Indian-American entrepreneur Maneesh Sethi hired someone off of Craiglist in 2012 to slap him every time he went on Facebook. It quadrupled his productivity.
Sethi’s strategy for staying on task is still going viral years later. A response from Elon Musk on Twitter revitalized Sethi’s story.
In 2012, the entrepreneur was living in San Francisco. At the time, slap bets made popular by the show How I Met Your Mother were all the rage.
In his interview with VICE, Sethi confessed that he was wasting 19 hours a day. He realized that he needed someone to keep him accountable – so he turned to Craigslist and put out an ad titled “Slap me if I get off task” for 8 dollars an hour.
Sethi immediately received 20 applications for the position. He chose a woman named Kara to be his new time management expert. Her help allowed Sethi to quadruple his productivity, and so he continued to work with her for a few months.
“More than the fear of getting slapped, I’m certain the social element that Kara added to my work routine is what made me stay on task,” Sethi told VICE.
“I finally had a boss, although a makeshift one, who made the experience refreshing. She was helpful with not just slapping me, but I was also able to bounce ideas off her in real time. It was an experiment that taught me that the social element is more important than the fear of being slapped. Having a teammate to work with and bounce ideas from is ideal to focus and get out of your comfort zone.”
Maneesh Sethi to VICE
Sethi’s time with Kara inspired him to design a product called Pavlok, named after Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov and his famous conditioning experiment with salivating dogs. Pavlok is a wearable behavior training device that vibrates as a reward for good behavior and sends a “gentle electric shock” for bad behavior.
Speaking of Facebook – what’s up with Meta? Find out how Zuckerberg plans to collect even more of your data with the Metaverse here.
