The /Now Page Movement: Publicly Declaring What You Work on

In 2015 the world’s very first /now page was created — an HTML file announcing what the owner of that domain is working on… now.

In an email interview, creator Derek Sivers remembers that he was mostly inspired by two friends he’d been thinking about often. “Noticing I was wishing for that, I thought maybe someone feels the same about me.” (Sivers is a long-time entrepreneur/author/musician currently living in New Zealand, who is also an occasional giver of TED talks…)

But he also described it as “a public declaration of priorities,” where the very act of creating the page also brings an opportunity to confront this clarifying question. “If I’m doing something that’s not on my list, is it something I want to add, or something I want to stop?”

And that turned out to be just the beginning…

Later in 2015 another /now page was created by Gregory Brown, who offers life coaching services for software developers. Brown later wrote that he experienced the same sensation: that adding new items to his /now page felt like “an intentional priority shift.” And when Sivers had tweeted out Brown’s announcement, eight more people created their own /now pages.

Sivers conclusion? A movement had been created. Soon he’d whipped up a directory of all the /now pages, and given it an easy-to-remember URL: NowNowNow.com.

Sivers told me “It’s been a really fun nerdy project to maintain.”

A Long Time Coming

After eight years, there’s now a whopping 2,822 /now pages in that directory — and it’s still being updated. A few are outdated, and there is even a few that are deadlinks. But there are plenty of others. “It goes in waves,” Sivers said in an email. Though the usual pace is 1 or 2 new pages a day, “Someone mentions it to their network and I’ll get 20 new signups per day for a while.”

The page displays the faces of each happy /now page creator, in rows of four, along with their name, job title, and, of course, the URL of their /now page…

There are programmers and designers, authors and musicians, agile coaches and SEO consultants — a vast and varied range of careers. Yes, many of these so-called /now pages haven’t been updated in years. But many of them have, offering those precious peeks at what somebody else is working on right now.

• “Don’t tell anyone, but I’ve started work on my first graphic novel!” writes British filmmaker Adam Westbrook this month.
• “At the moment I am working as a Senior Software Developer (full remote) at a large consumer electronics retailer…” writes UK-based Matthew Fedak.
• Over in London, “I’m all in on my new business,” writes entrepreneur Jodie Cook. “Coachvox AI. We create artificially intelligent coaches based on thought leaders.”

In our email interview, Sivers shared a fond memory from roughly two years ago, when a web service was offering to create personal webpages for people. “They liked the idea of the /now page so much that they made it automatic for everyone who has a site with them.”

But Sivers also shared the secret history of the URL: he’d already bought the domain back in 2003. By 2009 it was even part of his online startup, with NowNowNow.com becoming a place to document his progress on building services for musicians. Archive.org preserves a copy of that 2009 version, a homepage promising visitors a “transparent office where you can watch everything being built, or even contribute if you’d like.”

So why did he call that domain NowNowNow? Sivers liked the motivational message that was built right into its name. “I liked the idea of doing things now now now instead of procrastinating…”

Sivers admits he probably reinvented the wheel. Early Linux systems included the finger command for pulling up a user’s self-composed status updates. (Though it’s since been removed from many distros — in some cases replaced by a simpler command — named pinky.)

But Sivers takes pride in creating a tool that lets others offer a window into their own world. “It’s not a business. It’s not social media,” explains the official “About” page at NowNowNow.com, emphasizing that businesses are intentionally not being included. “Browsing nownownow.com is only interesting because you get a glimpse into people’s lives and how they focus. If it became full of businesses, it would lose its appeal…”

As a satirical Easter Egg, Sivers even created a /now page for NowNowNow.com. Anyone who thinks to look at NowNowNow.com/now gets a congratulatory webpage gushing “How clever you are… That is so meta, it’s crazy.”

It’s followed by a funny list of six things being done now… that changes every two seconds.

The New Now-ify Movement?

Another superfan of /now pages is Taylor Troesh, a Southern California-based software engineer and tech blogger. “Maintaining a /now page helps me focus on ‘one big thing’ at a time…” Troesh said in an email. “My natural desire to move on to my next Big Thing every few days has been forcing me to complete what I’m working on ‘now’.”

“As a side-effect, I’ve actually found that it’s a great shortcut for people to learn who I am…”

But in 2020 Troesh took things to the next level, creating his own “opinionated time management system” called nowify. (“Use any cron program to make nowify check for overdue items and beep,” explains its ReadMe page on GitHub.) As a newly-remote worker, Troesh saw this system as “an attempt to learn some self-control outside of the physical office context.” And looking back Troesh says the ongoing reminders “successfully rewired my brain as hoped… Timetracking is probably the most effective way to completely change your life.” (Along with turning off intermittent notifications.)

He’s now getting several emails a month from users interested in implementing it themselves. And his friend Brian Hicks was even inspired to make his own similar system called Montage. Hicks says Montage “annoys me when I’m not doing the thing I said I was gonna do” — after prompting the user to specify an intention, and also an amount of time to spend on it.

Troesh tells me, “I suspect that there’s quite a few people out there with similar home-grown systems.”

Followers Are Leaders

And of course, Troesh still has his own /now page, breaking out various projects as “Recent,” “Current,” and “Soon”.

“Life moves both more slowly and more quickly than expected!” Troesh wrote at the top of the page. “Looking back at ‘big things’ puts you into perspective…”

But to this day Sivers gives a lot of credit to Gregory Brown, who will always be that all-important “first follower” — the first person to follow Sivers’ lead and make a second /now page back in 2015.

Strangely, there’s an inspiring leadership lesson in here. One of Sivers’ Ted talks was on the importance of the “first follower,” calling it “an underappreciated form of leadership.” While the original leader stands alone, daring to look ridiculous, it’s that first follower who provides the first public validation of the idea — transforming that original lone nut into an actual leader. “Everyone needs to see the followers, because new followers emulate followers — not the leader… And ladies and gentlemen that is how a movement is made!”

This was in 2010, but it’s easy to see the logic that would lead Sivers’ to declare a /now page movement. Mixed in with logistical advice — “Be public. Be easy to follow!” — Sivers’ talk also included some specific philosophical thoughts. Sivers spoke about “the importance of nurturing your first few followers as equals, making everything clearly about the movement, not you.” The talk eerily foreshadows some of the intentionality Sivers would later bring to his idea for a /now page community.

“We’re told we all need to be leaders, but that would be really ineffective,” Sivers told his audience in 2010. “The best way to make a movement, if you really care, is to courageously follow and show others how to follow.

“When you find a lone nut doing something great, have the guts to be the first person to stand up and join in.”