In my experience, there's not vey much social influence to fight akrasia in college, but there is plenty of this kind of social influence in high school, and I am willing to guess that there is plenty of this kind of influence in the professional world. However, it might be the case that others feel that there are more social influences to fight akrasia in college (or fewer social influences to fight akrasia elsewhere) than I do, since I weight having structured mandatory study/work time in a public place so heavily. For me, being socially expected to be physically present in a place where I am supposed to be working on things causes me to be much more productive than I would be in the absence of such an expectation. This is doubly true if people who know about my commitment are physically present while I am studying.
Anyhow, I find it unfortunate that there aren't any programs or services that make it easier for college students to coordinate into forming pseudo-workplaces in which multiple students are socially expected to be physically present in a certain place during certain times, as described above. It is certainly possible to coordinate this kind of thing, but I don't know of any college students who have actually done this, which is part of what I'm upset about. Something like Beeminder could be used for tracking this sort of thing, but Beeminder alone doesn't create all of the same incentives that having a workplace with coworkers or students who expect you to be physically present at a certain place for a certain duration of time does.
I've asked 3-4 non-LW friends if they would find a pseudo-workplace arrangement useful, and they all said no. I've historically had lots of trouble with getting people to show up to organized study groups on the weekends, as well. Would many students be open to, or benefit from this kind of pseudo-workplace setup for university students? Am I aneurotypical enough that I'm the only one who would benefit from something like this? Would LW readers who are students be much more likely to use or benefit from this type of setup than the average college student? Would it be worthwhile to attempt to create and encourage college students to use pseudo-workplaces?
Briefly: I'm looking for a person (or group) with whom I can mutually discuss self improvement and personal goals (and nothing else) on a regular basis.
Also, note, this post is an example of asking a personally important question on LW. The following idea is not meant as a general mindhack, but just as something I want to try out myself.
We are unconsciously motivated by those around us. The Milgram experiment and the Asch conformity experiment are the two best examples of social influence that come to my mind, though I'm sure there are plenty more (if you haven't heard of them, I really suggest spending a minute).
I've tended to see this drive to conform to the expectations of others as a weakness of the human mind, and yes, it can be destructive. However, as long as its there, I should exploit it. Specifically, I want to exploit it to fight akrasia.
Utilizing positive social influence is a pretty common tactic for fighting drug addictions (like in AA), but I haven't really heard of it being used to fight unproductivity. Sharing your personal work/improvement goals with someone in the same position as yourself, along with reflecting on previous attempts, could potentially be powerful. Humans simply feel more responsible for the things they tell other people about, and less responsible for the things they bottle up and don't tell anyone (like all of my productivity strategies).
The setup that I envision would be something like this:
I've tried doing something similar to this with my friends, but it just didn't work. We already knew each other too well, and there wasn't that air of dispassionate professionality. We were friends, but not partners (in this sense of the word).
If something close to what I describe already exists, or at least serves the same purpose, I would love to hear about it (I already tried the LW study hall, but it wasn't really the structure or atmosphere I was going for). Otherwise, I'd be thrilled to find someone here to try doing this with. You can PM me if you don't want to post here.
1. After explaining this whole idea to someone IRL, they remarked that there would be little social influence because we would only be meeting online in a pseudo-anonymous way. However, I don't find this to be the case personally when I talk with people online, so a virtual environment would be no detriment (hopefully this isn't just unique to me).
Edit (29/3/2015): Just for the record, I wanted to say that I was able to make the connection I wanted, via a PM. Thanks LW!