
Tell HN: Auto-Blackmail - jacquesm
I've got this dirty secret. I blackmail someone and it takes me places.<p>I call it auto-blackmail, and here is how it works:<p>Whenever I come up against something I really don't want to do but that I know I have to do I go out of my way to tell others that I'll do it, and when it will be done.<p>That way, if I don't do it I'll end up looking like a fool in front of those that matter to me.<p>I call it 'auto blackmail', the similarities are strong enough to warrant the title. I'm sure it is not original but it works wonders for me.<p>Blackmail is threatening to tell on someone if they don't do something you want them to do, Auto-Blackmail is a preemptive strike, you tell those whose respect you value that you will succeed, failure, after that is no longer an option.<p>This in response to some of the 'how to stay focused', 'how to avoid coders block' and other posts of a similar nature that I've come across recently.<p>I don't have a nicer way of doing it, when self discipline fails, blackmail invariably succeeds.<p>Join me and use the power of blackmail whenever you feel that urge to avoid a certain piece of work (you know, the one you really should be working on right now).<p>In fact, there is probably a nice little project embedded here somewhere, a place where you can publicly post your next item on your todo list that you'd really like to avoid and when you will have it done, after the timer expires your whole facebook and twitter posse will be automatically informed that you've dropped the ball :)
======
chaosmachine
There was a study recently that said people are less likely to achieve their
goals when they tell other people about them. Here's an article that discusses
it:

[http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ulterior-
motives/200905/...](http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ulterior-
motives/200905/if-you-want-succeed-don-t-tell-anyone)

And the actual study, "When intentions go public : Does social reality widen
the intention-behavior gap?" [PDF]:

[http://www.uni-
konstanz.de/psychologie/gollwitzer/PUBLICATIO...](http://www.uni-
konstanz.de/psychologie/gollwitzer/PUBLICATIONS/Gollwitzer_Sheeran_2009_When_Intentions_Go_Public.pdf)

~~~
dpapathanasiou
_There was a study recently that said people are less likely to achieve their
goals when they tell other people about them._

It's interesting that Robert Cialdini says the opposite; according to his
concept of "Commitment and Consistency", if people commit, orally or in
writing, to an idea or goal, they are more likely to honor that commitment
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Cialdini#Six_.E2.80.9CWe...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Cialdini#Six_.E2.80.9CWeapons_of_Influence.22)).

~~~
systemtrigger
So does G. Richard Shell in Bargaining for Advantage: Negotiation Strategies
for Reasonable People. Shell, a Wharton professor, cites a study where half of
negotiators committed to a goal in writing and the other half did not. Those
who wrote down their goals were far more likely to win at the negotiation
table. I picked up the book last week after several people here recommended it
and am enjoying the many examples from famous people with which Shell peppers
his lessons. <http://www.amazon.com/dp/0143036971>

------
jlees
I do this sometimes, but it doesn't work _that_ well. My problem is that the
sort of people that matter to me, the people I'd tell about these goals, are
exactly the sort of people who believe in me and support me and won't actually
be that disappointed if I fail because they know I'll have tried my best.
(Even if I haven't.) So I don't really fear looking like a fool in front of
them at all.

Having to eat a nice serving of humble pie after you've told loads of people
something's going to happen and it doesn't is unfortunate, but in my
experience it mostly happens with things out of my control (job interviews and
the like). I can't really empirically say if I've tried harder in a job
interview because I told my mum about it or not. :-)

Another drawback of this system is that people really close to you care about
what you're doing, so can get too intrusive and keep asking you questions
about it. You end up resenting the questions because things aren't going well
and you haven't actually started the task, which makes you resent the
questioner, even though they mean well by it. It can drive a wedge between
friends and obviously depends a lot by personality (one of my friends was like
this and after a period of estrangement he learned to back off and I learned
to not associate the resentment with him).

Having said that this auto-blackmail does work in specific situations for me,
with specific people, but I think with more 'life' stuff than 'work' stuff.

------
DanielBMarkham
For some reason I find that the more people I tell something, the _less_
likely it is to happen.

So, for instance, I don't talk about potential sales calls, leads, stuff I'm
picking up, projects I'm working on -- anything that could possibly be
"jinxed"

It's probably just superstition, but dang if every time I talk about one of
these things it seems to ruin it.

~~~
jacquesm
Not that long ago you wrote here that you were building something and that you
would be releasing it soon, how is that coming along ?

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Still plugging away. It's Sunday morning here and I don't feel sick any more,
so that's a big plus! Woo hoo! Hopefully I can get a lot more done today than
yesterday.

There are four delivery points. I'm hoping to make it to delivery point 1 in
the next week and demo it here. Fair warning: it will be very lame, but each
increment builds on the one before it and you have to start somewhere.

Just working by yourself really sucks, jacquesm. I can handle the work --
coding is coding. And I can do the biz stuff and the techie stuff. It's just
the ups and downs and worrying about money and such is easier when you have
two people to share in the load. As it is, I have a family that wants to know
where the exit points are and hell! I haven't even got on the highway!

After reading this article today, I decided to start a video diary. Each day
I'm going to explain to myself what my goals are and how I'm feeling. It's
basically an advanced form of talking to myself, but hopefully it will help
with the motivation.

~~~
jacquesm
if you need to blow off steam and have a feeling that you are not as alone in
this: twelve.truetech.com:6667 #tmc

But don't let it keep you from your work ;)

------
kyro
I'm kind of the opposite. I love to work in secret and have others
underestimate me, so that when I do go public about a project, I deliver a
nice shocking punch. Then I brag the hell out of it at that point.

------
raffi
I partially credit keeping going on my startup with having told many of my
coworkers about it before I left. Well, more accurately I say: "If I hadn't
run my big mouth, telling everyone I was doing a startup, and don't want a
job..." Yeah. I had no choice but to keep going. Not always the best thing
though. Choice is good.

~~~
raquo
Have to fight other's choices every day:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braesss_Paradox>

~~~
eagleal
The link above has a typo:

here the correct one: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess_paradox>

~~~
jacquesm
That's a very interesting read, I never figured that something like Braess'
Paradox would have such acute real life examples. I though it was mostly a
thing confined to theory.

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pseingatl
Years ago there was a diet based on this idea, I think it was called the
blackmail diet. You set your weight loss goals, and then escrow, say, $10,000
to be paid to the Klan or the Na$is or some other loathesome group if you
don't reach your goals.

People are still fat, at least in the U.S.

~~~
jacquesm
That's a fun one, I wonder if people are still fat, why isn't the klan the
best funded institution on the planet :) ?

Either someone at the escrow company is now living the high life or the
enrollment wasn't very high. But that's a really funny application of the
idea.

I've looked it up, I'm late to the party:

    
    
      The Blackmail Diet by John Bear (1984, Ten Speed Press)

------
pbh
Regarding the last bit, this exists in a couple forms. The one I can remember
at the moment is stickK (<http://www.stickk.com/>).

~~~
vlad
The founders are a practicing lawyer, a professor, and a recent graduate in
American Studies. The remaining staff consists of a marketer, another lawyer,
an economist, and a couple of MBA's. How well is this working out?

------
Slashed
Actually, the best thing that works for me is to work with somebody. For
example, two of us are working on our startup: I'm the coder, my partner is
the business guy. When we discuss how each one of us is doing and check if we
match our goals, then I get enthusiastic for the next 24h. Of course, this is
an oversimplified example but hopefully you got the idea. :)

------
zaidf
pg has written about a similar idea about founders who get featured in
magazines have a higher bar to live up and are less likely to just give up.

I have been doing this _a lot_ recently--telling every friend I meet that I am
broke and I am going to fix this part of my life in a big way. But i'm not
sure if this is a cause or the effect because I am not doing this
systematically or as a plan. I actually would be kinda embarrassed if I was
doing it consciously. It is just what comes out of my mouth naturally these
days. The impact of this is after a while you attain a certain image in your
friend circle. That image gets reinforced from multiple channels. Example: a
friend of mine posted one of those quizzes on my fb wall:

    
    
      "Is Zaid addicted to Facebook?"
      I answered ''no. But he is addicted to his laptop.
      Constantly refreshes his bank statement. Asks where the f*** is his 10,000. ''

~~~
jacquesm
I think that for the PG sample that is because the 'bite' is too big. If you
say you're going to be a millionaire before you're 30 you are going to find
out soon enough that that is not so easy and maybe give up, whereas if you
hadn't thought about it you might have accidentally succeeded.

For me the usage is very simple, bite-sized concrete things that I know I can
easily do but keep postponing.

I would never use it for something that is either out of my immediate reach or
not under my control. Then it would have the opposite effect.

~~~
zaidf
Interesting. I don't usually have a problem going forward with my intentions
at a macro scale. The most frustrating part is I hit a rut every now and then
at a mini-step and may end up avoiding it a few days(or weeks at worst!). It
helps to have a friend or two to not only call your BS but actually lend you a
hand. I have couple friends who'll go ahead and _do_ the mini thing I've been
avoiding. Like I said, in reality it's usually a pretty small thing(like
making a call) but in my head it becomes a huge thing until someone shows it's
not.

~~~
jacquesm
I suffer from that. What always amazes me is that even after all those years
when I kick myself in gear and get it over with it usually is less than an
hour, two at the most to get that molehill-that-became-a-mountain out of the
way.

This is a very annoying character trait and I do everything I can to get it
out of my life, including the tricks I outlined above. The golden rule seems
to be don't make promises you can't keep. Treat those statements about what
you are going to do exactly like you would treat a solemn promise.

Sometimes it's stronger, sometimes it is less, but on the whole this is really
a bad element in my character and it takes a lot of effort to get (and keep)
it under control.

I am not sure if I'll ever be free of this particular demon but I'm definitely
going to continue to work on it.

Just one example to show you how bad this can get. I do some contracting and
had to move a bunch of tickets over from one ticketing system to another. Not
rocket science, simply take one database, do a format conversion and import
into another.

All told it was less than 4 hours of work. But it took me 4 days, and I
finally did exactly what I said above, I mailed all the users of the old
system that their new system would be up later today.

That sort of clinched it for me, now there was no backing out. Several hours
later, job done, users active on the new system. Why it took me that long is
simple, it's a totally boring job, anybody could do it, there is _0_ challenge
in it for me.

Give me a puzzle and tell me that I can't solve it and I'll be on it like a
shot though :)

~~~
zaidf
Exactly! If you are like me, you probably spent more than four hours just
_thinking_ about that monkey on your back. This happens almost on a daily
basis for me. I deal with it by at the least telling myself that it's ok to
not do something, but it's not ok to be thinking about it all the time. At
least this way whenever I do get to it, I wouldn't have wasted hours fretting
about it which is the real time sink.

------
apu
Richard Hamming talks about doing this in his "You and Your Research" talk:
<http://www.paulgraham.com/hamming.html>

(search for 'ashamed')

------
blackdog
I use this all the time - my favourite is to promise to give a talk about
something I haven't actually written yet. Powerfully motivating.

------
setori88
better yet, stand up in front of a hall of some of the best engineers in
$country and say you will do something. that really is a driver!

~~~
zackattack
is this a reference to foreign engineers becoming taxi drivers in the US?

------
dpcan
This is not blackmail, it's called being "accountable". When you say you're
going to do something, you do it. Again, this is not blackmail, this is how
successful, trustworthy people operate every day.

From your profile, you seem to understand this, but do others not?

What is happening to this world when accountability has become a surprising
new concept????

~~~
jaddison
A surprising number of workplaces still do not understand the concept of
accountability - I can say that they are frustrating places to work.

I agree with the original poster; there is no better way to get your goals
accomplished than by publicizing them.

------
chime
> (you know, the one you really should be working on right now).

This is the problem really. Don't compel yourself to do anything you don't
want to. Don't guilt yourself into thinking that you should be doing something
else instead of what you really want to do. Stop doing this in the name of
productivity, efficiency, ambition, or goals. Instead, focus your energy on
making yourself realize why something must be done, if it needs to be done at
all. If you can convince yourself that it needs to be done, then you will have
no problem doing it and will in fact do it willingly. If you can't convince
yourself why it needs to be done, then you should do something to make sure
you don't have to do it.

E.g., writing a school paper for a class you don't much care for. That is
something that happens to me because some of my required Masters classes are a
bit too easy (in fact my undergrad courses in the same subjects were much more
advanced). I tell myself that life is a learning experience and writing well
is an art that I must continually practice to remain proficient, regardless of
the subject matter or specific task at hand. Knowing that this one 10-page
assignment is a small piece of the bigger jigsaw puzzle of my life as student
makes me want to work on it. Not because I love the class but because I see
how this particular assignment fits into the big plan I have previously made.
I always try to stick with my big plans unless there is a true reason not to.
Is a 10 page assignment a true reason not to stick with my Masters degree and
my academic plans? No. Then it is something that will take me one step closer
to my final goal. Who doesn't want to take one more step in the right
direction?

I don't play tricks with my brain or try to excite myself by small goals or
high-scores (try to get an A+ in a 10pg paper I wrote in 2hrs). I see a lot of
advice in these motivational / GTD type posts that are mostly tricks and
advice on lying to yourself. I don't set my clocks 10mins ahead. I try to
understand why it must be so instead of fooling myself and hoping that a
safety-net for my follies will somehow help me.

Why do I work on the really boring project at work that nobody else wants to
help me on? Because I understand that this is something that helps with the
bigger picture of my career. If it doesn't, then I will make sure I don't have
to do it. I don't want to live a life avoiding things that must be done or
playing tricks on myself just so I do things I don't want to do. If I sit back
and truly don't want to do something, I make sure I don't have to do it.

This doesn't mean I look forward to doing the dishes. Wife and I both hate
doing the dishes and we avoid using too many pots and pans while cooking.
However, I do the dishes whenever I can because it makes the misses happy and
that is my bigger goal. Doing the dishes gets me one step closer to marital
bliss and who doesn't want that? Do I really want to claim "honey I will do
the dishes" and do them reluctantly only because I claimed that publicly? Or
do I do the dishes willingly because it makes my wife happy and thus me happy?

~~~
jacquesm
Different strokes for different folks!

What works for me may not work for others, that's for sure.

I've always worked with lists and commitments, that's the way I structure my
time.

If it is on the list it will get done sooner or later. If I commit to a time
it will _probably_ get done by that time. If I commit to it publicly then it
_will_ get done by that time.

When faced with a thousand choices and many of those are more interesting than
that ones that should be done the danger of leaving the things that have to be
done until it is too late is very real (for me).

I'd rather be washing _your_ dishes because it would make you and your wife
happy than I would do my own, but those need to be done as well. (my own
solution to this is very close to yours, use as little stuff as possible).

I've rebuilt a house, without the lists to keep me going I would have surely
given up. And without telling people that I would have phase 'x' finished at
such and such a date I would have finished a lot later.

So, this is my way, I'm impressed with yours, and I wished I could self
motivate for the drudgework as well as you apparently can but I feel I need a
little extra push.

~~~
chime
Side note: I have a lot of respect for you and your work. My comment above is
in no way an attempt to disrespect you or your work ethic. Reocities is an
awesome project and how you managed to do it was even better.

You're right about different strokes. I don't expect everyone to do what I do
in the same way. However, I question the underlying premise behind having to
do things you REALLY don't want to do. My comment was really about making sure
you don't have too many of those.

> I've always worked with lists and commitments...

> I've rebuilt a house, without the lists to keep me going I would have surely
> given up.

Talking about lists, I live by them. I even wrote my own todo-list app (like
every run-of-the-mill hacker) called <http://untodos.com> that works with my
personality. I put things in Today / Soon / Whenever buckets and move them
around depending on real-life situations. If something has been in the soon
list for too long, I'll revisit it and either drag it up to Today or down to
Whenever. I guess it is a very personal list and unlike you, I don't want to
tell people publicly about what I intend to do, willingly or not.

> When faced with a thousand choices and many of those are more interesting...

Not to judge you for being so enterprising, but do you feel having a thousand
choices is actually a good thing? I've worked in many interesting projects and
a couple of startups over the last decade and found that individuals with too
many interesting projects rarely brought a project to fruition. On the other
hand, those with just a handful of interesting projects successfully completed
most of them. It's the old "too many eggs in a basket" issue. Lot of
entrepreneurs are afraid of putting all their eggs in a basket so they begin
to get more baskets till there's too many baskets and too few eggs. If you
feel compelled to do something instead of what you really want to do, is it
because you have too many interesting baskets? Again, this is a personal
preference and the # of baskets you are comfortable with will be different
from mine.

> I'd rather be washing your dishes...

Is that a public admission of a task you will eventually get around to doing?
If so, you're always welcome to St. Petersburg, Florida. We live 5mins from
the beautiful Gulf of Mexico.

~~~
jacquesm
Having too many choices is a mixed blessing.

I think that the number of choices we have in life are a measure of our
welfare, if you are near starvation you have 0 choices, you need to get some
water&food, and you need to get it now.

As you go up on the welfare ladder you get more and more options on how to
spend your time and your choices seem to multiply.

To quote Joe Jackson ( <http://lirama.net/song/226232> ) "They say that choice
is freedom, I'm so free I'm stuck in therapy", too much choice is definitely
not a good thing.

I try to find a good mix between the stuff that I like to do and the stuff
that I have to do.

What I have to do is mostly driven by the need to stay afloat and to stay
'current', what I like to do is usually somewhere off on the fringe, learning
languages just for the heck of it (human languages and programming languages)
simply because it interests me.

I like to work on stuff that has a clear beginning, a middle and an end, open
ended things are less of an attraction to me.

Probably because I can never 'check them off' one of my lists :)

As for the many eggs theory, I think you need at least 6, 3 that you currently
depend on (less than 3 sources of income for a business and you're fragile,
it's like a chair, it needs three legs to be stable), and 3 waiting in the
wings as 'plan b' in case one of the other ones fails so you can get back to 3
legs relatively quickly.

If you try to do much more than that it is my experience that the quality will
start to suffer.

Re. washing your dishes, that's a really nice thing of you, to invite me! I'm
no longer traveling to the US like I used to, I think your immigration
department & TSA have become too much of a nuisance to be dealt with. If I
were I'd definitely take you up on it.

I've had to give them my fingerprints, a photograph and my _boots_ on my last
tour to the US and I ended up late for a meeting on the west coast because I
had to go buy new shoes...

Since then I've avoided the US completely on my travels. (the boots were
confiscated because they had steel toes and plates in them, they were supposed
to be handed back to me on landing but they forgot to put them on the
plane...)

Should you make it to this end of the world then please know that you're
invited as well, I'm about 2 hours away from Amsterdam.

j.

------
codedivine
Reminds me of this : <http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/10/21/>

