Get slapped to boost productivity; Elon Musk impressed by Calif. man's creativity [read his story]

There are hacks for pretty much everything in life, but to what extent are you willing to think out of the box to get the idea working. Improving productivity at work is everyone's goal, but often fails in practice. Taking periodic breaks away from your screen, solving a Sudoku puzzle, or even the ever-so-famous "two-minute rule" can be of help, but how effective have these traditional methods really been in real life. If the answer is non-impressive, this Indian-American's hack to quadruple your productivity is tried and tested.

You might have seen a viral social media post about a man hiring a stranger woman to slap him everything he used Facebook. The goal was to increase productivity and it worked like a charm. Maneesh Sethi, founder of wearable devices brand Pavlok, shared his creative life hack to boost productivity in a blog, in which he revealed the experiment delivered astounding results - so much so that it was widely reported in 2012.

The slap-to-focus experiment

Maneesh Sethi, an Indian-American, took matters into hand after realising his productivity was lagging. He put out an ad on Craiglist to hire a slapper who would help him focus on work. Sethi offered $8 an hour for the job that required the person to sit next to him while he was working and watch his screen.

"When I am wasting time, you'll have to yell at me or if need be, slap me," the job description read.

Many were interested in the job, but Kara got it. As a result of this experiment, Sethi said his average productivity skyrocketed from a measly 35-40 percent to a whopping 98 percent.

Elon Musk impressed

But why is this story going viral nine years later, one might ask. Well, in part credit goes to SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk who seemed impressed by this whacky idea. After one Twitter user breathed life into the story nine years later, it caught Musk's attention.

Musk tweeted two fire emojis to the story shared by Twitter user Massimo, which instantly struck a chord with his millions of followers who grew curious. Sethi seized this opportunity by introducing the world of new followers by claiming "I'm the guy in this picture."

Replying to Musk's tweet, he said: "Is @elonmusk giving me two emojis the highest I'll ever reach? Is this my icarus flying too close to the sun moment? Was that implied by the fire symbols elon posted? Time will tell."

He further introduced his company, too: "And in the off chance anyone sees this, I founded a wearable device company to change habits based on this experiment. @pavlok . Wearable device that delivers an electric zap and positive sensations to reward good habits and break bad ones."