Show HN: Focumon – Turn your work into a multiplayer adventure (focumon.com)
After a few months of a fruitless search, I made up my mind and decided to build it myself! I've since launched FocuMon a little over a month ago. Quite a few early users told me it has helped them stay focused, so I'm excited to share it on HN for ya'll to try it out and let me know how I can make it better!
FocuMon is like an idle Pokémon game where you can collect, level up, and evolve cute monsters by being productive! It puts a reward layer on top of your work which helps to give you an initial boost to get into focus; it then gets out of your way once you are in the flow :)
I'm actively developing more features & game modes for FocuMon. It is also a multiplayer-first app where you can adventure together with people from all over the world!
Cheers and thanks for your time! Milton
25 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 49.1 ms ] thread...crap what was I supposed to be doing again?
Moving to next level
Support Kids at college/University
“Focus Anywhere
Our web app can be installed on your mobile devices. Focus with friends & keep track of your progress on the go. Boost your productivity no matter where you are!”
>>Most web browsers and some mobile operating systems and mobile applications include a Do-Not-Track ("DNT") feature or setting you can activate to signal your privacy preference not to have data about your online browsing activities monitored and collected. At this stage no uniform technology standard for recognizing and implementing DNT signals has been finalized. As such, we do not currently respond to DNT browser signals or any other mechanism that automatically communicates your choice not to be tracked online. If a standard for online tracking is adopted that we must follow in the future, we will inform you about that practice in a revised version of this privacy notice.<<
Besides of the grey-on-grey, I am aware they probably just copy pasted something. Still, I take them by their word.
I don't want to have business with someone who says things like this
> If a standard for online tracking is adopted that we must follow in the future
"we will track you until there is regulatory obligation not to"
The person who wrote this was terrible at marketing spin. But uh, it's good that they are at least open about it, maybe?
I too believe it's likely just copypasta because this is everywhere, but until changed it is still their official stance soooo....
The relevant one is that success feels good and failure feels bad. However, all of these systems rely on raising or lowering your feelings in response to stimulation. That is inherently short term and works best with very direct feedback and short 'loops'.
Humans are simply terrible at long term success(compared to short term) because it is a process of incentive that lives entirely in the logic part of the mind, with very little animal input. And the people/organizations that reliably achieve long term successes already hijack these short term systems to achieve those successes.
This is just a tool to do that, at the end of the day. Games are designed around that animal system, mega optimized, so it makes sense to use them as a format for a productivity tool.
That's especially important now, because so many large organizations have workers that are completely detached from the final product, making the feedback EVEN WORSE.
This would be immediately labeled a distraction from real work in my mind and would have no effectiveness whatsoever. I'm also not motivated by competitions between teams to achieve various stats for silly rewards. Just show me what needs to be done to make progress on the company's actual goals and let me figure out what I think is the best way for me to help.