Announcing the Complice Less Wrong Study Hall
(If you’re familiar with the backstory of the LWSH, you can skip to paragraph 5. If you just want the link to the chat, click here: LWSH on Complice)
The Less Wrong Study Hall was created as a tinychat room in March 2013, following Mqrius and ShannonFriedman’s desire to create a virtual context for productivity. In retrospect, I think it’s hilarious that a bunch of the comments ended up being a discussion of whether LW had the numbers to get a room that consistently had someone in it. The funny part is that they were based around the assumption that people would spend about 1h/day in it.
Once it was created, it was so effective that people started spending their entire day doing pomodoros (with 32minsWork+8minsBreak) in the LWSH and now often even stay logged in while doing chores away from their computers, just for cadence of focus and the sense of company. So there’s almost always someone there, and often 5-10 people.
A week in, a call was put out for volunteers to program a replacement for the much-maligned tinychat. As it turns out though, video chat is a hard problem.
So nearly 2 years later, people are still using the tinychat.
But a few weeks ago, I discovered that you can embed the tinychat applet into an arbitrary page. I immediately set out to integrate LWSH into Complice, the productivity app I’ve been building for over a year, which counts many rationalists among its alpha & beta users.
The focal point of Complice is its today page, which consists of a list of everything you’re planning to accomplish that day, colorized by goal. Plus a pomodoro timer. My habit for a long time has been to have this open next to LWSH. So what I basically did was integrate these two pages. On the left, you have a list of your own tasks. On the right, a list of other users in the room, with whatever task they’re doing next. Then below all of that, the chatroom.
(Something important to note: I’m not planning to point existing Complice users, who may not be LWers, at the LW Study Hall. Any Complice user can create their own coworking room by going to complice.co/createroom)
With this integration, I’ve solved many of the core problems that people wanted addressed for the study hall:
an actual ding sound beyond people typing in the chat
synchronized pomodoro time visibility
pomos that automatically start, so breaks don’t run over
Intentions — what am I working on this pomo?
a list of what other users are working on
the ability to show off how many pomos you’ve done
better welcoming & explanation of group norms
There are a couple other requested features that I can definitely solve but decided could come after this launch:
rooms with different pomodoro durations
member profiles
the ability to precommit to showing up at a certain time (maybe through Beeminder?!)
The following points were brought up in the Programming the LW Study Hall post or on the List of desired features on the github/nnmm/lwsh wiki, but can’t be fixed without replacing tinychat:
efficient with respect to bandwidth and CPU
page layout with videos lined up down the left for use on the side of monitors
chat history
encryption
everything else that generally sucks about tinychat
It’s also worth noting that if you were to think of the entirety of Complice as an addition to LWSH… well, it would definitely look like feature creep, but at any rate there would be several other notable improvements:
daily emails prompting you to decide what you’re going to do that day
a historical record of what you’ve done, with guided weekly, monthly, and yearly reviews
optional accountability partner who gets emails with what you’ve done every day (the LWSH might be a great place to find partners!)
(This article posted to Main because that’s where the rest of the LWSH posts are, and this represents a substantial update.)
It’s asking for a password to join. What’s the password?
The password is ‘lw’. (context: It’s not a security thing, it’s there to keep random TC users from stumbling into the room without being familiar with its purpose)
(Note: if you’re confused because it’s not asking you for a password, that’s because Malcolm replaced the embedded tinychat channel with his own chat. So we’re finally rid of the bane of tinychat!)
This is fantastic Malcolm, thank you!
Will the Tinychat version still operate?
The tinychat version is embedded in the Complice version, so absolutely. The transition has been very smooth, with people just gradually checking out the new page. That is, I suppose, one single advantage of not switching away from tinychat.
The only difference might be that people may be less likely to post the pomo time into the chat, because they have it as part of the complice page. But if you ask, they’ll still answer :)
And people stopped stating the beginning and expected end of a pomodoro on chat. Almost everybody uses Complice’s pomodoro timer which just rings the beginning of a pomodoro and this might be slightly confusing for people without the timer when the chat suddenly goes all quiet for no apparent reason.
Update: As of now, we switched to Malcolm’s own chat (which is at the same link as he provided). This means it’s not an embedded tinychat channel anymore, and the old tinychat room still exists, but is empty.
I reckon the video chatroom presents an excellent opportunity for managing virtual teams in general without being overly surveillancy.
Take the following into account because the problem of virtual management seems under-appreciated:
...
It facilitates what Insead considers the virtues of virtual management:
I just want to say, it is confusing to me to see productivity as doing things you want to do and I wonder why a large chunk of the Internet, such as LifeHacker, focuses on it. If you want to do it, why would you procastinate? I procastinate because I generally don’t do things I want to do, I do things formerly my teachers and now my employers want me to do. Procastination or taking breaks or all that is simply balancing must do / want to do.
A lot of things follow from it. Such as, in must-do, i.e. a job, there is little point to measure your productivity. If the boss is happy, you are productive enough. If not, you are told. As for distractions, procastination, that is easy too: as much as you can get away with without noticeable disapproval.
(Maybe on sites like LW or LessWrong there are people high on the Maslow pyramid, actually doing work they want to, I don’t know. I am kind of pessimistic about it: they are paying you because it sucks, if it did not suck someone would do it for free. When my dad wanted some guy to play music in his bar, he did not pay him: so many people enjoy playing music before an audience that there are people who do it for free and happy about the chance. Of course rock stars get paid, but that is the point, only the elite gets paid if it is something fun.)
For enjoyable things that can be done on the spur of the moment, like having a beer, why indeed? For everything else, though, for most people it is more complicated. Necessary but irksome tasks like cleaning one’s house. Projects that promise both a reward and a long unrewarding slog to get there. Any way of life where you are your own boss and there’s no-one else to tell you to work.
Fun doesn’t pay the bills. Beginning musicians have to take some non-paying gigs because they haven’t made a name for themselves. But every musician who wants to make a go of it comes to a point where they have to start saying to people, no, I will not perform for expenses and “exposure”, I am worth money to you and money to me, this is the figure I need to see before getting out of bed. I play with a taiko group, and while we’re just a little amateur group, nothing in the larger scheme of things, we have reached that point. It’s great fun to play, and we might be willing to do very occasional favours for people we know, but anyone else who wants us to play for them has to pay a realistic rate.
The same goes for a lot of professions. No, Mr Publisher, I will not pay you to publish my book. No, Ms Gallery Owner, I will not hire space in your gallery for my art. No, Mr Businessman, I will not design a logo for you as a favour. Yes, Mr Plumber Next Door, I’d be happy to rebuild your car engine, if you’ll install a new bathroom for me.
OK, good point. Maybe I need to learn something from it, I was always more like must-do, study/job, then leisure, and every personal goal or task taking third priority. This may not be ideal. Lately it is changing, now that married with a child, now a suitable birthday present to my child feels even more important than some things the boss needs, and I am actually surprised by myself a bit there. I don’t know what exactly, but I think is the birth of our child is pushing me out from the “do things other people give you grief if you don’t, then leisure” mood into “hey there are some things I actually want to achieve” mood. Weird, kind of.
That is a bit optimistic. Maybe it is just my circumstances, but I see an over-supply of everything. I see quite good musicians still having to do it for free and making a living doing accounting during the day because the paying demand is low and the supply is high. This is why my impression is you really, really need to be a big “star” to do something you both enjoy and get paid for.
That’s a far better place to be!
There’s a range of getting paid. In the market for fiction, so I’ve heard, only a small fraction earn enough to live on it. But any publisher who asks a fee to publish your book is a crook. The market for taiko here in the UK is small enough that there are only about three people in the country who can make it their primary job, and I’m certainly not one of them. But still, anyone who wants us to start their corporate party with a bang can pay corporate rates, and have done. Even the street busker is getting paid—there wouldn’t be any point otherwise.
Even when you aren’t depending for survival on the money from what you enjoy doing, there is value beyond the money itself in getting payment to do it for others. Giving to strangers and getting nothing from it but the act of giving is draining in the long term. There has to be an exchange of value, even if one side is contributing “only” money.
Which is rambling away from the original topic, but I felt like saying it.
This looks quite interesting, I didn’t know we had a Study Hall before now.
I’ll be sure to check it out when I have a large enough block of time.
Thanks for putting it together.
Maybe I’ll start visiting again soon!
Thanks, when I checked out your link it wasn’t open for guests and now I’m happy it is. I can see how can be terribly helpful using complice full stack, but even as guest, it is still pretty functional and nice. Well done ;)
It appears that you need to be logged in from FB or twitter to be fully non-guest. That seems like a… strange… choice for an anti-akrasia tool.
(Tangentially related to above, not really a reply)
You don’t need to use your Twitter or Facebook credentials. You even don’t want to, since tinychat will spam your feeds. Logging in as tinychat guest is the status quo for pretty much everyone on the LWSH.
As tkadlubo says, most people choose to visit as guests. Otherwise you are free to create an account on tinychat.com and visit the chat after logging in, which is what I do. It allows you to PM people and potentially become a moderator, neither of which are necessary for just participating in the pomodoros.