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by jaredcollett 3294 days ago
Hey, thanks for taking the time to check this out and give your thoughts. I completely agree with you that in general we want to think of ourselves as having self-control, and in a lot of aspects we do, some of us more than others. It's kind of like the 'place something on top of my keys the night before so I don't forget it' approach. In the evening, this would be easy to remember, I am sharp and aware, but in the morning, I know from past experiences that I'm not as sharp and need a little help. What I want now, vs what I want later.

I think both positive and negative reinforcement are effective. It obviously depends on the person, situation and other factors. My thought with this idea is that the positive re-inforcement aspect of activity when it comes to activity monitors is already being tackled by the big companies, fitbit, garmin, apple health, google fit, etc. However on the 'penance' side of things, it's underrepresented and the options are far from streamlined and easy imho.

My opinion on Beeminder is that it's designed for highly-technical people. The idea would be to present a solution that is similar to Beeminder that anybody can easily understand and use. There are also other highly motivating aspects that beeminder doesn't use such as social accountability (fitbit), charities (StickK and many others), and competition (fitbit, apple, etc.).

Thanks again for the thoughts and inquiry, I'd love to keep the convo going. My current goal is to flesh out any lingering thoughts on how the idea could be improved so that I can create more of a polished model to present to the public and gage interest.
1 comments
dreeves 3293 days ago
As a cofounder of Beeminder, this makes tons of sense to me! Plenty of room for a less nerd-focused take on this (we're heaving on the Quantified Self side) and other forms of motivation hacking besides commitment contracts based on graphs.

I should mention that we do have a partial charity option in our fancypants premium plan: http://blog.beeminder.com/infinibee (Beemium plan, $32/mo)

And we have a tiny bit of social accountability with this feature: http://blog.beeminder.com/supporters

Btw, I'm not sure about your term "penance" here. I mean, I see how you're using it for monetary commitment contracts, I'm just not sure I agree with the term. To me it implies assuaging guilt after the fact. I think commitment contracts are all about shaping incentives before-the-fact.

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