It is well known that boredom often results in eating — it does in my world, anyway. It is also well known that productivity tends to increase if there is a reward offered for completing the task at hand. So if you are actually trying to stop grazing on the couch all day, it makes sense to use this knowledge to cause a tidal wave of anti-sloth emotion. The kSafe, a freshly launched product on Kickstarter, wants to remove all temptation by keeping the chocolate locked away until you finish your work.
Once you’ve summoned up the courage to place your future reward in the see-through kSafe, the idea is to select a goal — time, steps taken, location, etc. — at which point, the beaker locks itself. The self-inflicted cruelty genius of the system is that there is no manual override. Only once your goal has been reached will the door unlock. And if it is starting to feel too easy, you can increase the difficulty of your goal mid-way through, if you’re feeling masochistic.
Joking aside, it must be said that I can see the kSafe really working, not least because the item you desire is always in view. Clearly, it is primarily aimed at folks who are trying to get fit. With a bit more work on the software side, however, I could see some great integrations with desktop apps — hitting a certain number of words in Microsoft Office, for example. For difficult-to-measure goals, the team behind the kSafe also wants to add a mode that will give friends the power to adjudicate and reward your commitment.
The price of this torture device is $89 to Kickstarter backers, with shipping penciled in for November this year, while the planned retail price will be $129.
To find out more about the kSafe, head for the project’s Kickstarter page.
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