I love apps like pleaseRobMe. A while back I pitched the idea to our team of a distraction blackout plan. The plan was….

• We all agree to uninstall all distraction applications from our individual machines, ie email clients, twitter, facebook, linked in etc.
• We setup a single computer in a public location in our office where we all have an account. That account has all our previously mentioned accounts.
• We all commit to only interacting with the selected distractions when we’re on that single computer. So you need to go to that computer and use it to check your email, twitter etc.

The obvious idea is the public phonebooth, ie introduce some basic peer pressure into your usage of these apps. “Hey Brydon, you’ve been on the email a lot today, busy day or not?” Work when you’re working, play when you’re playing.

The context was driven by us as individuals as we are all struggling with these distractions. The conversation wasn’t driven by how ‘the man’ can get everyone off facebook. Now, we didn’t ever actually try this but I intend to in the context of Startupify.Me.

It will be volunteer only. We may write a basic app that allows you to sign in. Once signed in, the app will troll your various distraction apps and humiliate you in some fashion if you break the rules, ie use them while NOT using the public machine.

Thoughts? Would you and your team try this?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 1st, 2011 at 1:26 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.