[sph]

Good advice. Re: body doubling, I think I would benefit a lot from that, but I hate having a webcam turned on all day with strangers. Or even a microphone. I feel these body doubling apps focus too much on neurodivergent extroverts, and it's a damn shame.

Honestly, if I need strangers around, I'd rather work in a coffee shop, but ideally I just want something no more intrusive than an IRC chat to shoot the shit while the code is compiling.

Still crossing my fingers for body doubling that less intrusive.

[mklepaczewski]

Body doubling isn't only for neurodivergent extroverts. I'm an example of a neurodivergent introvert who needs body doubling to do more than 2-3 hours of work per day. I understand what you mean, though.

The problem with working from a coffee shop is that your strength and motivation to go there must come from you. You must get up, leave your apartment, go to the coffee shop, and decide to work there. For chronic procrastinators, it's rather tricky. A person like that needs enough motivation to do it but not enough to work alone.

Shameless plug - you can try us (https://workmode.net/). However silly it sounds, we provide body doubling as a service. Try the demo session - no registration is required, and it lasts from 15 minutes to several hours.

Some features that might convince you to finally give body doubling a shot:

  - you connect with our employee (aka productivity partner), not a random stranger,
  - you always connect with the same productivity partner,
  - all sessions are 1-on-1. It's just you and your productivity partner,
  - you don't have to enable your camera. We don't rely on you being our body double. We're happy as long as text chat/audio/screen sharing/webcam feed makes you productive,
  - you can share your screen at a greatly reduced resolution. It's enough for us to distinguish between you watching Youtube/reading Hacker News and spending time in IDE/Excel/other work-related apps. We're unable to read any text on your screen, even at 32px font size,
  - every day, we make sure that you connect with us. We make sure you tell us when you want to start the next day, and in case you don't show up, we'll call you and keep calling you.

[ekanes]

Hmmm, what if you had a simple concept of pushing a button that's asking the other person, "hey, you still going?"

(I'm kind of reminded of video games where there are some "canned lines" that you can click on in the middle of the action and your character will "say" them to the opponent.)

Still going! Still going? 10 mins more and let's break! I think I'm done Thanks for playing Ok Hmmm Never!

etc. :)

[sph]

Eh, not sure I want body doubling to peer pressure productivity.. mostly should be a way of very low key socialising and venting about code not compiling.