To reduce procrastination and become faster at launching my projects, I’ve set the goal to launch 12 startups in 12 months. This month, I’m launching the second project which fits this mentality well. It’s called Go Fucking Do It and it forces you to reach your goals, or pay if you don’t.

The problem

“Procrastination is one of the most common and deadliest of diseases and its toll on success and happiness is heavy.” — Wayne Gretzky

Back when I was a student, I used to share an apartment in Amsterdam with my friend Timo. We had serious issues keeping the house tidy. We’d clean the apartment but then in a matter of days, the kitchen would be filled with dirty dishes. The house would be so dirty after weeks, that out of sheer desperation, we’d start to clean. Not okay.

Meanwhile, my friend Jim and me were busy making music videos. While we’d love thinking of concepts for videos and shooting them, we hated editing the clips together into a final video. It would take months to finish one music video.

Both were classic cases of procrastination.

The solution

Timo and I took desperate measures and thought of a system. We would fine each other if the dishes we used wouldn’t be cleaned in 24 hours. The fines were about $5 per plate. It worked so well that while the system was going for years, the house would stay neat.

So Jim and I decided to use the same system as with cleaning my house. We’d pay Timo $250, if we didn’t finish the video by a certain date. Those were college days and back then paying $250 meant no food for a month. So we did everything manageable to get it done. And it worked. Instead of months, we finished that video in a week.

The concept

I continued using this system for most of my latest projects. I’d simply email my friends with a goal, a deadline and a price. I’d promise them to pay it if I didn’t finish it. And a few times, I failed and paid up. I became accountable for reaching my goals. And I begun to hold friends accountable too when they told me they wanted launch a product and let them put a price on it.

So this idea works, and I thought it’d be fun to built this into a site. I even put $250 on launching this site today and it worked cause it’s here! The site records your goal and deadline and you pick a friend (called a supervisor) who will check if you actually did it. It’s very minimal on purpose.













How it works

It lets you specify a goal, deadline and a price

It uses Stripe to process payment details

Every day, it checks if there are deadlines passed today

If so, it emails the supervisor to check if their friends reached their goal or not

If they say you haven’t, you’re charged the amount you set

If they say you have, everything is fine and you’re not charged

Challenges

It’s not easy to get people to enter their credit card details. But that can be mitigated. Just like with my previous project, the trustworthiness increased the moment you get press and can add their coverage to the website. I hope that happens in the coming days and weeks.

Another topic would be who should get the money when a person doesn’t reach their goal? Me, the (greedy) site owner? A charity? A third friend? That’s vigorously discussed on Hacker News now and I’ll keep reading their ideas and implement it when there’s a consensus.

Try it out

Try it here for yourself. As always I’d love to hear your feedback on it.

Update: See the debriefing on Go Fucking Do It and how it raised $30,000 »

See the startup I built next: Tubelytics »

P.S. I just wrote a book on bootstrapping indie startups called MAKE. And I'm now on Twitter too if you'd like to follow more of my adventures. I don't use email so tweet me your questions.