06.12.2012 | Blog : Celeste Ng, lit and tech, productivity, the writing life, web tools
How to write more: Blackmail yourself?
By Celeste Ng
Perhaps, like many of us, you’re the kind of person who won’t do anything without a (proverbial) gun to your head. But it’s hard to type while holding a gun to your own head, no? Leave it to technology to solve this problem: enter Aherk!, which describes itself as a free “goal-oriented self-blackmailing service.”
Now in beta testing, Aherk! has three basic steps:
- Define a goal. Tell us what it is that you want to achieve and set a deadline.
- Put your ass on the line. Upload a compromising picture that will be posted to Facebook in case you fail to achieve your goal.
- Your friends decide. After your deadline expires, your Facebook friends will vote and tell us if you achieved your goal or not.
Okay, I can see a few problems with this—for starters, your friends might vote you down just to get their hands on those incriminating photos! But if you’ve got honest friends, perhaps Aherk! can help you finish that novel draft.
Anyone out there willing to give it a try? I would, but there are no compromising photos of me. (Ahem…)
Further Reading:
- Prefer positive reinforcement? Written? Kitten! may be just the tool for you.
I would squirm out of the blast radius by uploading incriminating photos of other people. That way, they’re the ones pushing me to write and if I fail, it won’t be my (already fractured) public image that pays the price!
[...] Writers Review posted a (hopefully) facetious article about how to blackmail yourself into writing via the goal-setting site Aherk!. Here’s how it works: you sign up, provide a [...]
[...] Writers are full of tricks to get themselves to actually WRITE. We’ve covered a lot of them here on FWR: positive reinforcement (with tools like Written? Kitten!, which rewards you with photos of cute cats), fear (with apps like Write or Die, which plays annoying noises—or deletes your work!—if you stop writing), and flat-out self-blackmail. [...]