
I let a stranger watch me work for a day and I've never been more productive - johnshades
https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/focusmate-review-productivity-work-hack
======
StaticRedux
Now do that for a month. Or even a week. You may be more productive bc you
don't want to be seen as slacking off with someone watching, but maintaining
that kind of pace is untenable. Did you ever get stuck and check your email or
Facebook just to give your brain a little break? Did you ever sit, unsure of
your next move? Or did you do the first thing you thought of, even if it was
wrong, so you didn't look like you were wasting time?

Intense productivity with someone looking over your shoulder is great for a
day. After a week you'll want to quit. After a month you'll want to kill
yourself.

~~~
travisjungroth
That’s fine. Having a tool I can use a few hours a few week to get me through
things that are the highest product of important and annoying is super
valuable. Doesn’t have to be a lifestyle.

~~~
coldtea
You won't be the one choosing when and for how long to use the tool...

~~~
alangpierce
Normal office environments already have managers that are plenty capable of
watching and critiquing everything you do all the time, but at least in my
experience, that's almost never how it goes. Good managers know that freedom
and autonomy are empowering. I'm sure others have had much worse experiences,
but I think it's mostly well-established that micromanagement is a bad thing.

Whether it's in-person or with a tool like this, if your employer is creating
an unreasonable amount of pressure/stress, then that puts them in a weaker
position in the job market than companies that treat their employees well.
Give them feedback, and if they're not receptive to feedback, see if you can
ask for a raise or find another job.

~~~
0x8BADF00D
> Good managers know that freedom and autonomy are empowering. I'm sure others
> have had much worse experiences, but I think it's mostly well-established
> that micromanagement is a bad thing.

This is really important. If your manager or PM is constantly bothering you,
you won’t be able to get into your flow state, which is important in software
engineering.

------
myth2018
Procrastination has destroyed my life.

Three years ago I finally achieved my dream of working from home. I was
writing my thesis and believed I could finish my masters in 8 months. I
decided to fully focus on it and, afterwards, I would create my long dreamed
own software company.

It worked really well for some weeks. I was much more focused than I used to
be working in regular offices, with bosses. But soon I started getting
distracted with amateur radio, social media, couch and TV and so on.

Then I couldn't concentrate on anything anymore. After almost a year I had
finished only half of my thesis. I started to feel desperate because I hadn't
even started my company, and my savings were being burned day after day. This
contributed to further drops in my productivity and concentration.

I finished my masters 14 months past what I initially imagined. And I
eventually had almost no energy left to work on my products. I sporadically
had some boosts in productivity and managed to get something done. But I
wasn't able to commit to plans anymore. I was always getting stuck. And my
money going away.

My life-worth savings are basically depleted now, I have no wife anymore and I
feel pretty bad and alone.

Coincidentally, yesterday I started to work on a co-working space. That new
atmosphere helped me significantly and I hope it keeps this way for some time
at least.

Good to know about Focusmate and alikes. I will definitely try them if my
productivity drops again.

~~~
emerongi
Working from home changed my life in the opposite direction. Being able to
fully manage my own time and not have someone breathing down my neck has
enabled me to actually _not_ procrastinate.

I used to suffer from a lot of stress and anxiety and I think that fueled my
procrastination. Now that I no longer suffer from those, I can just focus on
work.

For a while I've wondered how I even started procrastinating as hard as I did.
I used to be the type to first get all pending tasks done and then go and
enjoy my free time, but at some point it flipped. It's weird.

~~~
deevolution
I think the stress and anxiety is caused by procrastination and the stress and
anxiety causes further procrastination. It's a loop! The trick is to get out
of the loop by establishing productive, rewarding habits.

~~~
myth2018
I totally agree and I got caught in such loop. And it took me too long to do
something about. Had to reach a really sad local minimum until I decided to
act.

I will maybe write something about this in the future. When it comes to
procrastination, people are usually so concerned about not realizing their
full potentials. But it can be much worse than that. I was concerned about a
suboptimal improvement and I ended up in a position worse than when I started.

------
systemizer
Anybody else get an immediately negative visceral reaction from this? If I'm
understanding this correctly, the aim is to manipulate our sense of
shame/guilt to boost productivity.

After sitting with the feeling for a bit, here are some ideas that come to
mind:

1\. Maybe we should ask why we feel shame/guilt in the first place. Is it
"normal" to feel this? If it isn't we should not rely on it for our happiness
(or productivity).

2\. What is the value of productivity? Why does it make us happy?

For me, guilt/shame is something to be overcome, not used as a tool. And the
value of productivity is something that has been handed down to us by a
culture which we've been thrown into. And (at least for me), it's our duty to
question these ideas instead of merely giving into them to self-reinforce
themselves.

~~~
drdeca
> For me, guilt/shame is something to be overcome, not used as a tool.

Wow, I think I quite strongly disagree.

What do you think it exists _for_ ?

It is good for society that people have the capacity for guilt and shame.

If we did not, I cannot see any other recourse other than fear!

~~~
systemizer
Okay, so shame exists because it is good for a society that is built on shame?
I don't mean to be derogatory in anyway, but the fact something is stabilizing
doesn't mean it is good. I believe there are better ways to build
relationships with others

~~~
coldtea
> _Okay, so shame exists because it is good for a society that is built on
> shame?_

Yes. Shame exists because it gave some evolutionary benefits to the primates
who had it, like being able to live in a society and cooperate and don't
cheat/kill/fuck over each other as much (if you think we do bad stuff too
much, wait till you see what we can do without shame).

> _I believe there are better ways to build relationships with others_

The problem is that made-up (e.g. of our own making, requiring us to think
about them and follow them rationally), not instinctual, ways, are none
effective at all compared to innate, evolutionary, feelings like shame...

~~~
systemizer
Good points! I agree the feeling of shame is pre-reflective. At the same time,
I think we have the possibility of comporting ourselves in a way-of-being that
better copes with shame. For me, By reflectively using your pre-reflective
feeling of shame as a tool for productivity feels wrong (and this is personal
and I don't have the best words right now to expound that feeling)

~~~
coldtea
>* For me, By reflectively using your pre-reflective feeling of shame as a
tool for productivity feels wrong*

Well, with that I agree.

For one, it cheapens the quality and utility of shame.

Following this to the end, could end up with cheating on one's spouse or
killing someone feeling only as bad as checking your Facebook page when you
should be working...

------
BurningFrog
My first month of pair programming was utterly exhausting, but once I got into
the pace, it was the best thing I've ever done.

The mutual focus is definitely a big part. You're in a social context, and
there is no place to stray from the mutual task, and that discipline is very
liberating, weird as it may sound, for someone prone to procrastinating like
myself.

~~~
sh87
There are some pre-requisites to Pair programming. That you need to have a
well defined task, that you need not be bogged down by insane deadlines and
can afford to have 2 people work on the same thing and both need to be well
versed at the task at hand to live up to the promise of productivity. My
experience pair programming for a year was sh*tty enough to never consider it
again unless I have these pre-reqs met. I'd much rather split tasks, work
independently and then touch base often.

~~~
saghm
I haven't had a job that required pair programming, but I've found it can be a
pretty useful tool in certain circumstances. There have been a number of times
when a colleague and I have naturally fell into pair programming for tasks,
normally starting with us just sharing ideas and one of us eventually jumping
in front of a keyboard and the two of us trying out several ideas live. It
certainly isn't as formal as "pair programming" normally might imply, but as
someone who's hasn't been in the industry all that long, I've found the times
that one done it with more senior teammates to be insightful, as well as
pretty effective for certain types of tasks.

~~~
koala_man
I'd rather have a design session and a code review in that case.

What I've found pair programming useful for is tooling and workflow.

When working that closely you'll notice when they hit a few keys and are
suddenly in the right file, and you go "wait, what did you just do?" and they
tell you about this great new Vim plugin.

Inversely, they start doing something really manual and you can say "hey, I do
this a lot do I wrote this utility script that automates it"

------
perl4ever
I used to think that the sense of "having to look over my shoulder" with all
the productivity monitoring going on was what made me miserable at work. But
I'm now in a different environment, and it has been revealed to me that the
issue I had was not at all what I thought. The problem was that I was formerly
employed to do technical stuff and all of the administrative work was just
piled on as extra stuff, theoretically required, but all metrics involved the
actual technical work. Now I have a job that is _just_ administrative, and
anything involving programming is extra. Now that mentally I am in the mode of
doing administrative work as my _real_ job, it no longer seems like a burden
to be doing it every minute of the day, and accounting for every minute, and I
don't even mind having my phone turned off all day so I don't spend any time
goofing off.

What I'm saying is that the agonizing thing for me was the contradiction, the
equivocation between saying "you're employed to program, etc., but you also
have to do all this stuff that interrupts your thought process, but we don't
really care how you cope with it..."

Now that my _primary_ task is the administrative stuff (working with project
managers), suddenly it doesn't hurt! I'm being compensated and valued for
doing it. Any programming I may do is extra.

~~~
noego
You've touched upon something that made me find work a lot more bearable as
well. Ultimately, it doesn't matter what your designated "primary" task is, as
long as you tell yourself that your primary task is to do whatever the
business requires.

I used to get extremely frustrated whenever I got bogged down by
inefficiencies, grunt work, or bad technical/business decisions made by
others. Until one day I came to the realization that my employer isn't paying
me to do things I enjoy. They are paying me to provide them with services they
need. I certainly speak up if I think there's a better way of doing things,
but I recognize that big corporations by their nature are bureaucratic,
political and inefficient. If I dislike my work so much, I can certainly leave
and work for myself, or find a different employer. Until then, they are
certainly paying me extremely well, so I have no reason to complain for having
to do some grunt work.

This subtle shift in attitude has made work so much more enjoyable. Every time
I find myself frustrated by something, I remind myself this is precisely the
reason I'm getting paid the big bucks. My job isn't to solve all the company's
problems, it is simply to do the best job I can within the work hours agreed
upon, so why complain. Having low expectations truly does make you happier.

~~~
perl4ever
Your comment reads as a rah-rah for adjusting your own mental state by force
of will. I want to make it clear that is _not_ what happened to me. I can't do
that, don't believe I have ever done that, and I honestly believe it is a myth
that anyone can, although I might for politeness not challenge someone who
claims to.

I also have found that I have no increased tolerance for what feels like abuse
when I am paid more.

The only way I have ever improved my situation is by seeking out an
environment in which the people I directly dealt with were clear about what
they want from me.

If you see your job as doing what the business requires or needs, that's easy
to say, but _nobody_ knows what it needs! Even the CEO probably doesn't have a
clue. Any large business is IMO mostly a kind of self-organizing machine with
random actions directed from the top. For years, my employer was doing
acquisitions and trying to diversify. Then they reversed it all and broke up
their parts under different names.

------
coldtea
I particularly enjoyed the follow-up article "I burnt out and lost my
sanity/health/job/gone to opioids/alcoholism/etc after pressured to maintain
this 'more productive' pace for months on end as if I'm a hamster on a wheel".

~~~
krapht
Yeah. I've experienced this working to project deadlines at several jobs. Like
everything else, "crunch" and "pair programming" are good in small doses for
getting productivity. I couldn't handle it long-term. I have seen some people
thrive on it with no ill-effects, but I have never had an extremely-focused,
very driven work personality.

------
Svoka
Legends say that long ago outside of the bubble where people working
constantly monitoring each others and there even was people who's position was
literally supervisors.

This is called "office". Somehow absolute peak of my procrastination happened
in those human filled dedicated work places with supervision, from bosses,
peers and subordinates.

~~~
jakebaker
Eh, it’s less about monitoring and more about shared effort and focus. Take
what works, leave the rest. For a lot of us, this is a life saving and
wonderful service.

------
arminiusreturns
I hate this trend in management so much. I'm a combat vet with ptsd, and I've
noticed companies more and more trying to do stupid open office layouts to
save money and achieve this same result, but there are those of us it majorly
negatively impacts our productivity in the medium to long term. Add on top
that now instead of being able to think about a problem deeply, I get
interrupted every 3 minutes by some adhoc query by those around me, so my
thinking power feels hampered to the point it's stressing me so bad it's been
aggravating my ptsd and I find myself wanting to drink and smoke.

Companies are digging their own grave with shit like this.

~~~
whymauri
Does your company not have productivity rooms/spaces? I've found that to be
the happy middle between completely open and closed-office for me.

Though I do agree I was significantly more productive at companies where I had
my own office/shared with only one other person.

~~~
arminiusreturns
Not at the moment, only because we are growing so fast though.

~~~
hopler
Maybe they aren't digging their grave then?

------
Benjamin_Dobell
I can't really imagine a job in which someone is bothered to pay you to do
work, but cares so little about the work you're outputting that they don't
notice whether or not you're working efficiently/effectively.

I've worked from home full-time for just over 5 years now. I'm self-employed
and answer to my client directly. I operate almost entirely autonomously and
am given a heap of freedom, both tech-wise and with respect what hours I work.
I've not once in 5 years reported my exact hours worked - but of course do
report days off sick etc.

However, despite my client not being a developer (or overly technically
inclined) I can assure you my client still notices if I'm being less
productive than usual - which over the course of 5 years is somewhat
inevitable e.g. when my daughter was born.

Actually, I find that not having someone knowing that I'm ticking over hours
sitting at desk, hitting buttons, and making the screen flash, causes me to
work more. For the last 5 years I've consistently worked more hours than I
ever did in an office environment, not by a small margin either.

Sometimes you just don't feel "switched on", but if you're working in an
office you're still tallying up hours. However, if I'm not totally switched
on, I somewhat subconsciously know I need to work longer in the
afternoon/evening. This is simply because I feel pressure (am motivated) to
live up to the standards I've established with my client. I must add though,
that my client is absolutely fantastic, any perceived pressure is almost
entirely self-inflicted.

If anything, I need to start setting firm boundaries so that I work less. This
means I need to start considering those less productive "hours worked" as
genuine hours worked, just as I would if was working in an office.

~~~
imhoguy
When you take a walk and come up with clever solution to expensive problem
wouldn't it be more valuable than proving you deliver keystrokes constantly?

I think you need to have some explanation, at least for yourself, what kind of
value you deliver even when you are just around not so occupied.

------
gist
Hawthorne Effect:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect)

In short iirc at first they thought the changes they were making was what
caused the increase in productivity but then they found out that the people
worked harder because they were being observed and felt special.

------
throwaway66666
That's cute. But did you consider hiring a stranger from craigslist to slap
you everytime you access facebook?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4661940](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4661940)

Or perhaps testing websites... drunk? I love and loath these articles. They
are the equivalent of "and you won't believe what this madlad did!!!!" of
hackernews.

~~~
osrec
I thought you were kidding. You weren't!

------
Mirioron
That's interesting and I have no doubt it works. However, I think that you
might simply get used to the pressure and start procrastinating either on the
service itself or simply procrastinating using in the service.

The other problem is that any kind of outside force that pushes you to work
harder also creates stress. This stress isn't entirely regulated by yourself
and it's possible for it to backfire.

~~~
jakebaker
It’s about making it a bit easier to get into the groove. If you’re determined
not to work, you’ll find ways around it. P

------
mwfunk
I don't doubt it in the short term, but I fear these are the sorts of articles
that give people one more reason to want to stick their employees in open
offices.

The usual excuses presented to employees are handwavey things like
"collaboration" and "teamwork", but the excuses presented to other managers
can also involve things like "employees are more likely to feel self-conscious
from visibility, and less likely to slack off". Even that's just scrounging
for some excuse other than cutting corners to save money.

~~~
suppressingfire
To be fair, I see plenty of folks in open office settings that DGAF about that
and looks at memes or YouTube or Reddit on 30" monitors visible to any passers
by.

------
mlthoughts2018
The article is just wrong. Social pressure makes you less productive and
hampers cognitive health while working.

I can’t believe anyone even feels this is worth discussing or disagreeing.
From the mountains of evidence refuting the communication conditions of open
plan offices, we know that knowledge workers require privacy to be productive.

The case is closed. This essay is arguing against the tide. Move on.

~~~
leoc
Pairing or close one-on-one supervision hasn't much in common with being in an
open-plan workspace.

~~~
mlthoughts2018
They are even more severe and intrusive forms of disruption than ambient noise
and impromptu conversation of open plan offices, so they would exacerbate the
negative effects already known.

Pairing in particular requires you to schedule time for it, host it in a
private conference room for those two people, and have adequate video
conferencing. If pairing happens at someone’s desk in an open plan setup,
looking at the same laptop screen or monitor (instead of a projected version),
then it universally falls apart, and is significantly disruptive to other
around as well.

------
graeme
Tangentially related: is there any sort of dashboard service that would let me
create a dashboard showing things like:

* email inbox count (differentiated by email inbox)

* unmoderated comment queue on website

* Facebook unread message count. Similar ones for other social media inboxes

* and maybe some custom metrics or ones triggered by a spreadsheet or todoist or something

I think this would be immensely useful for my own purposes, in seeing where I
wasn’t on top of things. But also useful for sharing with someone else and
being accountable. Would allow analysis too, such as eliminating a certain
inbox entirely, or delegating some sections, etc

~~~
ianmcgowan
No, but that sounds like a great startup idea. Sign me up!

~~~
graeme
I looked into it since commenting. Klipfolio might be able to do this, but it
wasn’t clear how to get a gmail inbox count.

Then I remembered I use Numerics to put monthly sales on my apple watch. I
checked, and it can get email inbox counts at least! They have a ton of data
customization. Will see what other services I can add.

Ios only for now unfortunately. May come to mac once Marzipan happens:
[https://cynapse.com/numerics/](https://cynapse.com/numerics/)

Edit: doesn’t have messages beyond email unfortunately. Though there is
perhaps a way to jerry rig something using zapier and one of their supported
services such as Trello or Todoist. Klipfolio does support Slack.

------
louwrentius
I don't like working from home. Working from home feels lonely and dead-end to
me. I'd rather have a commute and sit in an open office plan, despite all the
obvious drawbacks.

Also, I've recently realised what makes me productive as fuck:

Pressure.

~~~
luckylion
Do you stay productive with pressure though? I can work insane amounts of time
(relative to what I usually do) and be very productive when everything is on
fire, but if everything is on fire for a month or more, I doubt that I'll
still have the same feeling of immediacy that I'll have on the first day.

------
Rainymood
I had some time between my graduation and my job and I streamed some software
development on Twitch, I don't think I had that much fun and was never so
productive when others were watching me. It's such a weird effect but when
someone is watching you your whole behavior changes ... and for me, in a good
way. I'm naturally kind of lazy so this was really awesome.

------
ZhuanXia
We used to do this on LessWrong back in the day; people would write or study
math in a video chat room. It was surprisingly effective.

~~~
jakebaker
+1 for surprisingly effective. Such a good word for my experience of this.

------
telesilla
I'm a member of a private online pomodoro group, every 30 minutes or so the
bell dings and we all chat, if we want, for a few minutes then get back to
work. Those who want to show their cam do, but mostly we don't and we tend to
talk about the tasks we are doing and how it's going. It's informal and geared
towards independence but with enough communication that I don't feel I'm
isolated. I think it's a much better balance than having some panopticon-
inspired structure enforcing productivity through embarrassment.

~~~
jakebaker
Culture and intent matters a lot. If it’s an enforcement/punishment thing,
it’s garbage. If it’s a shared and collaborative thing to get more out of
life, it’s a great thing.

------
ilaksh
I have worked from home as a software engineer for almost all contracts for
the last 7+ years and would like to mention how it is for me.

The key point from this article to me is "just telling someone I was going to
do something made me get it done".

So what keeps me on track is that I discuss with the client every week or few
days what it tasks I should to try to complete. This is based on his
priorities for requirements and the technical issues that I know about.
Usually there are one or two primary tasks and one or two secondary that I
honestly say may not get completed.

Every 1-3 weeks usually one or more of these items is something concrete that
is supposed to show up in a computer program or report that the client will
actually see or touch.

So for there is usually already an accountability structure. It's just not
someone looking over my shoulder constantly.

I have actually worked on Upwork or whatever they call it with the constant
screenshot of what you are doing. To be honest, in a way that does make you
productive. However it also makes life more stressful. And I feel like I would
prioritize more poorly because I didn't want to look idle so rather than doing
a hard task that might require more thinking or googling or something, I might
be more inclined to tackle easier tasks that would make things seem more
productive from the screenshots. Overall there was just a constant distraction
of wondering what people would think if they reviewed the session. I would
never willingly choose to work like that again.

When I don't actually have someone looking over my shoulder I honestly do
spend somewhat more time on non-work items. However, it seems like my this is
automatically limited by the needs of the task items which I will be reporting
on to my client in a few days or a week. And even on days when I am getting
distracted, I put my main energy into my tasks until they are completed.

The idea of absolutely constant supervision during work only really makes
sense when there is no trust or real respect for the worker and no other way
to have accountability. I am worried that this type of article or service may
reinforce management's tendencies to not respect or trust workers and want
constant proof of total productivity from the wage slaves.

------
miki123211
I wonder if live streaming your work to the whole internet, potentially
allowing others to comment, i.e. to help you to spot mistakes along the way,
would also work. This wouldn't be applicable to everything, but for open
source side projects or open companies like GitLab, that could be amazing. It
would also be extremely valuable for other people, particularly in junior
positions, as they could see how other people work, that they're not
omnipotent, they make misteaks and sometimes get stuck too.

~~~
rabidrat
There are already many people on Twitch live-coding for fun and profit.

------
travisjungroth
I'm excited to try this. I do my best thinking alone but work best with
someone watching. I know some people can't perform even basic tasks with
someone watching, but for me, it's easier and sometimes even necessary. If I'm
stuck coding I'll imagine explaining it to someone (or ask someone to do it
with me). If I can't nail a movement in the gym, I'll pretend to demo it.

------
novarek
I see it as a version of telling people something you're trying to do so you
feel more pressure to do it, a classic trick to force yourself to start
habits.

This sounds a bit extreme though, and I'm not sure if it actually reinforces
the bad habit of needing someone watching you in order to do any work.

~~~
hopler
It's also said that telling people what you are doing is bad because it
satisfies your psychological desire to deliver even though you haven't
actually delivered.

------
jaytaylor
Related reading about focus and folks on the autism spectrum:
[https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-04/uoe-
abq04051...](https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-04/uoe-
abq040519.php)

------
ww520
What I found work surprisingly well is to sit in a cafe with my back to busy
foot traffic. There're lots of transient strangers passing by behind with the
potential of seeing my screen. In that case, I cannot really goof off, like
browsing ycombinator.

------
_bxg1
I wouldn't want to work remote full-time, but that's because of the isolation,
not a lack of productivity. When I do work from home now I'm far more
productive than in the office. I can sit back and think about problems from a
higher-level perspective without that constant itch to feel like I'm looking
busy. Of course, the reason I don't get distracted is that I'm fortunate
enough to enjoy my job, and I realize that doesn't apply to everybody.

Still, when I was freelancing I dealt with a significant amount of loneliness,
such that I now actually enjoy the buzz of a workplace, so I could see using a
service like this if I worked from home constantly.

------
code_duck
I’ve had experiences like this with glassblowing. When I have an interested
observer, such as a student, I often get enthusiastic and make several pieces
in a row and use a wider variety of techniques.

Also, many glassblowers work while hanging out together on video chat.

------
luckylion
Is it necessary to have an actual live video feed with an actual person that
you've talked to before, or can you just have a video of a person that
occasionally glances up to look at the camera?

Committing to (and reviewing afterwards) what you want to accomplish does
somewhat work for me. Ultraworking work cycles [1] are based on that by making
you write down what you'll work on, how you'll start before each (short)
session. When I really need a push to do something I don't enjoy at all, this
usually does the trick.

[1] [https://www.ultraworking.com/cycles](https://www.ultraworking.com/cycles)

------
djcapelis
This seems to be one of the major drivers for some folks who do pair
programming.

------
SN76477
I had a remote team for years. Opposite schedules etc didn’t allow for a lot
of FaceTime.

I used some desktop recording software and recorded myself daily with
instructions on how to execute various tasks.

Through out this process I would be talking and narrating the task explaining
this or that while doing the work.

Sometimes I would end up finishing the task and just delete the video, I would
be really focused and prefixes when making the videos it always felt a bit
weird.

Thinking back there were even a few times I would record myself just in
efforts to get something specific done.

~~~
luckylion
Did the effect wear off? Would you edit the videos before sending them to your
team, or would they see a "how to do X" with a 10-minute sidetrack of checking
HN?

------
wopeipeipei
I let my boss watch me work for a day and I’ve never been more productive

------
imhoguy
There is a bunch of freelance/contract companies who screenshot your screen
and webcam every couple of minutes and record mouse/keboard activity
constantly, then after every week they validate the number of hours you
spinned and that makes your paycheck.

Maybe this is ok for some line work but not for more complex problems wher you
need to discus or brainstorm things. My friend who is dev/architect quit such
job after year with severe burnout. Hourly compensation was very good though.

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pyman
Focusmate has nothing to do with pair programming. It's used by people who
work remotely and don't have the benefits of working in an open plan
environment.

The problem lies in how focusmate and pair programming are implemented.

Inexperienced dev managers, who have little or none knowledge of XP, use these
techniques to micro-manage developers, making their life's miserable.

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swozey
I wonder if this writer has ever tried a Pomodoro technique. If I force myself
to use that entire 20-25 minutes and work the entire time with some planning
on what to focus on directly before hitting the button I find myself hyper-
focused for that duration and knock a lot out; if I'm not interrupted by the
surrounding zoo of the open office.

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tessmann
Well in China they do that with cameras see if students are focusing on the
classroom. I think the feeling may be the same.

~~~
OrgNet
A camera or knowing that someone can remotely view your computer screen at any
time should do the trick.

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reshie
its not for the irresponsible or people who are not self motivators. if
someone is like that work from home may not be for you though you may also not
get to for in the office as well. there are still deadlines and communication
usually though so there are external pressures.

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ummonk
If I had to work that hard continuously I’d probably quit and become a beggar
instead or something. There are workaholics out there for whom this might be
possible but it isn’t sustainable for most people.

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crimsonalucard
If you did this everyday with a new stranger you'd stop caring eventually.

~~~
jvagner
My girlfriend tried one of these recently. It mapped to her "Obliger"
personality, per The Four Tendencies by Gretchen Rubin.

Me..? I'm a Questioner. But I'm happy for her to find whatever makes her self-
employment day-to-day life more manageable and uplifting.

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Animats
Now you know what foremen do.

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bootcode
I was always fascinated by some of the offices in Zurich having a large glass
wall, with worker's desks and computers next to them. Almost as if put on
display, "see we are working here".

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nmg
cut rate freelancer here. whenever i feel blocked, i bring my laptop to
Starbucks and situate myself with my back to the room. without thinking about
it, I'm automatically more productive. it's not for show, just having my
screen be public knowledge liberates me to not impulsively check aggregator or
newspaper sites. Call it environmentally enforced focus. i gighly recommend it
for anyone who works physically isolated from a team.

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usaphp
It’s like going to a running event. Sure you will run quicker than you usually
do, but can you do it day in day out, like you do with your evening jogs?

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nafey
Once the novelty wears out and your subconscious processes that the stranger
has no power over you I believe you will relapse into your old habits.

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callcouncil
Actually I’m testing this very idea out. Pay someone to watch you work. Get
penalised if you don’t. Would anyone be interested in this?

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etucktuck
My go to when I’m feeling lazy is to imagine oh I’m something like the Truman
show - this usually gets me into a higher gear

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Warclimb
I prefer to go live on youtube and monetize my handsome face

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pnw_hazor
Author might be even more productive if the watcher threatens to or inflicts
pain on her if she begins to slow down.

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a-saleh
I remember @jessitron mentioning on twitter that streaming on twitch is
helping her be more productive.

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jakebaker
I’ve used this service a lot. I’d be very happy to share answers to any
questions people have.

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kosei
Only read part of the article because I got sucked into reading about Mike
Myers and his comeback...

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RickJWagner
Crazy. I work from home and have no such problems. Once in a while I'll have a
day where I don't feel motivated to do my 'normal' tasks, on those days I try
to self-educate on interesting new stuff.

I don't feel the need for a virtual nanny.

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thoughtstheseus
Sounds effective but weird. Maybe just go to a coffee shop.

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vbuwivbiu
Why not wear a hair-shirt while you're at it

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ravenstine
It's as if idealistic kids inevitably grow up to believe the same things as
their annoying "butts in seats" older bosses.

