In my experience, there’s not vey much social influence to fight akrasia in college, but there is plenty of this kind of social influence in high school, and I am willing to guess that there is plenty of this kind of influence in the professional world. However, it might be the case that others feel that there are more social influences to fight akrasia in college (or fewer social influences to fight akrasia elsewhere) than I do, since I weight having structured mandatory study/work time in a public place so heavily. For me, being socially expected to be physically present in a place where I am supposed to be working on things causes me to be much more productive than I would be in the absence of such an expectation. This is doubly true if people who know about my commitment are physically present while I am studying.
Anyhow, I find it unfortunate that there aren’t any programs or services that make it easier for college students to coordinate into forming pseudo-workplaces in which multiple students are socially expected to be physically present in a certain place during certain times, as described above. It is certainly possible to coordinate this kind of thing, but I don’t know of any college students who have actually done this, which is part of what I’m upset about. Something like Beeminder could be used for tracking this sort of thing, but Beeminder alone doesn’t create all of the same incentives that having a workplace with coworkers or students who expect you to be physically present at a certain place for a certain duration of time does.
I’ve asked 3-4 non-LW friends if they would find a pseudo-workplace arrangement useful, and they all said no. I’ve historically had lots of trouble with getting people to show up to organized study groups on the weekends, as well. Would many students be open to, or benefit from this kind of pseudo-workplace setup for university students? Am I aneurotypical enough that I’m the only one who would benefit from something like this? Would LW readers who are students be much more likely to use or benefit from this type of setup than the average college student? Would it be worthwhile to attempt to create and encourage college students to use pseudo-workplaces?
In my experience, there’s not vey much social influence to fight akrasia in college, but there is plenty of this kind of social influence in high school, and I am willing to guess that there is plenty of this kind of influence in the professional world. However, it might be the case that others feel that there are more social influences to fight akrasia in college (or fewer social influences to fight akrasia elsewhere) than I do, since I weight having structured mandatory study/work time in a public place so heavily. For me, being socially expected to be physically present in a place where I am supposed to be working on things causes me to be much more productive than I would be in the absence of such an expectation. This is doubly true if people who know about my commitment are physically present while I am studying.
Anyhow, I find it unfortunate that there aren’t any programs or services that make it easier for college students to coordinate into forming pseudo-workplaces in which multiple students are socially expected to be physically present in a certain place during certain times, as described above. It is certainly possible to coordinate this kind of thing, but I don’t know of any college students who have actually done this, which is part of what I’m upset about. Something like Beeminder could be used for tracking this sort of thing, but Beeminder alone doesn’t create all of the same incentives that having a workplace with coworkers or students who expect you to be physically present at a certain place for a certain duration of time does.
I’ve asked 3-4 non-LW friends if they would find a pseudo-workplace arrangement useful, and they all said no. I’ve historically had lots of trouble with getting people to show up to organized study groups on the weekends, as well. Would many students be open to, or benefit from this kind of pseudo-workplace setup for university students? Am I aneurotypical enough that I’m the only one who would benefit from something like this? Would LW readers who are students be much more likely to use or benefit from this type of setup than the average college student? Would it be worthwhile to attempt to create and encourage college students to use pseudo-workplaces?