This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 30th, 2008 at 9:48 am and is filed under All Posts, Family and Parenthood, Usability and Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
You Snooze? You Lose.
For sale at ThinkGeek:
The SnuzNLuz gets your [derriere] out of bed with the simple trade-off of sleep for hatred. With every push of the snooze button, the SnuzNLuz will deduct ten dollars (or more) from your bank account and donate to an organization that you detest. That could be the Republican Party, PETA, ACLU, NRA, anything opposite to your politics. [via History of the Button]
ThinkGeek argues:
“The SnūzNLūz uses the very complex psychological phenomenon known as ‘HATRED’. Basically it’s human nature to wish harm upon your enemies. Similarly, it’s human nature not to give your enemies gobs of cash so that they can grow big and dominate the world with their totally wrong, stupid and invalid point of view. ThinkGeek realized that. That’s why every time you hit the snooze button, the SnūzNLūz will donate a specified amount of your real money to a non-profit you hate. The problem of sleeping in is solved.”
I’m not sure that I totally buy in to their explanation of the psychology behind the (supposed) effectiveness of the product, but I love the overall method: harness your own internal motivations (negative or positive) to drive desired behavior patterns. Many similar ideas are found in the teachings of the Mussar movement of Lithuanian Torah Judaism.
