The goal of the 10,000 hours project is to create a device that will track and enforce a person's studying/working/skill-perfecting habits through an easy physical interface, sensor monitoring and help of social pressure.

The idea is to prototype a clock-like device whose main function is to track how many hours the user has spend studying/learning/practicing. The time will be displayed in a motivational format to encourage the user to continue perfecting the chosen skill. While there will be a number of smaller intermediary milestones, the final goal is to accumulate 10,000 hours of practicing a single skill.

The device will be able to show how many hours was logged on a given day, week or month. The user will be able to start/stop/add/subtract logging time using button interface or through the app.

The device will feature the motion sensor to monitor user's presence and will shut off the time log automatically if no user movement is detected.

There will be a WiFi module that will connect the user to the social media, so all the progress, goals and even failures can be shared with friends.

Physical motivation will be provided by a speaker and a motor that will start vibrating and beeping if the studying goal for the day is not accomplished.

The working prototype is shown on the picture below.

Example:

So say, I want to learn coding.

Steps to take:

  1. Create the skill on the app, set how often and at what time you want to practice and when you want to start practicing, with an option of entering the time you have already spent practicing the skill.
  2. Set motivational options - social, sounds, vibrations, encouragement messages, internet blocking etc.
  3. Start time tracking by pressing the start button.
  4. After some preset amount of time, the device will start to make noises, re-hit the start button to continue time logging .
  5. When you are finished, press the stop button or just don't do anything, time logging will stop automatically. In addition, the device will continually track your physical presence, and if you leave the logging will also stop.
  6. Once the practicing session is accomplished share your accomplishment with your friends by pressing a button on the device.
  7. At the time of the next practicing session the device will encourage to begin the practice by making noises, vibrating, and even some light shaming on social media.
  8. Once you hit a milestone, the device will share encouragement messages.
  9. Once some time logging has been done, the device will be able to analyze the velocity and predict the future progress.

Why I think this project is important:

I lot of people (me included) want to get better at something. But it is hard. So every bit of help counts.