Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Body Doubling

bodydoubling.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 203 posts

Re: Body Doubling

#121

Post by SevenNation »

> In simple terms, it’s merely being in the same room with another person who is having trouble getting things done on their own. As a body double, you don’t need to help or even say anything. All you need to do is just be there in the room, and through some invisible power, the other person is able to focus and finish their work. ...

I had to do a double take there to make sure this wasn't parody. Being more productive with another person in the room? But they don't actually do the work? And they help through an "invisible power"?

That's unexpected.

Re: Body Doubling

#122

Post by ajmurmann »

elcritch wrote: post #90
vjk800 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is also how I remember my childhood and even early teenage years. My friends would just pop over unannounced and ask me out to play or play sports or something. Also relatives and grandparents would do this occasionally since basically my whole extended family lived in the same village. I also feel like things would have continued the same way if it wasn't for everyone (including me) moving away to study, work,…

My teenage years were similar. Cells phones were a thing but relatively rare and texting was limited. Friends in HS would often enough just drop by. Nowadays, if you just stop by a friends house, it feels borderline rude or intruding. My hypothesis is that given the rise of everyone having always connected cell phones, texting, etc, that subconsciously we've all shifted to viewing our physical homes as our form of pr…

I wonder how much of the changed behavior comes from the less intrusive communication options having gotten much lower effort. Even calling someone unannounced is almost unthinkable except if it's an emergency. I think that's because it's so easy to just send a text message first to ask if it's convenient. In the past text messages weren't as common. Before that, I could have called for example before stopping by a friend's house. However, I would have had to call the landline which nobody might have answered because maybe they were outside. It would also have been disruptive because anyone in their household would have felt like they needed to answer. So why not just stop by if I am passing by anyways? Now though, I better first send a text, then it's not ideal right now because they are cooking or something, so we postpone, even though I could have just helped with the cooking. But nobody wants to propose cooking together. It feels like you are imposing from both sides, but probably both sides would enjoy it. We are just overthinking it.

Anecdotal data for another factor: Too much effort is made! I've recently tried to make an effort to build up more of a friend network and turn some acquaintances into friends. I've noticed that we try to make everything so "nice" that it becomes inconvenient. The hosts always spend at least an hour getting their place ready and prepping food. This leads to a "barrier entry" for getting together that makes these events less. I even brought that up one time, but hosts seem unable to reduce the effort they make. Guests commonly bring gifts. Nobody needs the gifts or the super tidy home to visit. Just ring the doorbell, grab a beer and let's just hang! I say that, but I'd never do this either because it would feel like a transgression. The only exception I've noticed is that sometimes we'll end up chatting with neighbors for a prolonged time when we randomly run into each other while going for a walk or something. However, nobody would ever say "let's take this party inside". It seems to have become cultural and I am not sure how to fix this as an individual. I think part of it is that we are always busy now or feel like we should be. Gotta run those errands, work on my side project, etc.

Re: Body Doubling

#124

Post by Enginerrrd »

vjk800 wrote: post #84
munificent wrote: post #61

There was a thread on Reddit recently asking what leisure time was like for people before radio, TV, and the Internet. Someone mentioned a memoir they'd read from the early 1900s and the part that stuck with them was how social everyone was. After work, people would go to friends houses, putter around town and catch up with neighbors, visit shops where they knew everyone, etc. I can't but think that so many of the ma…

This is also how I remember my childhood and even early teenage years. My friends would just pop over unannounced and ask me out to play or play sports or something. Also relatives and grandparents would do this occasionally since basically my whole extended family lived in the same village. I also feel like things would have continued the same way if it wasn't for everyone (including me) moving away to study, work,…

>I think it helps to think of our social environment as some kind of ecosystem that has evolved to fulfill various needs and shouldn't be messed with. The results will be similar to if you take a few species from biological ecosystems and just randomly put them together - the result is not going to look very pretty.

This is just a real gem of an analogy.

Re: Body Doubling

#125

Post by watwut »

munificent wrote: post #61

There was a thread on Reddit recently asking what leisure time was like for people before radio, TV, and the Internet. Someone mentioned a memoir they'd read from the early 1900s and the part that stuck with them was how social everyone was. After work, people would go to friends houses, putter around town and catch up with neighbors, visit shops where they knew everyone, etc. I can't but think that so many of the ma…

All of that os possible only if you work 8 or less hours a day and then go home close to work. It is not possible with current "if you work less then 60 hours a week you are not passionate" frequent ideology. Nor with long commute actually.

What you praise here is called being lazy. And also it relied on kids being unsupervised which was ok at the time.

Re: Body Doubling

#126

Post by geuis »

munificent wrote: post #61

There was a thread on Reddit recently asking what leisure time was like for people before radio, TV, and the Internet. Someone mentioned a memoir they'd read from the early 1900s and the part that stuck with them was how social everyone was. After work, people would go to friends houses, putter around town and catch up with neighbors, visit shops where they knew everyone, etc. I can't but think that so many of the ma…

That's a really interesting anecdote about that memoir. It immediately reminds me of a lot of fantasy type novels I've read.

For example, I'm a big fan of the Wandering Inn series. Essentially, one of the main characters is a young woman transported to a fantasy-style world who takes over an abandoned inn outside a major city. A large part of her story is about interacting with the locals, just wandering around shops and visiting friends she makes along the way, etc. Very reminiscent of the book you mention.

When I look at a lot of other similar books, they often rely on the same style of small community interactions among the characters.

Makes me wonder if part of the reason such stories are so popular is because we're missing so much of that in our everyday lives.

One thing I like about living in SF is that despite its problems, a lot of the city is based around neighborhoods and being walkable. I see the same folks at the local restaurants and hang out with friends and associates at the local pub each week. So I still get some amount of that traditional daily interaction, and unfortunately some of the drama that comes with it.

Re: Body Doubling

#127

Post by watwut »

squokko wrote: post #65
munificent wrote: post #61

There was a thread on Reddit recently asking what leisure time was like for people before radio, TV, and the Internet. Someone mentioned a memoir they'd read from the early 1900s and the part that stuck with them was how social everyone was. After work, people would go to friends houses, putter around town and catch up with neighbors, visit shops where they knew everyone, etc. I can't but think that so many of the ma…

Not even just the neighbors and friends - people used to live in large family units with 10+ people per household. This meant a much broader support network if, for example, you got ill and couldn't take care of your kid for awhile.

It also means you need to help others and sometime take time off work from it. People in age range 16-55 were actually people doing more help then receiving it.

On HN it always sounds like you are only receiving, but actual deal ia you provide until you are really old or sick.

Re: Body Doubling

#128

Post by watwut »

pixl97 wrote: post #114
unity1001 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> many of the malaises that people suffer today, which we ascribe as individual psychological problems, are really just a result of how profoundly lonely and isolating media consumption is Media consumption is just a replacement for social interaction. And it exists only because people dont have time and energy left for socialization and other activities after work. Our society is geared towards extracting maximum pr…

>And it exists only because people dont have time and energy left for socialization and other activities after work. Did people not socialize in the days before worker protections demanded worker protections? I just don't think your reasoning covers the causes well, especially in the suburbanite 40 hour week type that travel by car for an hour+ a day to a single family home. Media consumption exists because technolog…

They were actually exhausted. Fairly often, they just got drunk quickly after work and went to sleep.

Both parents were working 12 hours a day so many kids were unsupervised from age of 4 whole day. Before that, supervised by one older kid.

Re: Body Doubling

#129

Post by ddingus »

munificent wrote: post #61

There was a thread on Reddit recently asking what leisure time was like for people before radio, TV, and the Internet. Someone mentioned a memoir they'd read from the early 1900s and the part that stuck with them was how social everyone was. After work, people would go to friends houses, putter around town and catch up with neighbors, visit shops where they knew everyone, etc. I can't but think that so many of the ma…

Very interesting observation!

And yes, I strongly agree! Just hanging out was the thing people did.

Kind of miss that. Time to maybe fix it some.

Re: Body Doubling

#130

Post by imsaw »

munificent wrote: post #61

There was a thread on Reddit recently asking what leisure time was like for people before radio, TV, and the Internet. Someone mentioned a memoir they'd read from the early 1900s and the part that stuck with them was how social everyone was. After work, people would go to friends houses, putter around town and catch up with neighbors, visit shops where they knew everyone, etc. I can't but think that so many of the ma…

Is this why people like working in a cafe?
Post reply on HN