Tokyo writers seeking an antidote to procrastination and unproductive work practices can now toil away in the company of like-minded people, united in their determination to face the tyranny of the looming deadline.
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can be found at the manuscript writing cafe, which opened in April in the city’s koenji neighborhood as a haven for writers, editors, proofreaders, video producers, and manga artists – anyone facing the odds. distractions from home or the office.
Reading: Anti procrastination cafe
Committing to a specific writing goal is a condition of admission, as is understanding that leaving in a fit of spite is out of the question before the task at hand has been completed.
the cafe charges 150 Japanese yen ($1.15) for the first 30 minutes and then 300 an hour after that. Though some people have overstayed the official closing time, they’ve finally finished their work, said owner Takuya Kawai.
The comfortable 10-person café offers unlimited self-serve refills of tea and coffee, high-speed Wi-Fi, plug-in ports, and high chairs that positively discourage slouching or falling asleep.
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This week, my editors asked me to put the coffee shop’s unique selling point to the test. Would I spend my two-hour session flitting between a nearly empty word file, email, and social networking sites, or, as I promised kawai, would I move on with this article a bit?
clients must write their name, writing goals and the time they plan to finish. They can also ask Kawai to scold them about their progress. those who ask for the “light” option will simply be asked how it went when they pay at the end of the session; others who need a higher dose of discipline can expect him to occasionally stand behind them, though he insists that he makes no value judgments about the content on his laptop screen.
The mild-mannered 52-year-old, who is a technical writer when he’s not coaxing clients to get to work, dismissed concerns among some social media users that his tactics were heavy-handed.
“Instead of monitoring you, I am here to support you,” he said. “As a result, what they thought would take a day was actually completed in three hours, or tasks that usually take three hours were done in one.”
Seated to my left, Shizuku Kino admitted that he was struggling. the manga artist had arrived more than two hours earlier, but had come up blank so far. “It has nothing to do with the environment, I just don’t have any good ideas at the moment. It’s not that I can’t concentrate… the fact that I don’t have anything done is my problem.”
uhyou kitami, with whom kino has collaborated on a manga series, was doing better. “I’ve made a lot of progress,” she said of his first visit to the cafe. “It’s not that the environment inspires you… once you sit down you have no choice but to get down to business.”
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kawai, who opened the cafe earlier this month, thinks its location on a busy street corner is perfectly suited for unleashing torrents of creativity.
“After we opened, I played jazz to drown out the sound of people banging on their keyboards, but actually the noise from traffic and people outside is at the right level for that. you don’t want the absolute silence of a library or a house…here people can take advantage of the energy of the neighborhood”.
After initial doubts about whether the concept would work in a city full of themed cafes, he was caught off guard by the answer. “People were happy when they told me they had met their deadline or word count for the day. and that also made me happy.”
My two hours at the café flew by, thankfully free from the dreaded afternoon slump. my screen was filled with a rough draft of this article.
When I left, I wished kino luck with his deadline. she turned around and nodded her thanks, but her hands didn’t leave the keyboard. the ideas finally flowed.
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