My friend Amelia and I are in many ways alike: we’re both freelance journalists, with a sweet tooth and a Simpsons quote for every occasion. And we’ve both got tasks we’re putting off.
Amelia’s are tedious household jobs: ordering new vacuum filters, investigating her broken dishwasher, measuring a panel of her bath for some reason.
Mine are all work-related: edits on one piece, pitching another. At the top – or bottom – of my list is sending a difficult email to an interviewee, marked “to-do” since last November.
And so, on one sunny Thursday morning, we gathered at Amelia’s kitchen table to hold a “forcing party”.
It’s perhaps even less fun than it sounds. The concept was coined by an X user called Tyler Alterman, who tweeted semi-jokingly about wanting to hire someone to force him to complete tasks he was procrastinating from.
When one of Alterman’s friends responded with an offer of help, they agreed to throw a “force-one-another-to-do-stuff party”. Alterman later reported the results: a completed passport application, a brand new website and a cleared inbox.
Inspired, Amelia and I allocated one hour to complete all the tasks we’re procrastinating from, and vowed to hold each other to account. At first the vibe was stoic as we tapped at our laptops. I was still trying to avoid the email. Start with an easy win, I reasoned as I plugged through my edits.
Amelia finished a task first. “I messaged the bank,” she said proudly. “That’s huge.”
But the quiet kitchen didn’t match our celebratory mood. I opened a new browser tab, typed in “InstantRapAirhorn.com” and smashed the big red button.
The sound functioned like a shot of adrenaline: we were instantly upright, transformed like Pavlov’s slavering dogs at the bell, newly attuned to all we might yet accomplish and the rewards in store.
That email had never looked more possible. The party was kicking off.
***
Ewa Lombard, a neuroscientist and senior researcher at the University of Geneva’s Laboratory for Uncertainty, Collective Intelligence and Decision-Making, says there are a few different reasons why a forcing party might work to overcome procrastination.
The first is reward substitution: coupling a thankless task with something pleasant – in my case, hanging out with Amelia. Social interaction “is a very powerful reward for most people”, says Lombard.
Tasks we’re inclined to put off are usually not “intrinsically motivating”, says Lombard: boring, unpleasant, difficult or with little perceived reward. “They do not excite your reward system, because you’re not curious about them, there’s no novelty attached – there’s only complexity.”
This is true of our tasks. Amelia is a curious person, driven by novelty, so it’s no surprise that she’s lax with household admin. My aversion to writing that email is emotional; I have to explain that the piece I interviewed him for isn’t going to be published, and I feel bad for wasting his time.
The second motivating factor is the time constraint. Often, Lombard says, we over-estimate how much time we need for a task or are put off by its apparent complexity.
For example, you might predict that making a website will take several days. “In reality, you might need three hours – but you don’t know that, because you don’t have that experience,” Lombard says.
Blocking out an hour or two limits the unpleasant period, making it easier to start. The thought of being free afterwards further focuses us, Lombard says, because we anticipate the reward.
The deadline also helps you to reach a productive state more quickly. A psychological principle called the Yerkes-Dodson law dictates that we become more effective with a certain amount of physiological or mental arousal, but experience diminishing returns beyond that, Lombard says.
A time limit can spur us on to that optimal state, raising neuroadrenaline levels the same way fast-tempo electronic music might.
Simply completing a task can be a “moment of ramping up” too, giving you a boost. Alterman’s forcing party featured optional shots “for liquid courage”, and concluded with a round of applause. I tell Lombard about InstantRapAirhorn.com, and she nods like it makes perfect sense: “You added some reward conditioning.”
***
While forcing parties might seem solely about productivity, the social aspect is key to their effectiveness. They share similarities with body doubling, or completing tasks in the presence of another person – a strategy used by people with ADHD. Focusmate, an online service, pairs strangers on video calls for this exact purpose.
Another parallel is hackathons, which first took off in Silicon Valley; software engineers would meet to collaborate on a short, focused burst of intense work. The concept has since been adopted more widely as a way to brainstorm solutions, problem-solve or boost innovation.
When Lombard interviewed hackathon participants for a 2023 paper, interviewees described the events as energising, “amazing”, even the best way to spend a weekend.
“Part of the magic was the social novelty,” Lombard says. This increases levels of noradrenaline and dopamine in the brain, and thus motivation. Social proof – wanting to be accountable and do right by the collective – was another important factor: “You don’t want to let others down.”
Many hackathon participants reported that the time pressure forced them to be more creative. With typically 24 hours, sometimes fewer, they did not “have the time to procrastinate”, Lombard says.
Lombard and her colleagues also found an even more transcendent effect. Hackathons encouraged “kairos moments”: meaningful, rare and special instances that register as distinct from the daily humdrum and have lasting resonance.
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Just working in the presence of other people can reduce our own perception of the difficulty of a task, Lombard says. Plus: “Two brains are always better than one.”
At my forcing party, I asked Amelia for help with checking a phrase and deciding how to prioritise my tasks. By the hour’s end, we had added the opening bars of DJ Khaled’s All I Do Is Win to the airhorn. The vibe was euphoric, and both our lists were nearly completed.
Amelia liked the competitive element and the momentum generated by blitzing through tasks. She ordered her vacuum filters and measured her bath panel – the latter, she’d been putting off for “probably a year”.
And yes, I sent the email. It took five minutes. My interviewee responded positively not long after. It shouldn’t have taken a forcing party to get it done – but I’m glad it did.
