

Thank you! I hadn’t thought of it that way, but what you wrote makes total sense and explains the engagement issues we’re seeing with the calculator and the pricing section.

Again, please feel free to ignore this as it is quite possible that it is just me with the attention span of a goldfish with CTE while clicking around new websites.

Most of our clients have issues with attention span, so your feedback is gold :-) Again, thank you!

Yes, they monitor several people simultaneously. Most clients ask us to check in on their progress every 15–30 minutes, and these interactions can last anywhere from a few seconds to three minutes, depending on the client and the challenges they're facing. It might be boring when working with a single person, but it gets more challenging as more people connect.

Also, we do more than just body doubling. Some clients need to follow a morning ritual before starting their work (think meditation, a quick house cleanup, etc.). Sometimes, we perform sanity checks on their to-do lists (people often create tasks that are too vague or vastly underestimate the time needed to complete them). We ask them to apply the 2-minute rule, and so on. It all depends on the client's needs.

The parent might be referring to us: https://workmode.net/. Most of our clients work from home. Do you have a specific concern about body doubling and working from home?

Interesting! I see how this could work for inattentive procrastinators. By "inattentive procrastinators", I mean people who are easily distracted and forget that they need to work on their tasks. Once reminded, they return to their tasks without much fuss.

However, I doubt it would work for hedonistic procrastinators. When body doubling, hedonistic procrastinators rely on social pressure to be productive. Using AI likely won't work unless the person perceives the AI as a human.

If the argument order is a problem for you, you can use named arguments.

Can you elaborate? I'm not sure what you mean, but IDEs definitely make reading code easier. IDE does code formatting, highlighting, argument hints, jumping to methods, declarations, and various hover effects on variables, methods, and classes. Some IDEs offer call graphs and other more advanced tools. Not to mention static analysis that works out of the box in PHPStorm (and I'm sure it can be set up in VSCode).