This is a concept primarily for people with ADHD by the way, if you're not in this target group you might not understand why it's needed, as we already see in this thread.
If this concept resonates, https://www.flow.club/ is where you'll find people who practice this technique regularly. We use it to do everything from the work we care about and want to be even better at, to work we don't care for like taxes, bills and laundry but have some mental block or emotional resistance to.
I think people with ADHD are hyper attuned to the effort that goes into everything from the moment we wake up (related term: executive dysfunction), so we look for ways to facilitate "doing." Other people who have similar levels of awareness tend to be self-employed (your time costs you), working parents (limited time and energy) and graduate students (long-term dread), but not everyone. And no, I don't think this is a purely remote work issue.
With all the AI discussion I'll just take a moment to talk about humans. HN probably thinks anything having to do with other humans are yuck especially on the internet and would be proven right most of the time. But humans and internet-mediated humans can also be great if the product does a good and careful job to allow their best parts shine. That's why we love HN and admire dang, and we try to make https://www.flow.club/ another awesome human corner of the internet.
I'm just so tired of this VC urge to monetize every possible aspect of human interaction. You're selling yourself as a "community", but instead of actually doing that you lure people in with a free trial, to then use the friendships people make to lock them into a ridiculous 40€/month subscription.
Sorry, but I'm not paying 3x a netflix subscription for what amounts to little more than a glorified discord bot.
Actually, now that I look for it, I found this exact product as a discord server. And would point people there instead: https://discord.com/invite/study
I joined that Discord, did a session, and promptly left afterwards. Sometimes you really do get what you pay for, if even as a Veblen good. I joined a community last year for example that costs hundreds of dollars a month and the price itself acts as a filter for being around the types of people you want to be around.
Mentioned this below as well. Seconding Flow Club. I don't have ADHD, but am just a new parent and god having an "appointment" w/ other people for deep work changes everything.
I’ve been doing this for a long time, calling them “study parties”. It works quite well for me. I wonder if this is some sort of indication that I have adhd, or if it’s just a generally effective strategy.
People with ADHD experience find it more difficult to choose doing mundane tasks when a more stimulating option is present. Additionally, they are more likely to employ unhealthy coping strategies like avoidance when faced with a chore that is associated with negative emotions. This can cascade into a cycle of feeling like a failure for lack of motivation causing further demotivation. So the difficulty isn't in the task, but in choosing to sit with the task and the associated emotional.
My mistake, so they were agreeing that body doubling is for people with ADHD then. Otherwise a less-charitable interpretation would be that GP is saying that using a website to schedule a stranger to watch you do mundane tasks over Zoom —in 2025– is the same thing as human companionship in general, but that would be a kind of strange thing to volunteer online unprompted
