4 ms·

Show HN: My first Rails app helps you motivate yourself to get things done

34 points by jasonshen 13y ago

jknightco 13y ago
Great job! I have a huge personal interest in motivation and the science behind it, its always fun to see how people try to bring it into technology. I think there's still a lot of room for motivational-tech. That said, this reward style finds significant problems in the literature. Expected rewards act like a chemical fix (quite literally, in terms of how they work in the brain), that require larger and larger doses over time, and eventually crowd out the will to do the behavior on your own. I'd be interested to see how using something like this would work long term. I know its rather simple in its current form, but so are most of the examples researchers use in the laboratory. Regardless of the science, great job on finishing and launching your first Rails app. My only technical note: your images are a bit pixely on my Retina display. Other than that it looks great!
- jasonshen 13y ago
  Thanks for the feedback! Yeah, there is something about a dosage / acclimation effect that can be dangerous about any kind of positive action. I think that using a variable reward system keeps the brain excited (because you don't know what you are going to get) and even extremely simple and low cost variable rewards have helped drug addicts stay sober: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16203960 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16203960
  - jknightco 13y ago
    Interesting study, I hadn't seen that one. I think one of the problematic points is this though: "...the chances of winning prizes increased with continuous time abstinent." They're literally upping the "dosage" over time. Also, the variability is in the chance of receiving a reward or not. I think that's a crucial element: rewards work well when they're not guaranteed. My final observation regarding the study is that it only lasted 12 weeks. I'd be worried that the reward group might have a higher percentage of post-program relapse than the non-reward group, as there is significant literature behind the idea that once rewards are stopped the desired behavior stops as well. I appreciate the study! Always interested in reading more about human behavior.
jasonshen 13y ago
I estimate spending about 100 hours over 4.5 months (~45mins a day) learning how to program using teamtreehouse.com and railstutorial.org. It's been tough but super rewarding. Would love your feedback and happy to answer any questions!
alinajaf 13y ago
Hi Jason, Great work! The website has a great feel to it and it seems like a good first project to get out in the open. Definitely looks/works a gazillion times better than my first website! There's an issue I'd like to point out that I've seen come up over and over again with people like yourself who've taught themselves to code via treehouse, codecademy or some of the other webdev-education based startups. I've met developers with 10+ years of experience who make the same error though, so I wouldn't beat yourself up too much about it. This may have been deliberate, but it appears as though you can view all the rewards on the site (including other users) simply by modifying the URL. It also seems like you can modify or delete any of the rewards on the site too (try changing the form action/fields using chrome web inspector and submit the form). Since this is your first rails app and I'm assuming you're not hoping it's going to hold any sensitive data, this isn't that big a deal. Do keep in mind though that in its current state, it's trivial to create a script that deletes all the rewards on the website or worse, fills all the reward info with spam data. For the last person I pointed this out to, I put together a gist of what the before => after of the code should look like for fixing this https://gist.github.com/Najaf/5431024 https://gist.github.com/Najaf/5431024 (tl&dr, you need to whitelist those params and implement authorization). If you'd like any further help with this, feel free to ping me via email. Best of luck!
- jasonshen 13y ago
  That's super helpful and thank you for the very kind and welcoming way you delivered that feedback. I wish more HN comments were this nice. It takes longer to write but is more likely to be implemented. edit - Made the update! Sorry anyone who went to the site when it was down for 20 seconds prev edit - ans -> and
  - jlogsdon 13y ago
    Check out CanCan[1] for authorization. It's pretty simple to get started with, but provides a lot of power for controlling who can access what. [1] https://github.com/ryanb/cancan https://github.com/ryanb/cancan
    - 13y ago
hello_newman 13y ago
Hey Jason! I think this is a great idea. This is just my opinion, but I would love to give you some feedback: 1. I love the design. I might be biased because I am a huge fan of white space. The white with the subtle green really pops. Love that. 2. The idea itself is great in my opinion. When I do my prep work for Dev Bootcamp, I do something similar. I study for x amount of time or try to finish x amount of problems (we're talking genrally 60-120 minutes) then I reward myself with my ecig. I might be biased again, because my reward is nicotine vapor, but I use a similar approach. 3. I love this idea. But aside from that, what was your motivation to learn to program? The reason I ask, is because I dropped out of college to go to Dev Bootcamp and become an apprentice software engineer. I am an avid reader of your blog, and you mention you are a Stanford alum running a start up. Because of that, what made you think learning to program would be a good investment? This is not judgmental, I am just curious about your motivation to do this. Overall, keep up the awesome work! It's pretty cool your 100% self taught relying only on treehouse and railstutorial. [edit for spacing]
- jasonshen 13y ago
  Thanks for the kind words and feedback! 1) My cofounder Randy really emphasizes whitespace and being as minimal as possible. His argument is that the less you do, the harder it is to fuck it up. So thanks. 2) I could see an e-cig being a great reward because it's a discrete unit and something you really want. Though (and you've probably thought about this) it'd probably be ideal if you found a different reward/habit all together. And you could use this app to do that! =) 3) I wrote an entire post about this, but essentially, I think it's foolish to work in technology and not make an investment to continually increase your understanding and skill in technology. I'm also working on improving my marketing and sales skills, but coding is at the core of our internet/tech industry. Would you make someone an Army General if they didn't have any combat experience? More here: http://www.jasonshen.com/2013/when-software-is-eating-the-world-you-better-start-making-dishes/ http://www.jasonshen.com/2013/when-software-is-eating-the-wo...
hawkharris 13y ago
Great work, Jason! The app is fun and easy to use.
rhapsodyv 13y ago
I don't like reward driven systems. Did you read Punished By Rewards from Alfie Kohn[1]? I discovered this book from this Aaron Swartz post on productivity[2]. [1] http://www.alfiekohn.org/books/pbr.htm http://www.alfiekohn.org/books/pbr.htm [2] http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/productivity http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/productivity
_lex 13y ago
This is pretty cool Jason. It's clearly not perfect, but that's a feature rather than a bug - it means you launched at the right time.

34 points by jasonshen 13y ago

Great job! I have a huge personal interest in motivation and the science behind it, its always fun to see how people try to bring it into technology. I think there's still a lot of room for motivational-tech. That said, this reward style finds significant problems in the literature. Expected rewards act like a chemical fix (quite literally, in terms of how they work in the brain), that require larger and larger doses over time, and eventually crowd out the will to do the behavior on your own. I'd be interested to see how using something like this would work long term. I know its rather simple in its current form, but so are most of the examples researchers use in the laboratory. Regardless of the science, great job on finishing and launching your first Rails app. My only technical note: your images are a bit pixely on my Retina display. Other than that it looks great!

jasonshen 13y ago
Thanks for the feedback! Yeah, there is something about a dosage / acclimation effect that can be dangerous about any kind of positive action. I think that using a variable reward system keeps the brain excited (because you don't know what you are going to get) and even extremely simple and low cost variable rewards have helped drug addicts stay sober: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16203960 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16203960
- jknightco 13y ago
  Interesting study, I hadn't seen that one. I think one of the problematic points is this though: "...the chances of winning prizes increased with continuous time abstinent." They're literally upping the "dosage" over time. Also, the variability is in the chance of receiving a reward or not. I think that's a crucial element: rewards work well when they're not guaranteed. My final observation regarding the study is that it only lasted 12 weeks. I'd be worried that the reward group might have a higher percentage of post-program relapse than the non-reward group, as there is significant literature behind the idea that once rewards are stopped the desired behavior stops as well. I appreciate the study! Always interested in reading more about human behavior.

jasonshen 13y ago

I estimate spending about 100 hours over 4.5 months (~45mins a day) learning how to program using teamtreehouse.com and railstutorial.org. It's been tough but super rewarding. Would love your feedback and happy to answer any questions!

alinajaf 13y ago

Hi Jason, Great work! The website has a great feel to it and it seems like a good first project to get out in the open. Definitely looks/works a gazillion times better than my first website! There's an issue I'd like to point out that I've seen come up over and over again with people like yourself who've taught themselves to code via treehouse, codecademy or some of the other webdev-education based startups. I've met developers with 10+ years of experience who make the same error though, so I wouldn't beat yourself up too much about it. This may have been deliberate, but it appears as though you can view all the rewards on the site (including other users) simply by modifying the URL. It also seems like you can modify or delete any of the rewards on the site too (try changing the form action/fields using chrome web inspector and submit the form). Since this is your first rails app and I'm assuming you're not hoping it's going to hold any sensitive data, this isn't that big a deal. Do keep in mind though that in its current state, it's trivial to create a script that deletes all the rewards on the website or worse, fills all the reward info with spam data. For the last person I pointed this out to, I put together a gist of what the before => after of the code should look like for fixing this https://gist.github.com/Najaf/5431024 https://gist.github.com/Najaf/5431024 (tl&dr, you need to whitelist those params and implement authorization). If you'd like any further help with this, feel free to ping me via email. Best of luck!

jasonshen 13y ago
That's super helpful and thank you for the very kind and welcoming way you delivered that feedback. I wish more HN comments were this nice. It takes longer to write but is more likely to be implemented. edit - Made the update! Sorry anyone who went to the site when it was down for 20 seconds prev edit - ans -> and
- jlogsdon 13y ago
  Check out CanCan[1] for authorization. It's pretty simple to get started with, but provides a lot of power for controlling who can access what. [1] https://github.com/ryanb/cancan https://github.com/ryanb/cancan
  - 13y ago

hello_newman 13y ago

Hey Jason! I think this is a great idea. This is just my opinion, but I would love to give you some feedback: 1. I love the design. I might be biased because I am a huge fan of white space. The white with the subtle green really pops. Love that. 2. The idea itself is great in my opinion. When I do my prep work for Dev Bootcamp, I do something similar. I study for x amount of time or try to finish x amount of problems (we're talking genrally 60-120 minutes) then I reward myself with my ecig. I might be biased again, because my reward is nicotine vapor, but I use a similar approach. 3. I love this idea. But aside from that, what was your motivation to learn to program? The reason I ask, is because I dropped out of college to go to Dev Bootcamp and become an apprentice software engineer. I am an avid reader of your blog, and you mention you are a Stanford alum running a start up. Because of that, what made you think learning to program would be a good investment? This is not judgmental, I am just curious about your motivation to do this. Overall, keep up the awesome work! It's pretty cool your 100% self taught relying only on treehouse and railstutorial. [edit for spacing]

jasonshen 13y ago
Thanks for the kind words and feedback! 1) My cofounder Randy really emphasizes whitespace and being as minimal as possible. His argument is that the less you do, the harder it is to fuck it up. So thanks. 2) I could see an e-cig being a great reward because it's a discrete unit and something you really want. Though (and you've probably thought about this) it'd probably be ideal if you found a different reward/habit all together. And you could use this app to do that! =) 3) I wrote an entire post about this, but essentially, I think it's foolish to work in technology and not make an investment to continually increase your understanding and skill in technology. I'm also working on improving my marketing and sales skills, but coding is at the core of our internet/tech industry. Would you make someone an Army General if they didn't have any combat experience? More here: http://www.jasonshen.com/2013/when-software-is-eating-the-world-you-better-start-making-dishes/ http://www.jasonshen.com/2013/when-software-is-eating-the-wo...

hawkharris 13y ago

Great work, Jason! The app is fun and easy to use.

rhapsodyv 13y ago

I don't like reward driven systems. Did you read Punished By Rewards from Alfie Kohn[1]? I discovered this book from this Aaron Swartz post on productivity[2]. [1] http://www.alfiekohn.org/books/pbr.htm http://www.alfiekohn.org/books/pbr.htm [2] http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/productivity http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/productivity

_lex 13y ago

This is pretty cool Jason. It's clearly not perfect, but that's a feature rather than a bug - it means you launched at the right time.