6 ms·

How to Do What You Want: Akrasia and Self-Binding (2011)

65 points by yarinr 6y ago

dreeves 6y ago
Awww, it's the inaugural post on the Beeminder blog! I'd be delighted to answer questions about this. I think the summary is that hyperbolic discounting is the cause of procrastination (and other forms of akrasia) and the solution is commitment devices. Beeminder takes a quantified-self approach to commitment devices which we think is especially powerful and flexible.
rektide 6y ago
> Industry. Lose no time; be always employ'd in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.[1] One of the projects I've long procrastinated on is building a Benjamin Franklin 13 Virtues trackers, to help log/quantify myself regularly, & hopefully see/spot procrastination/low-points, & apply myself better. The commitment device of having a window in to the past. [1] http://www.thirteenvirtues.com/ http://www.thirteenvirtues.com/
- dreeves 6y ago
  Sounds highly beemindable! Likely relevant: Gitminder, our GitHub integration for committing to pushing more commits or closing more issues. beeminder.com/gitminder (I'm worried that I'm turning the comments into Beeminder Evangelism Hour here but I can't seem to help myself. I guess Hacker News of all places will be forgiving of that...)
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    You've been a part of the landscape for so long now that we can excuse the evangelism ;). Myself, I've been using Beeminder many years ago for a while. It significantly contributed to my stress and misery back then, as I lost money to it in a crucial time where I didn't have much of it, and my goals were very much related to improving my financial situation :). But that's not counter-evangelism! To this day, I consider Beeminder valuable and I recommend it to people - just with a bit of hard-won caution: double-check your mental state before you engage such a strong commitment device. Derailing needs to hurt, but if you're on a verge of spinning down into a dark place, it may tip you over. Also: I love the "yellow brick road" chart, it's clean and junk free. A commendable example of good dataviz.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
justarandomq 6y ago
"do something against your own interests because you can't be trusted" I really like the idea behind beeminder, as it focuses on discipline/process more than the outcome, but it looks like I could accomplish this with a spreadsheet, reminders, and a 'swear jar' of cash I actually get to keep. Might work for some people.
- dreeves 6y ago
  I don't think the incentives are quite right that way. What motivates you to keep money out of the swear jar? (It's possible that the tracking alone will be motivating. Some people, for some goals, find that to be the case.) I'd love to hear how it goes for anyone who sets up a DIY Beeminder!
  - justarandomq 6y ago
    I'd be motivated by the swear jar & reminders since I (would have) put it there intentionally. But I realize not everyone lives this way and busy life can be distracting. You're very right it would depend much on the person AND the goal. The main value I personally see here is the setup. I wouldn't have to set up reminders and tracking manually. I may even learn a new goal I hadn't considered if others share their goals. As long as it doesn't devolve into a perfectionism race to the burnout line. I hope it results into more a tool for self improvement than yet another business preying on human flaws/needs.
    - dreeves 6y ago
      You should check out the Beeminder community: http://forum.beeminder.com http://forum.beeminder.com -- I think it will quickly convince you that we're a Very Serious Tool For Self-Improvement.
reagle 6y ago
I wrote about this here https://hackinglife.mitpress.mit.edu/pub/94tu3rlx/release/2 https://hackinglife.mitpress.mit.edu/pub/94tu3rlx/release/2
- emmanueloga_ 6y ago
  * Regarding "life-hacking": "In an effort to keep up with a world of too much, life hackers sometimes risk going too far" [1] * Regarding "meditation": "The Varieties of Contemplative Experience Study catalogued 59 different types of meditation-related experiences that can be distressing or associated with impairment in functioning." ... " As many as 1 in 4 meditators reports negative or unwanted effects from meditation" [2] * There are "significantly higher mortality rate among people who regularly sit for prolonged periods" and "long term complications of prolonged standing" [3]. What's left for us? Floating? :-) I guess my point is that for each piece of "life-improving" advice there's a counter ... I don't really have much of silver lining to offer :-/. I guess we are all different and need to find through time, enormous effort and trial and error, the sweet spot of a routine that works for us. 1: https://hackinglife.mitpress.mit.edu/ https://hackinglife.mitpress.mit.edu/ 2: https://www.cheetahhouse.org/faq https://www.cheetahhouse.org/faq 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_desk#Effect_on_health https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_desk#Effect_on_health
  - nextaccountic 6y ago
    Your [2] link is from a site that offers paid consultations for meditators in distress.. do you have a source from a site that doesn't stand to profit from those statements?
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - emmanueloga_ 6y ago
      I don't think they are for profit, if they provide a therapy service then it makes sense that they would charge for it though (as any other therapist would do). I remember hearing about adverse effects of meditation in podcasts and blog posts and, perhaps some audio book? Can't remember. There are links to a few studies in all mighty wikipedia too [1], I'm sure you can find sources. From hearing the pros and the cons I suspect many forms of meditation are healthy, and it can be unhealthy in the same way some forms of exercise can be unhealthy [2]. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meditation#Potential_adverse_effects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meditation#Potential_adverse_e... 2: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22exercise%20overdose%22 https://www.google.com/search?q=%22exercise%20overdose%22
fy20 6y ago
How well does this technique work for goals where the path isn't so clearly defined? Say you want to "launch a profitable side business in 2021", how would you fit this into that? You could have a daily goal of "work 1 hour a day on my side business", but that could easily end up with you spending 365 hours reading blogs on starting a side business and not getting anywhere.
- dreeves 6y ago
  Good observation! Yes, you need a simple, graphable metric that's a good proxy for the underlying goal you care about. We've written about that a bit at http://blog.beeminder.com/whattomind http://blog.beeminder.com/whattomind Beeminder encourages you to define and refine your metric to make sure it doesn't fall prey to Goodhart's Law. Of course it's your own goal and so it's much less susceptible to Goodhart's Law. You actually care about the underlying goal!
tbirdz 6y ago
I never really understood beeminder. What's to stop someone from just lying so they don't have to pay?
- dreeves 6y ago
  I can rattle off half a dozen things to stop someone from doing that! 1. It ruins the Quantified Self aspect. You don't want to falsify your data. 2. You've set up an autodata goal and there isn't any (easy) way to cheat. Your Fitbit (or Habitica or Duolingo or Project Euler or whatever) just tells Beeminder how many steps got (or whatever your metric is). 3. Your graph is public, and ideally you've pointed friends/family to it. Are you going to lie to your friends and family? 4. It's just part of your identity as a Beeminder user. If you were the type to falsify your data to weasel out of a commitment, you wouldn't have signed up for Beeminder in the first place. 5. Beeminder does a lot of valuable things (reminders, graphs, community, generally making you awesomer) so arguably has earned the money by the time you first derail. 6. Cheating on Beeminder is a devastating precedent that ruins the power that it had as a tool to motivate you. 7. Think of the children! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jB62AyZ6gHk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jB62AyZ6gHk (Those kids are so much bigger now, because your derailments pretty literally put food in their mouths!) Ok, that's all I've got. Here's the blog version: https://blog.beeminder.com/cheating/ https://blog.beeminder.com/cheating/
lambdaloop 6y ago
I've tried beeminder and other self-binding contracts, but after some time something in my life (moving, breakup, etc) pops up and I just can't fulfill the goal for 1-2 weeks. After I let it slip for a bit, I find it harder to come back and it feels that the contract loses some meaning. For any system I've tried, it consistently falls after 3-4 months of use (this is beeminder, spreadsheets, text files, among others). Does anyone have suggestions for how to keep going after a setback?
- dreeves 6y ago
  First question: did you know that with Beeminder you can schedule arbitrary breaks in your commitment/graph? They do have to be scheduled with a week of lead time. (Of course you can also take the hit and get, by default, a week of respite after derailing. Our most hardcore users find that worthwhile sometimes and explains how Beeminder makes money even (especially) from our most successful users. I know that seems ironic or paradoxical for those first encountering Beeminder!)
  - lambdaloop 6y ago
    Yes, when I was using beeminder, I both set scheduled breaks and also got hit and got a break. I'd say the issue would be 50/50 planned/unplanned, but I didn't always plan appropriately so I got hit more often than scheduled. I did use beeminder for 3-4 months at a time, with great benefit! But looking back at every goal I set, it starts slipping past the 3-4 month mark. I got similar results with other systems (like the Lights spreadsheet from ultraworking or keeping a journal in text files), although without the nice beeminder charts.. I'm not sure, do other people see these patterns with their goals? Are there any tricks for fighting this late slippage?
    - dreeves 6y ago
      I think there are a million tricks and my top meta-trick would be to ask that question in the Beeminder forum. Just asking it will get you engaged with the community there and serve as additional motivation to stay on the wagon. Analytics-wise it seems that if you stick around for 9 months to a year you become markedly more likely to stick around indefinitely. Another possible source of tips: http://blog.beeminder.com/burnout http://blog.beeminder.com/burnout -- about not getting overzealous about beeminding all-the-things right off the bat.
Bellamy 6y ago
I use Habinator app and it's working for me.
- dreeves 6y ago
  Thanks for this recommendation! If it has a commitment device aspect to it, I'll add it to our list of competitors at http://blog.beeminder.com/competitors http://blog.beeminder.com/competitors
agumonkey 6y ago
We should be addicted to taxes. Control mechanisms often reveal where we truly want to go.
ainiriand 6y ago
Somehow I've been train 4 times per week for 5 years now. I can always find some time for it. I wish I could do that for coding.
Sodaware 6y ago
I've been using Beeminder for 8 years[1], and it is no exaggeration to say it has massively changed my life. It helped me run a marathon, procrastinate less, write more words, workout regularly, and a bunch of other stuff. It's weird and it's not for everyone, but if it works for you then go for it. I'm not ashamed that I need to wear corrective lenses, and I'm not ashamed that I needed help to get my shit together. [1] https://www.philnewton.net/blog/beeminding-8-years/ https://www.philnewton.net/blog/beeminding-8-years/
- yarinr 6y ago
  Hi, I'm the one who sent this link. It's funny to see you here, since I actually discovered it by reading your blog post! I honestly not sure how I stumbled upon it, but I liked it. Thank you! As for the link, what really resonated with me was the concept of commitment vehicles. We all hit external deadlines (a form of commitment vehicle) on a regular basis, so how can we harness their power to meet OUR OWN goals? This article presents some approaches (Beeminder and otherwise). I wonder what other approaches exist!

65 points by yarinr 6y ago

Awww, it's the inaugural post on the Beeminder blog! I'd be delighted to answer questions about this. I think the summary is that hyperbolic discounting is the cause of procrastination (and other forms of akrasia) and the solution is commitment devices. Beeminder takes a quantified-self approach to commitment devices which we think is especially powerful and flexible.

rektide 6y ago

> Industry. Lose no time; be always employ'd in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.[1] One of the projects I've long procrastinated on is building a Benjamin Franklin 13 Virtues trackers, to help log/quantify myself regularly, & hopefully see/spot procrastination/low-points, & apply myself better. The commitment device of having a window in to the past. [1] http://www.thirteenvirtues.com/ http://www.thirteenvirtues.com/

dreeves 6y ago
Sounds highly beemindable! Likely relevant: Gitminder, our GitHub integration for committing to pushing more commits or closing more issues. beeminder.com/gitminder (I'm worried that I'm turning the comments into Beeminder Evangelism Hour here but I can't seem to help myself. I guess Hacker News of all places will be forgiving of that...)
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  You've been a part of the landscape for so long now that we can excuse the evangelism ;). Myself, I've been using Beeminder many years ago for a while. It significantly contributed to my stress and misery back then, as I lost money to it in a crucial time where I didn't have much of it, and my goals were very much related to improving my financial situation :). But that's not counter-evangelism! To this day, I consider Beeminder valuable and I recommend it to people - just with a bit of hard-won caution: double-check your mental state before you engage such a strong commitment device. Derailing needs to hurt, but if you're on a verge of spinning down into a dark place, it may tip you over. Also: I love the "yellow brick road" chart, it's clean and junk free. A commendable example of good dataviz.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

justarandomq 6y ago

"do something against your own interests because you can't be trusted" I really like the idea behind beeminder, as it focuses on discipline/process more than the outcome, but it looks like I could accomplish this with a spreadsheet, reminders, and a 'swear jar' of cash I actually get to keep. Might work for some people.

dreeves 6y ago
I don't think the incentives are quite right that way. What motivates you to keep money out of the swear jar? (It's possible that the tracking alone will be motivating. Some people, for some goals, find that to be the case.) I'd love to hear how it goes for anyone who sets up a DIY Beeminder!
- justarandomq 6y ago
  I'd be motivated by the swear jar & reminders since I (would have) put it there intentionally. But I realize not everyone lives this way and busy life can be distracting. You're very right it would depend much on the person AND the goal. The main value I personally see here is the setup. I wouldn't have to set up reminders and tracking manually. I may even learn a new goal I hadn't considered if others share their goals. As long as it doesn't devolve into a perfectionism race to the burnout line. I hope it results into more a tool for self improvement than yet another business preying on human flaws/needs.
  - dreeves 6y ago
    You should check out the Beeminder community: http://forum.beeminder.com http://forum.beeminder.com -- I think it will quickly convince you that we're a Very Serious Tool For Self-Improvement.

reagle 6y ago

I wrote about this here https://hackinglife.mitpress.mit.edu/pub/94tu3rlx/release/2 https://hackinglife.mitpress.mit.edu/pub/94tu3rlx/release/2

emmanueloga_ 6y ago
* Regarding "life-hacking": "In an effort to keep up with a world of too much, life hackers sometimes risk going too far" [1] * Regarding "meditation": "The Varieties of Contemplative Experience Study catalogued 59 different types of meditation-related experiences that can be distressing or associated with impairment in functioning." ... " As many as 1 in 4 meditators reports negative or unwanted effects from meditation" [2] * There are "significantly higher mortality rate among people who regularly sit for prolonged periods" and "long term complications of prolonged standing" [3]. What's left for us? Floating? :-) I guess my point is that for each piece of "life-improving" advice there's a counter ... I don't really have much of silver lining to offer :-/. I guess we are all different and need to find through time, enormous effort and trial and error, the sweet spot of a routine that works for us. 1: https://hackinglife.mitpress.mit.edu/ https://hackinglife.mitpress.mit.edu/ 2: https://www.cheetahhouse.org/faq https://www.cheetahhouse.org/faq 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_desk#Effect_on_health https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_desk#Effect_on_health
- nextaccountic 6y ago
  Your [2] link is from a site that offers paid consultations for meditators in distress.. do you have a source from a site that doesn't stand to profit from those statements?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - emmanueloga_ 6y ago
    I don't think they are for profit, if they provide a therapy service then it makes sense that they would charge for it though (as any other therapist would do). I remember hearing about adverse effects of meditation in podcasts and blog posts and, perhaps some audio book? Can't remember. There are links to a few studies in all mighty wikipedia too [1], I'm sure you can find sources. From hearing the pros and the cons I suspect many forms of meditation are healthy, and it can be unhealthy in the same way some forms of exercise can be unhealthy [2]. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meditation#Potential_adverse_effects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meditation#Potential_adverse_e... 2: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22exercise%20overdose%22 https://www.google.com/search?q=%22exercise%20overdose%22

fy20 6y ago

How well does this technique work for goals where the path isn't so clearly defined? Say you want to "launch a profitable side business in 2021", how would you fit this into that? You could have a daily goal of "work 1 hour a day on my side business", but that could easily end up with you spending 365 hours reading blogs on starting a side business and not getting anywhere.

dreeves 6y ago
Good observation! Yes, you need a simple, graphable metric that's a good proxy for the underlying goal you care about. We've written about that a bit at http://blog.beeminder.com/whattomind http://blog.beeminder.com/whattomind Beeminder encourages you to define and refine your metric to make sure it doesn't fall prey to Goodhart's Law. Of course it's your own goal and so it's much less susceptible to Goodhart's Law. You actually care about the underlying goal!

tbirdz 6y ago

I never really understood beeminder. What's to stop someone from just lying so they don't have to pay?

dreeves 6y ago
I can rattle off half a dozen things to stop someone from doing that! 1. It ruins the Quantified Self aspect. You don't want to falsify your data. 2. You've set up an autodata goal and there isn't any (easy) way to cheat. Your Fitbit (or Habitica or Duolingo or Project Euler or whatever) just tells Beeminder how many steps got (or whatever your metric is). 3. Your graph is public, and ideally you've pointed friends/family to it. Are you going to lie to your friends and family? 4. It's just part of your identity as a Beeminder user. If you were the type to falsify your data to weasel out of a commitment, you wouldn't have signed up for Beeminder in the first place. 5. Beeminder does a lot of valuable things (reminders, graphs, community, generally making you awesomer) so arguably has earned the money by the time you first derail. 6. Cheating on Beeminder is a devastating precedent that ruins the power that it had as a tool to motivate you. 7. Think of the children! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jB62AyZ6gHk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jB62AyZ6gHk (Those kids are so much bigger now, because your derailments pretty literally put food in their mouths!) Ok, that's all I've got. Here's the blog version: https://blog.beeminder.com/cheating/ https://blog.beeminder.com/cheating/

lambdaloop 6y ago

I've tried beeminder and other self-binding contracts, but after some time something in my life (moving, breakup, etc) pops up and I just can't fulfill the goal for 1-2 weeks. After I let it slip for a bit, I find it harder to come back and it feels that the contract loses some meaning. For any system I've tried, it consistently falls after 3-4 months of use (this is beeminder, spreadsheets, text files, among others). Does anyone have suggestions for how to keep going after a setback?

dreeves 6y ago
First question: did you know that with Beeminder you can schedule arbitrary breaks in your commitment/graph? They do have to be scheduled with a week of lead time. (Of course you can also take the hit and get, by default, a week of respite after derailing. Our most hardcore users find that worthwhile sometimes and explains how Beeminder makes money even (especially) from our most successful users. I know that seems ironic or paradoxical for those first encountering Beeminder!)
- lambdaloop 6y ago
  Yes, when I was using beeminder, I both set scheduled breaks and also got hit and got a break. I'd say the issue would be 50/50 planned/unplanned, but I didn't always plan appropriately so I got hit more often than scheduled. I did use beeminder for 3-4 months at a time, with great benefit! But looking back at every goal I set, it starts slipping past the 3-4 month mark. I got similar results with other systems (like the Lights spreadsheet from ultraworking or keeping a journal in text files), although without the nice beeminder charts.. I'm not sure, do other people see these patterns with their goals? Are there any tricks for fighting this late slippage?
  - dreeves 6y ago
    I think there are a million tricks and my top meta-trick would be to ask that question in the Beeminder forum. Just asking it will get you engaged with the community there and serve as additional motivation to stay on the wagon. Analytics-wise it seems that if you stick around for 9 months to a year you become markedly more likely to stick around indefinitely. Another possible source of tips: http://blog.beeminder.com/burnout http://blog.beeminder.com/burnout -- about not getting overzealous about beeminding all-the-things right off the bat.

Bellamy 6y ago

I use Habinator app and it's working for me.

dreeves 6y ago
Thanks for this recommendation! If it has a commitment device aspect to it, I'll add it to our list of competitors at http://blog.beeminder.com/competitors http://blog.beeminder.com/competitors

agumonkey 6y ago

We should be addicted to taxes. Control mechanisms often reveal where we truly want to go.

ainiriand 6y ago

Somehow I've been train 4 times per week for 5 years now. I can always find some time for it. I wish I could do that for coding.

Sodaware 6y ago

I've been using Beeminder for 8 years[1], and it is no exaggeration to say it has massively changed my life. It helped me run a marathon, procrastinate less, write more words, workout regularly, and a bunch of other stuff. It's weird and it's not for everyone, but if it works for you then go for it. I'm not ashamed that I need to wear corrective lenses, and I'm not ashamed that I needed help to get my shit together. [1] https://www.philnewton.net/blog/beeminding-8-years/ https://www.philnewton.net/blog/beeminding-8-years/

yarinr 6y ago
Hi, I'm the one who sent this link. It's funny to see you here, since I actually discovered it by reading your blog post! I honestly not sure how I stumbled upon it, but I liked it. Thank you! As for the link, what really resonated with me was the concept of commitment vehicles. We all hit external deadlines (a form of commitment vehicle) on a regular basis, so how can we harness their power to meet OUR OWN goals? This article presents some approaches (Beeminder and otherwise). I wonder what other approaches exist!