If they turned this into an umbrella company service with equipment hire and lawyers and accountants on call, they'd really be onto something. I don't just hire bosses to shout at me, I expect them to also make sure the things I need for my job are there, that I'm legally covered and that the invoices are being chased.
It is so silly that this might actually be a good idea? I do want a good reminder and todo/red-flags don't do it for me. I can seriously see why speaking to a human and being accountable to someone can boost productivity. Consequences of not doing a task on time would be embarrassment and shame from someone you're paying. Or its just silly.
Customer defining the goals is akin to setting the difficulty on "easy" and beating the game. What would be good is if BaaS would interview the customer, set realistic but challenging goals for the customer based on the project needs and then push them. Similar to a gym coach.
Well, if you want them to have teeth there could be a contract where you either pay them X amount on success or Y if you fail to achieve a pre-negotiated goal. With Y > X of course.
To avoid setting bad incentives, i.e. that your boss still wants you to succeed, he personally should get a bonus out of the X even though the company earns less.
The boss management company is then incentivized to hire incompetent bosses. Their entire business model is profitable in proportion to how often it fails.
The perverse incentive has to land somewhere; not sure there's a way to neutralize this one. But it's an interesting idea.
Maybe if you transparently advertise the success rate it would neutralise since hiring incompetent bosses would result in less sign-ups. That said, not sure you could accurately verify that number.
Maybe instead of paying the boss more if you fail, donate to charity or some other financial loss. A charity you don't like for a negative penalty if needed.
If you fail, you pay the charity an amount Y. If you succeed, you could do nothing, or give the Boss a bonus of .5Y for being a good boss
What if the money was donated regardless. But if you fail it goes to an organization you don’t like.
For instance say I don’t like Donald trump. If I fail my money goes to trumps reelection fund. But if it succeeds it goes to a charity that buys malaria nets for poor communities around the planet.
Read the Beeminder blog if you want to understand why pay more for failure... let me find one[1][2] (link below)
You should want to avoid the payment! Is the short version. If you _only_ paid when you failed, you might go out of your way to not fail, if it meant you could avoid the payment.
Especially as a conditioned response -- eg. planning to fail sometimes. You won't mind losing $5 once in a while, if most of the time you aren't failing as a result. It's no fun if you're paying the $5 every time. But it's no fun if you're failing at your goals every time, either.
Failed once, failed twice, still paying $5? Why not up the commitment? How much will it take to get you to not fail next time, $20? $400? Or give up on that goal, once and for all. It's quite a weird system, but there is a lot of behavioral science behind it, and you will benefit by becoming better at predicting your capacity for important things, and planning. (Sure, you don't need Beeminder to do that, but it's a system for it...)
There are a lot of ideas around the psychology of getting things done from Beeminder and friends. Like the legend of Murder Gandhi, you have to read this one for yourself: https://blog.beeminder.com/schelling/
Paying money if you fail is counterproductive for actually getting things done. You're now allowed to fail, it just costs money. There's a case study I remember of a daycare that tried to get parents to show up on time by fining those who picked their kid up late; late pick-ups actually increased afterwards.
but that's a different problem. parents are already accountable to the daycare to pick up their kids, and the payment enabled them more flexibility and actually reduce the accountability. we are paying an after-school service for exactly that purpose.
bossasaservice is about voluntary accountability where there previously was none. and it's fully in my control on how i use it.
part of the point of being a freelancer (or entrepreneur) is that i get to decide what i am accountable for and what not.
> parents are already accountable to the daycare to pick up their kids
In the absence of consequences, they are obligated but not accountable to the daycare.
> and the payment enabled them more flexibility and actually reduce the accountability.
No, it replaced ethical obligation (which, insofar as it is accountability, is accountability to self) to defined-consequence accountability to the daycare, which in practice negates ethical obligation in favor of transactional accountability.
How that works out in price depends on the weight of the ethical rule involved for the individual vs the weight of the assigned consequence; it is counterproductive where you replace a strong ethical obligation with a weak consequence.
People often overlook that other people have ethics; that's actually useful self-protection in many situations, but it backfires when you undermine common ethics in an effort to create incentives and manage to replace it with weaker incentives than the target audience had from ethics in the status quo ante.
i think we actually agree, but use different terms or definitions to mean roughly the same thing. i am accountable to someone to fulfill an obligation. otherwise it would not be an obligation.
i don't believe in an absence of consequences. there are always consequences, even if they are not spelled out. sometimes we just don't know what the consequences might be. so at least i need to assume there are consequences unless it is explicitly said that there are none, at which point the obligation disappears.
however this is getting philosophical now, and strays from the topic.
Beeminder has written a lot about this. The daycare fine needed to be higher. Beeminder starts at a $5 fine and roughly triples with each consequent failure. Everyone is willing to fail until the consequence hits their limit, and then the behavior changes. I don’t know about Stikk, but Beeminder has a premium feature that lets you skip the cheaper fines and go straight to the big ones so you can start changing your behavior sooner. I’m guessing the daycare’s fine was timid and had no mechanism to ratchet up to each parent’s pain point.
The problem with the daycare was that parents began seeing it as "I can leave my child later, it just costs more" and they were just paying an additional fee to keep their child longer at a service they were already paying for. The daycare ended up removing the fee and the late pick ups stayed.
Yes, that makes sense. The fine changes the consequence to something that can be rationally weighed. Too low and people willingly pay it, so it needs to be higher. Automatic fine increases allow the fine to be customized to each parent so all of them eventually stop being late.
It doesn’t really matter if the parents see the fine as “a fine” or an unaffordable, automatically billed service if it’s priced right.
I think this is a horribly bad idea. Daycare caretakers are the most loving and caring people I know. Putting them in a position where they have to argue with 3x richer people about hundreds of dollars is going to stress them out and needlessly strain the parent-caretaker relationship. I also can't imagine that's good for the child.
That may be. In this case, the daycare is just an example of how inflexible financial consequences could work better or worse depending on the implementation.
That said, if lateness is a problem, it’s impeding on the workers’ personal lives, which can’t be good for anybody, so I don’t mind exploring how those workers could be helped. I assume more upfrontness from the business office, and parent education, would go a long way, similar to other institutions.
This problem can be solved by hiring a professional who doesn't interact with the children to do the arguing, assuming there is enough money on the table to make that worthwhile.
(I mean, I agree it's a big problem. I also dislike haggling, and I think I would have done much better had i outsourced that function when I ran a business, even if I paid a lot to that person)
All that said, a sufficient guilt trip might be more effective than a fine in any case, and is something that a caretaker could probably provide.
Worse, some libraries cap the fine. So the fine per day decreases the longer you keep the book. This is mitigated by collections reporting to credit, but the threat of collections is the kind of vague consequence that people disregard or misvalue.
Instead of thinking in a punitive manner (fines, shaming, etc) they could, for example, hire babysitters, charge the parents a good bunch and even thank them.
i seem to remember a service where you'd pay in on a regular basis, and only if you achieved your goals you'd get a payout that you'd then be able to spend on holidays, or a party or whatever.
I know a domme in the Connecticut area who says that lately this kind of work has become most of her business. She takes money to nag men to "do their chores" and occasionally sends them a lewd or two.
They call them business coaches and they plague business meetups and chambers of commerce.
For the most part they are sales people who are good at telling others what to do, but you always feel possibly not that good or they would be running some business themselves.
See also all the professional sports coaches who aren’t good enough to play on the teams they coach. Knowing what to do, knowing how to explain it, and being able to do it are all different skills.
Why is a business coach different than other kinds of teachers?
Going further, why should you learn anything from any kind of professional teacher? By your logic, doesn't the fact that they're teaching it imply that they can't do it?
A professional teacher is different, particularly at the primary/elementary level. Of the teachers I know and have worked with (I also have a few in my family), they do it because they enjoy teaching and would not choose to do anything else.
Business coaching is something you do after running a business.
Teaching at a secondary you will often find people who previously worked in industry. My high school chemistry teacher for example previously worked as an industrial chemist which put his level of expertise way above what was required.
And at the tertiary you will get a mix of academics and tutors, who are either actively researching or working in their field.
Which is why mentoring groups with other business owners can be a lot more beneficial than a coach.
> For the most part they are sales people who are good at telling others what to do, but you always feel possibly not that good or they would be running some business themselves.
Often, they are running a business (specifically, a business-coaching business) themselves.
Hmm, I know some bosses who really enjoyed making people “accountable” but didn’t seem to enjoy knowing what they were doing, articulating a realistic vision, or making coherent decisions. Why do poor bosses only seem to like that part of the job?
Assuming this is a real company and not a joke, consider taking the money you would spend with them and paying people to do work for you, like cleaning, cooking, bill paying, investing, testing, marketing, etc. Be your own boss!
Hey, that was more interesting than I expected. It looks like "boss" is in fact a loan from Dutch rather than a cognate:
> Middle Dutch baes, of obscure origin. If original sense was "uncle," perhaps it is related to Old High German basa "aunt," but some sources discount this theory.
> The Dutch form baas is attested in English from 1620s as the standard title of a Dutch ship's captain. The word's popularity in U.S. may reflect egalitarian avoidance of master (n.) as well as the need to distinguish slave from free labor.
So I've recently been throwing around the idea that I might have some form of ADHD after really not wanting to accept it for a while. I also happen to have the least structured job of all time - work from home freelance web developer and writer.
After having a structure my whole life in school which I did fairly well under, suddenly I found myself with literally no structure, deadlines that are always far in the future, and the ability to literally watch Youtube all day long without any _immediate_ penalty.
I love seeing things like this. I've had to build all sorts of structure into my life, but the hardest part is always getting myself to do it, because, you know, I could just _not do it._
I also have "some form of ADHD". Turns out stimulants work pretty well. I was terrified of them for most of my life, and it doesn't help that a lot of doctors are also scared of them, but they work, and getting treated with them is one of the best decisions I've ever made.
Adderall works absurdly well for me, it's actually depressing to see how it can make being productive virtually effortless. For me it's the difference between an hour of real work per day and 15+ hours. I'm just afraid that taking it often will lead to some kind of brain damage decades down the line. Otherwise I would be taking it every day.
It freaked me out how much of a difference Adderall made when I started taking it. My productivity and general feeling of self worth have definitely improved since I started taking it seven or eight years ago. I also worry about the long-term effects, but probably not as much as my concern for how I would function if it were ever taken off of the market.
It's a hell of a drug. The long term effects are why I discontinued, but it made the decade at Amazon not just bearable, but fun. That and half the other SDEs there were taking it too.
Cognitive decline is the main one that concerned me. You don't run an organ hot for years without doing some damage, and anyone who says otherwise is selling a dream.
If you dose stimulants properly, and you actually have ADD, you're not running anything hot. Stimulants should be used to bring a low resting dopamine rate to normal and healthy levels.
Hijacking the conversation to learn from your experience.
What would you tell to someone like me, who started taking 30mg Vyvanse for ADHD just a month ago?
I'm skipping weekends to delay organism adaptation and put less strain on the body. The drug doesn't let you feel that strain but I'm sure it's there since it works like a processor overclock. Before I functioned at 60% and now I function at 120% for most of the day.
30mg seems high to me for an initial dose. "Dosing things right" for stimulant therapy for ADHD is something like "little enough that you don't feel much of an effect subjectively, but not so little that it fails to help control symptoms".
Like, I got started out at 10mg Adderall XR, and even that has a little bit more oomph than I think is ideal. I might be more sensitive to stimulants than you, but even then you want to take as little as is necessary to control your symptoms.
I'd suggest talking to your psychiatrist about lowering your dosage. If you're taking three 10mg pills, try taking just one of them. If you're taking just one 30mg pill, then complain about side effects (feeling wired, upset stomach) and ask for a lower dose.
Unfortunately 30mg is the lowest dosage available in my country. It's available in 30mg, 50mg and 70mg here. Despite both both being amphetamine based stimulants, one could say 30mg of Vyvanse is equivalent to 20mg of Aderall but the formulas differ and it depends on the organism. Vyvanse is also more gentle and of a more gradual release than Adderall.
My question was more about tips and hints on long term usage of these stimulants.
Don't be afraid to take less than you're prescribed. I'm unfamiliar with Vyvanse, but with other stimulants you can cut the pill down to take less. You can talk with your doctor about this, in the US at least they can prescribe fractional pill doses. You really want to titrate down to the lowest possible dose that gives you a therapeutic effect. Also ask about drug holidays.
There are other ADHD medications based on amphetamine. Be careful though, they can easily disrupt your sleep cycle and the psychological addiction to the productivity is real.
Just FYI, "normal" people aren't highly productive for 15+ hours a day. So I want to emphasize that's a drug-enhanced state, not bringing you in line with where everyone else already is.
Also, forget about direct side effects of the drug, going nonstop all day long every day is unsustainable, the body will crash eventually.
I've been self medicating with modafinil for a while now and it does wonders. I don't use it daily and usually only take half a dose for a day and it has truly made a night and day change in my productivity. Even when I don't use it as I now know the "mindset" I need to be in to get things done, or at least I try.
As someone who has recently started figuring out this whole ADHD thing, definitely seek out help for it. There are a ton of really powerful tools and support systems that make a tremendous difference. Especially organizational systems designed for people with executive function deficits (whether that's ADHD or not, doesn't really matter!)
And additionally, if you find that these things speak to you, medication makes a tremendous difference. I really can't overstate the degree to which it can change your life.
I previously thought I may have ADHD, but after seeing a GP-refered psychiatrist who said “no you have anxiety instead”, I assumed him to be correct and dropped the idea.
Now, despite having largely learnt to manage said anxiety, I still have a massive problem with “avoidance”; do you think it is perhaps worth revisiting the potential ADHD?
I do find that Ritalin helps tremendously, but obviously I do not have a prescription, it’s something I only take when in supply and I have a pressing deadline.
You probably still have ADHD, or at least enough trouble with the things ADHD folks have trouble with to get an official diagnosis and prescription.
Like, the first psych wasn't wrong about anxiety being a thing. It often is very often co-morbid with ADHD. This is because ADHD interferes with keeping up with work and life commitments and deadlines, makes you tend to work closer to deadlines (and more vigorously), and causes other life issues. If your work performance is unsatisfactory, of course you are anxious.
In would not underestimate the potential harm of pharmaceuticals, let alone psychotropics. Just because it's stamped by the FDA does not necessarily mean something is absolutely and inherently safe - it means that there is insufficient evidence to say that it is not. This poses a problem because research on various drugs (and many other commercial compounds) is generally carried out, or at the minimum funded, by the organizations hoping to monetize them. Show they're safe and beneficial and you earn immense amounts of money, show they're unsafe or unbeneficial and lose immense amounts of money.
We still have little to no understanding of how, why, and in some cases even if psychotropics actually work. And there are correlations to all sorts of nasty things with indications causality between things such as ritalin/methylphenidate and depression. Other studies on ritalin have shown neuronal/brain changes comparable to cocaine. [1] The only reason I mention this is because I think we're currently in the era of having a chicken and egg scenario between all sorts of mental/psychological disorders and a skyrocketing rate of psychotropic consumption.
Basically, turn to medication as a last resort and think about the differences in how you feel medicated and how you feel unmedicated. Now imagine the gross (as in total, not as in eww) effect of your brain over what may be potentially decades of usage of such drugs since the drugs won't cure you - they will just end up working as a crutch for an indefinite period of time. For some this may be the right decision, but it's not a decision that should be made with no analysis beyond 'Wow, I feel much better after taking this!'
"... the drugs won't cure you - they will just end up working as a crutch for an indefinite period of time"
True. These drugs aren't a cure. They are a tool. For many, more like an aspiring writer's desk than a cripple's crutch. ADD drugs are like coffee, but without the culture. Use wisely: they can help to improve motivation, which can then be applied towards or away from self-control. Don't expect a cure or for the drug to do your own hard work. Like any tool, there is a learning curve and skill set associated with expert use.
ADHD here, diagnosed 30 days ago. I tried for years to fix it by myself. Reached a point that I had to either swallow my pride and seek help or become homeless. Even then, it only happened because my mother semi-forced me to see a psychiatrist. It's really hard to seek help when seeing a doctor is just another task in the pile on Trello.
I take 30mg Vyvanse daily but deliberately skip Sundays & Saturdays in an attempt to delay organism adaptation. It's similar to Ritalin but more gradual and longer effect. I see the drug as a temporary tool to help me get moving again. Hope to one day replace it with well ingrained habits plus dopamine from exercises.
Seriously. I've been on stimulants for ADHD for almost 25 years. The price I've paid is a few root canals due to dry mouth and I'm on beta blockers for a mild, benign arrhythmia I developed this spring.
Beats the living hell out of my alternative: on the streets, in jail, or 6 feet under because ADHD is hell. It's a price I'd pay every time without hesitation. It's a price I think EVERYBODY would prefer I pay cuz like yo, I ain't safe to drive unmedicated, this a public safety thing.
I'm curious about your take on something. ADHD was not recognized as a disorder until 1968. And the popularity of pharmaceuticals for ADD/ADHD didn't really take off until the 90s when a pharmaceutical industry astroturfing group called CHADD (Children and Adults with Attention Deficit) started marketing ritalin hard. Since then the use of using various pharmaceutical stimulants has become extremely widespread - jumping up by multiple orders of magnitude.
Okay, so:
- people claim that not being medicated for ADHD would result in homelessness and other such things
- medication only started to really take off in the 90s, and has since exponentially increased
So why is that when we go a bit further back in time, before the 90s, that we don't see some massively exponential increase in homelessness and other such things? I mean if that's the alternative to not taking the drugs, wouldn't this be precisely what we'd expect to see?
We do see many, many strangely unemployable types who from a modern perspective seem to clearly have all the signs of ADHD or other mental issues that have only been recognised comparatively recently. Especially when there is that little bit more history thanks to their being of a famous or diligent journal keeping family. In their time were institutionalised or kept at home as the black sheep of the family, or drifted from inconsequential job to job or were the petty indolent criminal, or even imprisoned for years.
Care was a little different as was the tendency for families to stick together. Perhaps the institutions, prisons and family spare rooms were used in place of modern homelessness? We can't know it wasn't responsible for significant homelessness. Figures were impossible to compare as the record would just show petty thief or lack of work ethic, or poor money management. If that.
I think you're looking a bit further back than necessary. FiveThirtyEight oddly enough did a bit on ADHD pharmaceuticals here [1] that gives some numbers. So for instance just between 2008 and 2013 adult usage of ADHD medication doubled. It was currently at 2.8% and has undoubtedly continued to skyrocket since then. And that number is dwarfed by how quickly we're putting young children and especially boys on it. In 2013 we already had 9.8% of boys 12-18 years old on ADHD drugs - and those numbers again were, and presumably still are, rapidly increasing. And once again the numbers as recently as 1990 were very near 0.
At least from your post it seems to me like you're talking about something like the 50s. You need only go back a decade or two to see tremendous differences in rates of psychotropic prescription and usage. And the sheer numbers here mean that if these drugs are as having as large a positive effect as many users do believe them to be, then we should be able to see tremendous macro level positive indicators. But I'm not sure we really do. By contrast I could certainly point to sharp increases in a variety of physiological and psychological disorders which are considered side effects of these treatments.
Yeah I'm thinking of descriptions of people from the first half of the 20th century. I've no idea what the actual rate of ADHD is in the population, but the chances are it's been roughly that rate forever and long before there was any recognition or treatment of the condition. It certainly seems like we've reached a level of diagnosis that seems wildly excessive.
I've read enough histories and biographies to have thought "ADHD" quite a few times when reading of a life of missed opportunity, or the insufferable politician or military leader who seems to have all the symptoms but succeeded despite it. Maybe sometimes because of it.
The difficulty is appropriate medication can be the difference between achieving a regular career as lawyer or programmer and struggling through a transient series of failed unskilled jobs or ongoing unemployment. I'm not sure we have enough precision in the data to recognise that. I've seen wholly positive effects in those few diagnosed and on medication around me, but that's a useless anecdote. I'm in a country with a far lower rate of diagnosis. :)
I vehemently disagree with you here. Stimulant therapy for ADHD is literally the most effective psychiatric intervention we know of. Everything else wishes it has the effectiveness that stimulants have for people with ADHD. If you think you have ADHD and you fit the stereotype (smart kid that'd only do well if they applied themselves), you absolutely should try it.
Yes, it has risks and is not 100% safe. No, that doesn't mean that the risk/reward ratio is anywhere near "think carefully before trying it." People with ADHD have enough trouble scheduling stuff and getting through the bureaucracy standing between them and a diagnosis already, it's downright irresponsible IMO to suggest that they go down a rabbit hole of research and doubt.
I am my own life-coach. What a terrible idea that is, let me tell you.
You have to constantly be two people, wear two hats. And then, at some point every day you also get to wear the tally hat, to see how you did.
A bit more about being two people - it's like when you do awareness meditation, you have to watch yourself go, but you also have to be there and do the work.
I am getting good results in my last three years (tally hat on) but that's after six years of miserably failing to get any control whatsoever over my life. Lots of pain there, heaps of depression.
No individual trick has done it for me, nothing stuck or moved the needle any. What I ended up doing is: new place/town, new job, new acquaintances. Some distance from older acquaintances. Did that twice, and both times got fantastic results, got progress. So, reset lead to progress.
I fucked up the distancing the first time, didn't move far enough away, didn't change my cellphone habits. You really are the sum average of the people around you, that is true if you want it or not. You need to shut up and cut the noise to have a chance to hear yourself weep when you're miserable doing what you do, to feel yourself content and joyful when you do something that is you.
Tally hat is not optional. Measuring progress, noting it down as you go, reflecting on what did and didn't work makes all the difference. Do, note, reflect, adjust, do again.
Awareness is not optional. Sitting down to watch Youtube? Think about what it is you're going to do after that, before sitting down. Set a timer, so you won't find yourself with the sun down and nothing accomplished that day.
Before you go to sleep, half an hour before, shut down everything, your phone, your computer; take a shower and think - if there is one thing I am to do tomorrow, what would that be? What would make the most difference? Write it down on a sticky note and put it on your monitor's top bezel. This is what you'll do in the morning, first thing. Then you get to do anything you want (set a timer), and proceed to tally-hat, then turn your phone on. This is when you'd get back to everybody and do household chores or what have you.
Do four good days like that, in a week. You don't have to be good all week. Just most of the week. There are 52 of those in a year, set your phone and desktop dash to show you what week number you're at, and use that when putting on your tally hat. Where are you coming from, what are you to do right now, what's the immediate next thing? No point planning way ahead or keeping a todo list (do keep a backlog and review it weekly, do mark things on a calendar so as not to miss them). Don't make yourself do a list of things, you're not a machine, yet. Make yourself do 23 minutes of "I'll just start doing that, even though I don't feel like it, and then take a break". You will feel like it after 15 minutes, but never before you actually start.
Or hire a boss/secretary and they will do your tallying for you (moderately well), and your awareness (works better if not remote).
No, it's not wearing two hats, it's simply being adult.
Accepting responsibility, time planning, prioritizing, all that is - or should be - learned during "growing up", and strenghtened during early adulthood.
Agreed. But some of us are a bit broken. We do have an adult mindset and good education. But mental problems, in my case ADHD, will still make it very hard to function as a normal adult without aid from drugs.
Think like a beautiful airplane toy with a broken wing. It just needs some glue to fly again.
I think you're overly generous with your definition of adulthood. I mean, over 90% of adults are probably not on the same page with you. Just look at their finances. Or the amount of free time they get.
The "should be learned" I agree with, but that's just not the world that we ended up with, is it?
You can look at what recurs and could be optimized, or optimized away, maybe delegated or nixed. You could take a measure of how you did whatever it is you did today, better or worse than expected? Were you unprepared? What could be improved?
My work week should flutter around four days, so I keep an eye on that, see that I did enough work and didn't over-work myself. There are fixed costs to living, but then there are frivolous or unexpected expenses – there's a budget for that. I write invoices or tally up working days/hours what have you – to bill my clients or my employer, if I was contracting.
There are people which should be contacted periodically, some more often, some less often – I make sure not to miss out on this. Forgetting to go over that list leads to not enough work, or not enough social interaction.
I make sure I take care of my tools, housework, stock up on food and such. Take care of my body and mental state by stretching and breathing (that's Upa-yoga and Wim Hoff style pranayama). I cook my own food, which I sometimes need to do in advance.
I note the things that I ended up doing but didn't plan to, and how they went and made me feel. I get follow up with whomever tried to reach me and didn't get to talk to me, and email (that's the very last thing).
I note whether I got to do the things that I enjoy, and how that went and made me feel. If not – then why not? That is very much not OK and should immediately be taken care of, for fear of loss of will to live so to say.
In general terms, "where am I coming from? Where am I going? Am I there yet, should I adjust direction/effort/approach?"
Thanks so much for writing this out, and to everyone else who responded to this thread!
Seems like whether we call it ADHD or not, productivity and focus is a real problem.
And you mention "being your own life coach" - especially for people who work from home, I think that's almost a necessity. But, you can also hire other people to be your life coach too!
I have a personal trainer who makes sure I go to the gym.
I have a therapist I see regularly who helps me a lot lot.
I am about to get a psychiatrist to talk about medicine but I imagine he'll have more ideas too.
I hired a business coach for 8 months and though expensive it was the best investment I've ever made for my career.
I'm currently playing around with Boss as a Service. It did in fact help me get started today!
I'm a part of 3 different mastermind groups. We meet for an hour every other week and talk about business and also life.
Being an introvert I had a tendency to isolate myself but my quality of life and business success has improved immensely by expanding my network.
This _combined_ with lots of little tricks and environmental changes have helped too. Things like having a physical checklist for my morning routine gets me out of bed. Having only a few staple foods helps me eat healthier. Going to coffee shops helps me work more. Etc etc etc.
It's a continual process that can always be optimized but as far as I can tell, the key is to keep trying things until you find things that work for you.
If anyone in here wants to talk more about ADHD and focus and productivity, happy to chat over email: david@lessboring.com. Cheers!
Anyone that has never been freelancing for a good amount of time will think this is a joke, but it's probably not.
Even if you love your job, you're working on your own personal projects, and you know how to manage yourself and get away from distractions, you wouldn't believe how hard it is to motivate yourself some days...
Very nice concept! We use something similar for daily follow-ups, it's a bot that integrates with Slack and pings us on a daily basis to check what we did yesterday, what we are up to today and if we are having any problems. Pretty simple yet powerful: https://dailybot.co/
Interesting idea... Kind of reminds me of (part of) the role artist managers have. Many (but certainly not all) artists find time management near impossible and need someone checking in constantly. Many (again definitely not all) also are technaphobes who do whatever they can do get away from digital tools. A human todo list might well appeal to them.
I think there could be a niche version or this service for that industry - esp if the "bosses" in this service were vetted in a way an artist could know they understand the industry. I could see some mid-high level artists paying for this (esp if social/marketing were slapped on top). Might need to be localised somewhat though...
As a complete aside if anyone running the business is reading this I found the centered text for everything inc body copy pretty hard to read. Solid website overall though.
You mean like how I envy my seniors, who managed to get a "Personal Assistant" or PA, who basically does this? because in the end, if you hire them, you can't get the same kind of tractive force them hiring you has.
On the other hand, you can get them to do things in calendar, project and time management, which you really should be able to do, but for whatever reason cannot. Yes, even project management. A lot of P.M. is timeline enforcement. amazing what a 2IC can do in these situations.
My seniors who have PA, basically rely on them to coordinate the awesome. The PA has no functional authority, except the silent kind a camerlengo has...
I thought PAs just helped you forget about menial, boring tasks like setting meetings, making initial calls, etc. so that you can continue working on the real problem. I didn't know they got to bust your balls if you slacked off.
If they could extend this to someone who would actively manage you, instead of just be a human to-do list with procrastination checks, this might be worth something. The idea at its core is great.
In this vein, has anyone had organizational success hiring a high level PA? Not talking about the cheap offshore PA's from upwork, but a native English speaker with training and a higher rate.
I find I have more projects than I can track. A good PA/project manager might help with that, but it's hard to know in advance or how to hire one.
I run an online business, and have contractors for specific tasks, but I'm really the only one with a bird's eye view. And frankly, project management is my weak point.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 308 ms ] threadCustomer defining the goals is akin to setting the difficulty on "easy" and beating the game. What would be good is if BaaS would interview the customer, set realistic but challenging goals for the customer based on the project needs and then push them. Similar to a gym coach.
To avoid setting bad incentives, i.e. that your boss still wants you to succeed, he personally should get a bonus out of the X even though the company earns less.
The perverse incentive has to land somewhere; not sure there's a way to neutralize this one. But it's an interesting idea.
If you fail, you pay the charity an amount Y. If you succeed, you could do nothing, or give the Boss a bonus of .5Y for being a good boss
Edit: read the second part of your original comment which clarified this. Perhaps the charity idea circumvents the wrong way risk altogether.
For instance say I don’t like Donald trump. If I fail my money goes to trumps reelection fund. But if it succeeds it goes to a charity that buys malaria nets for poor communities around the planet.
At the end of the day, that's what's happening anyway. As in, why continue the service if it's not working.
The incentives are already set so I am willing to pay (more) for successful management, and they will get paid (more) for successful management.
You get what you pay for. Why pay for failure?
You should want to avoid the payment! Is the short version. If you _only_ paid when you failed, you might go out of your way to not fail, if it meant you could avoid the payment.
Especially as a conditioned response -- eg. planning to fail sometimes. You won't mind losing $5 once in a while, if most of the time you aren't failing as a result. It's no fun if you're paying the $5 every time. But it's no fun if you're failing at your goals every time, either.
Failed once, failed twice, still paying $5? Why not up the commitment? How much will it take to get you to not fail next time, $20? $400? Or give up on that goal, once and for all. It's quite a weird system, but there is a lot of behavioral science behind it, and you will benefit by becoming better at predicting your capacity for important things, and planning. (Sure, you don't need Beeminder to do that, but it's a system for it...)
There are a lot of ideas around the psychology of getting things done from Beeminder and friends. Like the legend of Murder Gandhi, you have to read this one for yourself: https://blog.beeminder.com/schelling/
[1]: https://blog.beeminder.com/psych/ [2]: https://blog.beeminder.com/punishment/
bossasaservice is about voluntary accountability where there previously was none. and it's fully in my control on how i use it.
part of the point of being a freelancer (or entrepreneur) is that i get to decide what i am accountable for and what not.
In the absence of consequences, they are obligated but not accountable to the daycare.
> and the payment enabled them more flexibility and actually reduce the accountability.
No, it replaced ethical obligation (which, insofar as it is accountability, is accountability to self) to defined-consequence accountability to the daycare, which in practice negates ethical obligation in favor of transactional accountability.
How that works out in price depends on the weight of the ethical rule involved for the individual vs the weight of the assigned consequence; it is counterproductive where you replace a strong ethical obligation with a weak consequence.
People often overlook that other people have ethics; that's actually useful self-protection in many situations, but it backfires when you undermine common ethics in an effort to create incentives and manage to replace it with weaker incentives than the target audience had from ethics in the status quo ante.
i don't believe in an absence of consequences. there are always consequences, even if they are not spelled out. sometimes we just don't know what the consequences might be. so at least i need to assume there are consequences unless it is explicitly said that there are none, at which point the obligation disappears.
however this is getting philosophical now, and strays from the topic.
I think it's beautifully HN-libertarian of you to consider "no financial consequences" equal to "no consequences".
Our daycare solves this with peer pressure and stern looks and it's super effective.
It doesn’t really matter if the parents see the fine as “a fine” or an unaffordable, automatically billed service if it’s priced right.
That said, if lateness is a problem, it’s impeding on the workers’ personal lives, which can’t be good for anybody, so I don’t mind exploring how those workers could be helped. I assume more upfrontness from the business office, and parent education, would go a long way, similar to other institutions.
(I mean, I agree it's a big problem. I also dislike haggling, and I think I would have done much better had i outsourced that function when I ran a business, even if I paid a lot to that person)
All that said, a sufficient guilt trip might be more effective than a fine in any case, and is something that a caretaker could probably provide.
If I am late to give back a book that I am still reading, I do not mind giving it back one or two weeks late after I am done with it.
The fine is actually considerably cheaper if you compare with the upfront cost to be able to use the library.
Sounds like a normal project manager.
All via twitter.
For the most part they are sales people who are good at telling others what to do, but you always feel possibly not that good or they would be running some business themselves.
There are even business coach franchises.
A business coach should be capable of stepping into a business and running it.
Just to be facetious: "Those who can, do; those who can't, teach".
Why is a business coach different than other kinds of teachers?
Going further, why should you learn anything from any kind of professional teacher? By your logic, doesn't the fact that they're teaching it imply that they can't do it?
Business coaching is something you do after running a business.
Teaching at a secondary you will often find people who previously worked in industry. My high school chemistry teacher for example previously worked as an industrial chemist which put his level of expertise way above what was required.
And at the tertiary you will get a mix of academics and tutors, who are either actively researching or working in their field.
Which is why mentoring groups with other business owners can be a lot more beneficial than a coach.
Often, they are running a business (specifically, a business-coaching business) themselves.
It's quite a funny idea, I wonder if that'd be sustainable though!
> Middle Dutch baes, of obscure origin. If original sense was "uncle," perhaps it is related to Old High German basa "aunt," but some sources discount this theory.
> The Dutch form baas is attested in English from 1620s as the standard title of a Dutch ship's captain. The word's popularity in U.S. may reflect egalitarian avoidance of master (n.) as well as the need to distinguish slave from free labor.
https://www.etymonline.com/word/boss
After having a structure my whole life in school which I did fairly well under, suddenly I found myself with literally no structure, deadlines that are always far in the future, and the ability to literally watch Youtube all day long without any _immediate_ penalty.
I love seeing things like this. I've had to build all sorts of structure into my life, but the hardest part is always getting myself to do it, because, you know, I could just _not do it._
What would you tell to someone like me, who started taking 30mg Vyvanse for ADHD just a month ago?
I'm skipping weekends to delay organism adaptation and put less strain on the body. The drug doesn't let you feel that strain but I'm sure it's there since it works like a processor overclock. Before I functioned at 60% and now I function at 120% for most of the day.
Like, I got started out at 10mg Adderall XR, and even that has a little bit more oomph than I think is ideal. I might be more sensitive to stimulants than you, but even then you want to take as little as is necessary to control your symptoms.
I'd suggest talking to your psychiatrist about lowering your dosage. If you're taking three 10mg pills, try taking just one of them. If you're taking just one 30mg pill, then complain about side effects (feeling wired, upset stomach) and ask for a lower dose.
Unfortunately 30mg is the lowest dosage available in my country. It's available in 30mg, 50mg and 70mg here. Despite both both being amphetamine based stimulants, one could say 30mg of Vyvanse is equivalent to 20mg of Aderall but the formulas differ and it depends on the organism. Vyvanse is also more gentle and of a more gradual release than Adderall.
My question was more about tips and hints on long term usage of these stimulants.
Also, forget about direct side effects of the drug, going nonstop all day long every day is unsustainable, the body will crash eventually.
I think it may be due to sleep disruption, but I don’t know.
Caddra has an interesting chart here for suggestions: https://caddra.ca/pdfs/Psychosocial_October2016.pdf
I also like Russell Barkley's lectures and books: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzhbAK1pdPM&list=PLzBixSjmbc...
and
http://www.russellbarkley.org/books.html (especially Taking Charge of Adult ADHD)
And additionally, if you find that these things speak to you, medication makes a tremendous difference. I really can't overstate the degree to which it can change your life.
Now, despite having largely learnt to manage said anxiety, I still have a massive problem with “avoidance”; do you think it is perhaps worth revisiting the potential ADHD?
I do find that Ritalin helps tremendously, but obviously I do not have a prescription, it’s something I only take when in supply and I have a pressing deadline.
Like, the first psych wasn't wrong about anxiety being a thing. It often is very often co-morbid with ADHD. This is because ADHD interferes with keeping up with work and life commitments and deadlines, makes you tend to work closer to deadlines (and more vigorously), and causes other life issues. If your work performance is unsatisfactory, of course you are anxious.
We still have little to no understanding of how, why, and in some cases even if psychotropics actually work. And there are correlations to all sorts of nasty things with indications causality between things such as ritalin/methylphenidate and depression. Other studies on ritalin have shown neuronal/brain changes comparable to cocaine. [1] The only reason I mention this is because I think we're currently in the era of having a chicken and egg scenario between all sorts of mental/psychological disorders and a skyrocketing rate of psychotropic consumption.
Basically, turn to medication as a last resort and think about the differences in how you feel medicated and how you feel unmedicated. Now imagine the gross (as in total, not as in eww) effect of your brain over what may be potentially decades of usage of such drugs since the drugs won't cure you - they will just end up working as a crutch for an indefinite period of time. For some this may be the right decision, but it's not a decision that should be made with no analysis beyond 'Wow, I feel much better after taking this!'
[1] - https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nida-study-sho...
True. These drugs aren't a cure. They are a tool. For many, more like an aspiring writer's desk than a cripple's crutch. ADD drugs are like coffee, but without the culture. Use wisely: they can help to improve motivation, which can then be applied towards or away from self-control. Don't expect a cure or for the drug to do your own hard work. Like any tool, there is a learning curve and skill set associated with expert use.
I take 30mg Vyvanse daily but deliberately skip Sundays & Saturdays in an attempt to delay organism adaptation. It's similar to Ritalin but more gradual and longer effect. I see the drug as a temporary tool to help me get moving again. Hope to one day replace it with well ingrained habits plus dopamine from exercises.
Which do you think is worse for long term health?
Beats the living hell out of my alternative: on the streets, in jail, or 6 feet under because ADHD is hell. It's a price I'd pay every time without hesitation. It's a price I think EVERYBODY would prefer I pay cuz like yo, I ain't safe to drive unmedicated, this a public safety thing.
Okay, so:
- people claim that not being medicated for ADHD would result in homelessness and other such things
- medication only started to really take off in the 90s, and has since exponentially increased
So why is that when we go a bit further back in time, before the 90s, that we don't see some massively exponential increase in homelessness and other such things? I mean if that's the alternative to not taking the drugs, wouldn't this be precisely what we'd expect to see?
Care was a little different as was the tendency for families to stick together. Perhaps the institutions, prisons and family spare rooms were used in place of modern homelessness? We can't know it wasn't responsible for significant homelessness. Figures were impossible to compare as the record would just show petty thief or lack of work ethic, or poor money management. If that.
At least from your post it seems to me like you're talking about something like the 50s. You need only go back a decade or two to see tremendous differences in rates of psychotropic prescription and usage. And the sheer numbers here mean that if these drugs are as having as large a positive effect as many users do believe them to be, then we should be able to see tremendous macro level positive indicators. But I'm not sure we really do. By contrast I could certainly point to sharp increases in a variety of physiological and psychological disorders which are considered side effects of these treatments.
[1] - https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/dear-mona-how-many-adul...
I've read enough histories and biographies to have thought "ADHD" quite a few times when reading of a life of missed opportunity, or the insufferable politician or military leader who seems to have all the symptoms but succeeded despite it. Maybe sometimes because of it.
The difficulty is appropriate medication can be the difference between achieving a regular career as lawyer or programmer and struggling through a transient series of failed unskilled jobs or ongoing unemployment. I'm not sure we have enough precision in the data to recognise that. I've seen wholly positive effects in those few diagnosed and on medication around me, but that's a useless anecdote. I'm in a country with a far lower rate of diagnosis. :)
Yes, it has risks and is not 100% safe. No, that doesn't mean that the risk/reward ratio is anywhere near "think carefully before trying it." People with ADHD have enough trouble scheduling stuff and getting through the bureaucracy standing between them and a diagnosis already, it's downright irresponsible IMO to suggest that they go down a rabbit hole of research and doubt.
You have to constantly be two people, wear two hats. And then, at some point every day you also get to wear the tally hat, to see how you did.
A bit more about being two people - it's like when you do awareness meditation, you have to watch yourself go, but you also have to be there and do the work.
I am getting good results in my last three years (tally hat on) but that's after six years of miserably failing to get any control whatsoever over my life. Lots of pain there, heaps of depression.
No individual trick has done it for me, nothing stuck or moved the needle any. What I ended up doing is: new place/town, new job, new acquaintances. Some distance from older acquaintances. Did that twice, and both times got fantastic results, got progress. So, reset lead to progress.
I fucked up the distancing the first time, didn't move far enough away, didn't change my cellphone habits. You really are the sum average of the people around you, that is true if you want it or not. You need to shut up and cut the noise to have a chance to hear yourself weep when you're miserable doing what you do, to feel yourself content and joyful when you do something that is you.
Tally hat is not optional. Measuring progress, noting it down as you go, reflecting on what did and didn't work makes all the difference. Do, note, reflect, adjust, do again.
Awareness is not optional. Sitting down to watch Youtube? Think about what it is you're going to do after that, before sitting down. Set a timer, so you won't find yourself with the sun down and nothing accomplished that day.
Before you go to sleep, half an hour before, shut down everything, your phone, your computer; take a shower and think - if there is one thing I am to do tomorrow, what would that be? What would make the most difference? Write it down on a sticky note and put it on your monitor's top bezel. This is what you'll do in the morning, first thing. Then you get to do anything you want (set a timer), and proceed to tally-hat, then turn your phone on. This is when you'd get back to everybody and do household chores or what have you.
Do four good days like that, in a week. You don't have to be good all week. Just most of the week. There are 52 of those in a year, set your phone and desktop dash to show you what week number you're at, and use that when putting on your tally hat. Where are you coming from, what are you to do right now, what's the immediate next thing? No point planning way ahead or keeping a todo list (do keep a backlog and review it weekly, do mark things on a calendar so as not to miss them). Don't make yourself do a list of things, you're not a machine, yet. Make yourself do 23 minutes of "I'll just start doing that, even though I don't feel like it, and then take a break". You will feel like it after 15 minutes, but never before you actually start.
Or hire a boss/secretary and they will do your tallying for you (moderately well), and your awareness (works better if not remote).
Cheers.
Accepting responsibility, time planning, prioritizing, all that is - or should be - learned during "growing up", and strenghtened during early adulthood.
Think like a beautiful airplane toy with a broken wing. It just needs some glue to fly again.
The "should be learned" I agree with, but that's just not the world that we ended up with, is it?
You can look at what recurs and could be optimized, or optimized away, maybe delegated or nixed. You could take a measure of how you did whatever it is you did today, better or worse than expected? Were you unprepared? What could be improved?
My work week should flutter around four days, so I keep an eye on that, see that I did enough work and didn't over-work myself. There are fixed costs to living, but then there are frivolous or unexpected expenses – there's a budget for that. I write invoices or tally up working days/hours what have you – to bill my clients or my employer, if I was contracting.
There are people which should be contacted periodically, some more often, some less often – I make sure not to miss out on this. Forgetting to go over that list leads to not enough work, or not enough social interaction.
I make sure I take care of my tools, housework, stock up on food and such. Take care of my body and mental state by stretching and breathing (that's Upa-yoga and Wim Hoff style pranayama). I cook my own food, which I sometimes need to do in advance.
I note the things that I ended up doing but didn't plan to, and how they went and made me feel. I get follow up with whomever tried to reach me and didn't get to talk to me, and email (that's the very last thing).
I note whether I got to do the things that I enjoy, and how that went and made me feel. If not – then why not? That is very much not OK and should immediately be taken care of, for fear of loss of will to live so to say.
In general terms, "where am I coming from? Where am I going? Am I there yet, should I adjust direction/effort/approach?"
Hope that gives you something to think about.
Seems like whether we call it ADHD or not, productivity and focus is a real problem.
And you mention "being your own life coach" - especially for people who work from home, I think that's almost a necessity. But, you can also hire other people to be your life coach too!
I have a personal trainer who makes sure I go to the gym. I have a therapist I see regularly who helps me a lot lot. I am about to get a psychiatrist to talk about medicine but I imagine he'll have more ideas too. I hired a business coach for 8 months and though expensive it was the best investment I've ever made for my career. I'm currently playing around with Boss as a Service. It did in fact help me get started today! I'm a part of 3 different mastermind groups. We meet for an hour every other week and talk about business and also life.
Being an introvert I had a tendency to isolate myself but my quality of life and business success has improved immensely by expanding my network.
This _combined_ with lots of little tricks and environmental changes have helped too. Things like having a physical checklist for my morning routine gets me out of bed. Having only a few staple foods helps me eat healthier. Going to coffee shops helps me work more. Etc etc etc.
It's a continual process that can always be optimized but as far as I can tell, the key is to keep trying things until you find things that work for you.
If anyone in here wants to talk more about ADHD and focus and productivity, happy to chat over email: david@lessboring.com. Cheers!
Even if you love your job, you're working on your own personal projects, and you know how to manage yourself and get away from distractions, you wouldn't believe how hard it is to motivate yourself some days...
V2 should have Expert Bosses for specific Verticals ( premium plans! )
I think there could be a niche version or this service for that industry - esp if the "bosses" in this service were vetted in a way an artist could know they understand the industry. I could see some mid-high level artists paying for this (esp if social/marketing were slapped on top). Might need to be localised somewhat though...
As a complete aside if anyone running the business is reading this I found the centered text for everything inc body copy pretty hard to read. Solid website overall though.
I don't think that's how its supposed to work...
(something something disrupting entrenched renumeration models something something exit round...)
On the other hand, you can get them to do things in calendar, project and time management, which you really should be able to do, but for whatever reason cannot. Yes, even project management. A lot of P.M. is timeline enforcement. amazing what a 2IC can do in these situations.
My seniors who have PA, basically rely on them to coordinate the awesome. The PA has no functional authority, except the silent kind a camerlengo has...
I find I have more projects than I can track. A good PA/project manager might help with that, but it's hard to know in advance or how to hire one.
I run an online business, and have contractors for specific tasks, but I'm really the only one with a bird's eye view. And frankly, project management is my weak point.