See The Cafe That Helps Beat Writer’s Block—by Fining You $22: Customers who fail to meet their deadline pay a fee; ‘I sit down and immediately start typing’ by Suryatapa Bhattacharya of The WSJ. Excerpts:
"At the Manuscript Writing Cafe, people on a deadline pay to put themselves under the gaze of a manager in hopes of curing writer’s block.
Joe Sasanuma, a lawyer at a technology company, is under orders from his publisher to complete a legal book by the end of the year. Alas, the words to explain the contractual obligations of cloud-computing providers haven’t flowed effortlessly. So Mr. Sasanuma has been visiting the cafe.
The cafe’s co-owner, Takuya Kawai, directs his customers to set a goal for the day and, if requested, prods them to get on with it. If they fail to meet it by the time they leave, they have to pay a fine equivalent to $22. It’s an honor system, says Mr. Kawai, but it seems to work.
“Looking at each other, they find themselves under the same amount of stress—and so, together, they end up working hard,” he said.
Students working on book reports, comic-book illustrators, authors and corporate warriors with a presentation due have been flocking to the cafe, which opened in April in an artsy Tokyo neighborhood.
It seats 10, and costs around $2 an hour, or $4.50 an hour for a premium seat facing a brick wall."
Related post:
How Odysseus Started The Industrial Revolution (Factory work may have been a commitment device to get everyone to work hard)
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