About a year ago, I built Hypermonkey, a productivity app for my friends who were struggling to stay productive because of their ADHD. I gamified it so my ADHD friends would stick to using the app like Duolingo and start checking off tasks on their to-do lists. The trick is to earn a banana every day by interacting with the app.
The app uses the latest GPT and Sonnet models for all the smart features in the app, such as using your voice to add/edit/delete tasks, breaking down your tasks, prioritizing them, or suggesting the next tasks to start.
Currently, users can use the bananas they have earned to shop for stickers in the app. Planning to add more items to the shop in the future!
Open to any feedback, good or bad, and questions! Thanks in advance.
al_borland•1w ago
Intrinsic motivation is what really makes me work well, along with some novelty. If it's a new problem I'm interested in, I'll work non-stop. Extrinsic motivation only works in short bursts, after procrastination, if it has teeth... "get this done today or you're fired!" These apps tend to be extrinsic motivators without teeth, which makes them easy to ignore.
I wish I had a solution for this problem to offer up some ideas on what could help, but I'm still searching for that myself.
Congrats on shipping the update and if it's helpful for your friends, that's a big win.
> Smart task assists
This seems like a neat feature that could be pretty helpful, but I think I'd need to take it a step further. In many cases I've spent hours watching videos and chatting with AI to breakdown and fully understand what should be fairly easy things, before I feel somewhat comfortable moving forward. Getting just enough to move forward works for some things, but for others, if I don't understand the full thing up front, what can go wrong, and how to mitigate those issues, I can be left in a bad spot. This is where a lot of the procrastination comes from. Doing this much research on something people say should take 5 minutes is exhausting. Even with AI, it can take a lot of effort to get the right information out of it, which it skips over until you really get into the weeds with it and call out the questions that lead to important answers.
jcylim21•1w ago
the app worked for my friends since they just thought of it as a game where they could earn bananas and do something with them. I guess I need to figure out a way to keep this "game" interesting for them to keep using it though!
I totally agree that the lack of intrinsic motivation plays a big part in getting things done. Just wondering, how do you usually work on tasks that you find boring?
thanks for sharing your personal experience. It can be frustrating when the AI doesn't provide the information without much context. Which AI has been the most useful to you in your opinion?
al_borland•1w ago
Often times, I don't... until it becomes a problem.
If something is the right balance of boring and tedious, I actually like it, if I get started. It becomes something to keep my hands busy while I zone out.
> Which AI has been the most useful to you in your opinion?
I mostly use the Kagi Assistant, which defaults to a Kimi model. I occasionally switch the model (it offers many), just to see if it's better. I'll sometimes use ChatGPT as well, if I am doing something where going beyond a chat is helpful. So far they all seem to have similar weaknesses. Yesterday I was asking it something about baking and it said some stuff that sounded kind of dumb. I asked for more detail and then in contradicted itself in multiple places. When it does stuff like that, which happens a lot, I can find it rather paralyzing if it can't clear things up. I want there to be a "right" answer. When there is a debate on what is right, and it phases it as two different absolutes to create the contradiction, that's a problem. I'd rather it be up front and phrase it has a debate, give the reasons why each side takes their position, the trade offs, and then a recommendation based on circumstances. On the other hand, it will give a wishy-washy answer based on an obscure technically, creating debate where there really is none. It's a hard line to walk and I find that to be the biggest stumbling block I currently have with AI (outside of coding, which has many more stumbling blocks).
jcylim21•1w ago
interesting! I've never heard of that model before, so I'll check it out!thanks for sharing. I guess your issue with AI is mainly the accuracy then I suppose.
al_borland•1w ago
Yes. If I didn't care about accuracy, I'd just make my own assumptions and hope for the best. If AI can't be accurate, what is the value?