[TeMPOraL]

I also recommend them to everyone, but between all the praise they're getting, I think I should also give a fair word of warning - while great, it may not work for everyone.

I used the service once; I tried to discipline myself out of a poor financial situation using Beeminder - very quickly I found myself consistently slipping, had to pay the money, and I ended up in a worse financial situation and stressed to the point I could barely function.

Now don't treat it as a negative - instead, like a warning on the razor box: this thing is sharp, do not use when your hands are shaking. It's great as a motivator, but be sure you're in a good enough mental shape to handle both your commitments and the eventual slip-ups.

That said, I also have to praise Beeminder for having a great tool with lots of little nice features (I'm particularly fond of the graph aesthetics), amazing and responsive support (and proactive - I screwed something up once, they fixed it for me pretty much immediately and sent tips on how to avoid this happening again), and wrote a lot of interesting things on akrasia.

EDIT:

To 'dreeves - long time ago I shared this experience over at SlateStarCodex, and I missed your reply then. Referring to it, and that you're "extremely averse to people paying money to Beeminder that they don’t feel was worth it" - no, I feel it was totally worth it, even if it contributed a bit to one of my biggest stress episodes in my lifetime. I'm not scared of Beeminder, I'm scared of myself. I treat it as a combat scar in battle against akrasia :). So thanks for your kind refund offer, but a) you're totally entitled to the money, and b) it was long time ago :).

Oh, and thanks for supporting SSC :).

And, to everyone else - did I tell you already that Beeminder people are really great, friendly and radiate honesty in a way that's pretty much unseen in this industry? I do very much recommend the service despite the fact that, by my own fault, I managed to cut myself with it.

[dreeves]

Holy cow, you made my day! <blush> Thank you! Fascinating what you said in another comment about the catch 22 of remembering and sticking to plans when you're feeling good. Actually, I'm realizing I'm confused about this. I'm so everything-looks-like-a-nail that it sounds eminently beemindable so it would probably be good for me to keep trying to understand what I'm missing there. [e-mail] if an email thread seems easier.

Btw, I collected my replies from that SlateStarCodex comment thread and put them here for posterity: http://forum.beeminder.com/t/slate-star-codex-on-willpower/5...

Thanks again for all the feedback and kind words!