7 ms·

Show HN: WorkOrPay – Set goals, form contracts, pay a penalty if you fail

83 points by khromem 4y ago

kderbyma 4y ago
who are these people? why not pay for a personal coach? this seems like Band-Aid.....
carlgreene 4y ago
This desperately needs a free tier, or at the very least a several month trial
- mr90210 4y ago
  Great advice.
khromem 4y ago
For my whole life, I have been dealing with bursts of motivation where I am extremely productive for several days, followed by weeks-long slumps. This yo-yo behavior does not let a person develop their skills or build anything substantial. According to my observations, people usually start working towards a goal following a temporary spike in motivation. It lasts a few days at most. Usually, it is not enough for people to move past the hurdle that is the first 2 weeks. In the first 2 weeks of starting anything new, you are garbage at everything. It’s hard work, and not very rewarding because you are constantly getting things wrong and not being able to get in flow. However, after 2 weeks so, People start appreciating the task. They finally see hints of progression in their abilities. Are able to work for longer stretches at a time before running into something frustrating. This allows them to get into flow. Together this starts to produce consistent internal motivation that allows the person to actually stick with the new habit long term. But 99% of the time people give up before getting here. To address this issue, I created WorkOrPay WorkOrPay: Set goals. Form contracts. Pay the penalty if you fail. We let you form contracts in which you agree to reach a goal before a deadline. You then deposit some money. If you fail to accomplish your goal before the deadline, your deposit is lost and donated to a charity of your choice. Basically, we provide you with external motivation (by holding your deposit hostage), so you get stuff done even when you don't feel like it. In addition, we text you daily to keep tabs and make sure you stay on track. WorkOrPay's mission is to bridge the gap in motivation from the initial spike and the more consistent motivation that appears a while later. The idea is that if you make a contract for the frustrating 2 weeks where you want to quit. The pressure of potentially losing your deposit will provide enough external motivation for you to continue until you reach the promised land of consistent internal motivation. I hope others who have the same problem I had, can use this service to break out of the loop. Without wasting years of their life. Promo Code for HN members: hackernews
- nathanaldensr 4y ago
  Where are you incorporated? Are you a non-profit? How do you make money?
  - khromem 4y ago
    We are a New York LLC. We're not incorporated at the moment. We make money through a subscription model. We do not make anything from the contracts because it seemed wrong to profit from our users failing. We want our incentives to be aligned correctly!
    - gnicholas 4y ago
      > We do not make anything from the contracts because it seemed wrong to profit from our users failing. We want our incentives to be aligned correctly! I assumed that the monthly fee was on top of a percentage fee on lost bets, which other platforms charge. You should make this more prominent on the site — aligned incentives are great!
      - khromem 4y ago
        Good point. Just updated the site to make that clear. Thanks!
    - klyrs 4y ago
      > We do not make anything from the contracts because it seemed wrong to profit from our users failing. This is how naive good-meaning founders start evil parasitic businesses that don't realize their true potential until the buyout...
    - trhr 4y ago
      Since you're allowing people to donate to charities or "anti-charities," you should just allow the user to specify a % fee that goes to you. If I set up a $1,000 contract to go to some Nazi org if I fail, I'd much rather $1 go to the Nazi org and $999 to you.
ge96 4y ago
haha I tried this on my own before, donating to a food shelter every time I binged, it got expensive.
- khromem 4y ago
  I actually used to make my friends promise to give away my money if I failed to do whatever. But it never really worked that great because I would always make some plausible excuse and my friends would let it slide and eventually just give my money back.
constantinum 4y ago
How is this different from Beeminder — afaik popularised "commitment contract". I'm an active user of Beeminder; have 4 active commitments. More than feature to feature comparison, Beeminder has an amazing blog, and an ever supportive community to lean on to. [links] https://www.beeminder.com/home https://www.beeminder.com/home https://blog.beeminder.com/ https://blog.beeminder.com/ https://forum.beeminder.com/ https://forum.beeminder.com/
- khromem 4y ago
  Beeminder is great. However, it's all automated and you cannot set huge penalties for single goals. Also, It's limited to things that can be verified from fitness trackers and other apps thats many people do not use. WorkOrPay tries to add more human interactions. We text users daily to make sure they aren't starting slack off. We help them form reasonable goals. Do verifications manually, so the goals can really be anything. We are a mix between beeminder and a life coach.
  - adamzerner 4y ago
    > However, it's all automated... Also, It's limited to things that can be verified from fitness trackers and other apps thats many people do not use. That isn't true. You can track progress on a goal manually, as well as automatically. For example, I used to use Beeminder to track how many push ups I did.
    - khromem 4y ago
      True, but if you add manually then there is no verification
  - neya 4y ago
    >We are a mix between beeminder and a life coach This sounds like a great product idea. Screw automated follow ups. I have tried it abs it doesn’t work. I would prefer a personal touch anyday!
nocobot 4y ago
this reminds me of beeminder.com I like the idea of adding financial incentive to stick to habits etc, but i would be uncomfortable with having to deposit money, why not just take a CC and charge it if I break the contract? also: what prevents me from just lying about whether I did the thing I promised to do?
- khromem 4y ago
  From what I have seen, depositing before making the commitment makes you much more likely to succeed. Seeing the money leave your account creates a lot of psychological pressure that otherwise doesn't exist. The verification system is not fool proof. If you put some effort into forging proof you will succeed. However, I do not believe most people who willingly sign up for this would do that.
- geranim0 4y ago
  A lot of us know what's good for us... doesn't mean it's always easy to do. This is just another way of making it a little easier to actually do what you know is good for you.
adamzerner 4y ago
There's also https://www.beeminder.com https://www.beeminder.com and their competitors (https://blog.beeminder.com/competitors/ https://blog.beeminder.com/competitors/).
nemo1618 4y ago
For all the people asking how this differs from Beeminder: my first reaction was "finally, a version of Beeminder that lets me pay $1000!" Beeminder is obviously amazing, but it really "loses its sting" when you can't set a penalty higher than $25 (give or take -- I don't know what the current limit is).
- khromem 4y ago
  Exactly! I have used beeminder and stickk. But there were a few things that bugged me about them. 1) Theres no option to have a referee that isn't friends or family 2) Its automated, and no human actually checks up to see if you are staying on track. 3) You can't really set huge stakes
  - BeetleB 4y ago
    > Theres no option to have a referee that isn't friends or family Has stickk changed? When it was new you could set anyone to be your referee. > Its automated, and no human actually checks up to see if you are staying on track. With stickk, isn't the human referee the one who checks up on your progress?
- BeetleB 4y ago
  > Beeminder is obviously amazing, but it really "loses its sting" when you can't set a penalty higher than $25 (give or take -- I don't know what the current limit is). Beeminder's model is a bit different, in that the payment amount keeps going up if you keep falling off track. The current upper amount you can pay is $7290 (as in once you hit $7290, it will keep charging you that amount).
  - 1123581321 4y ago
    Even better, you can pay Beeminder money to jump to the big penalties right away. Very clever upsell since anyone who needs to lose thousands to be motivated won’t miss a fraction of that. :)
johnthewise 4y ago
I strongly believe external motivation kills the inner motivation. Maybe that is the goal here, by killing it completely so you can't ever think of depending on it(?). For me personally, I always found these kind of tools that helps trick one's self into doing or not doing things, very soul crushing. It's almost like trying to beat yourself into submission, disowning the part of yourself. If you can't make yourself to do something, maybe you shouldn't do it?
- khromem 4y ago
  The role of this is to bridge the gaps between the spikes of internal motivation. A lot of times people start working on something new and for the first few days they have enough motivation to stick with it. But when that disappears a lot of people just quit. They don't stick with the new activity long enough for the next surge of internal motivation. We believe this service can help people grind it out for a week or two until they get a surge of internal motivation and no longer need us.
  - vasco 4y ago
    Why would you grind out something you found you don't want to do? Or on another note, if something really should get done, I think their argument is that this sort of crutch makes you lose the muscle of "just do it and get on with it".
    - MaulingMonkey 4y ago
      > I think their argument is that this sort of crutch makes you lose the muscle of "just do it and get on with it". I don't have that muscle when it comes to "internal motivation", and decades of floundering have not particularly succeeded in developing it. The right external motivation - for me, most typically, something along the lines of not wanting to let down the people who are depending upon me in a reasonable manner - means I can absolutely slay it when it comes to getting things done in a 9-5 work environment, and rather than being soul crushing, it's a relief that I can contribute value. I might grumble a bit at the start of my mornings, but getting into the grove of work quickly distracts me from said grumbling. johnthewise's experience is far from universal. Precommitment in the form of money laden goalposts and checkpoints alone aren't super effective for me, but they do accomplish something. > Why would you grind out something you found you don't want to do Because it will be valuable enough to have it done, to be worth it in the long run. My natural internal motivation is terribly shortsighted - to the point that I'll procrastinate on getting myself food when I'm only a little hungry, because cooking, walking, driving, or even ordering sounds like a bother and a chore. Does spending an extra hour or three hungry improve my day overall? It does not. It's 10AM, I've skipped breakfast, and I'm rather hungry for lunch. My natural instinct is to spend another few hours doomscrolling reddit or HN or otherwise making not particularly good use of my time, even when it comes to the explicit goal of leisure or relaxation. But, instead, I'm going to hunt down some socks, shoes, keys, wallet, sunglasses, mask, jacket, and go out into the beautiful sunny day that I've been hiding away from, and go grab some delicious food I've been looking forward to all week, and improve my day in the process. And I will grumble slightly along the way, because among other injustices, I will have to "get up".
BeetleB 4y ago
$20/mo is expensive. Beeminder charges $8/mo (and they stop charging if you stop using it).
- khromem 4y ago
  Beeminder is largely automated. We try to offer much more human support. Such as daily texts and manual verification of goals instead of just pulling data from an API.
  - BeetleB 4y ago
    > We try to offer much more human support. Such as daily texts and manual verification of goals instead of just pulling data from an API. If people value this at $12/mo, that's great. It has no use for me, and will likely detract many from joining. When Beeminder raised their rates from $4/mo to $8/mo, they put in all kinds of mitigations for the customer: 1. Not charged if you don't have any active goals. 2. If you fall off track and have to pay an amount, they deduct that from the monthly cost. The key is to make it easy for people to sign up. Also, anecdotally, the majority of people will fail the first time round. My first stint with Beeminder was mostly a failure and I stopped using it for a few years. Then I came back to it with the lessons learned and use it much better now. If it cost me $20/mo, I'd probably never have returned to it.
    - rmbyrro 4y ago
      The bottom line are the results. I bet many people failed trying services like beeminder. The stakes are high. If it works, the upside is huge. If If doesn't, just a couple dozen dollars lost. Experimenting is a no brainer. If it works, 12 or 20 dollars/mo is ridiculously cheap. I'd pay $200/mo if it works and helps me achieve more in less time. Many would be able to recoup this investment in one or two productive days...
      - BeetleB 4y ago
        > I'd pay $200/mo if it works and helps me achieve more in less time. Think of fitness programs. Many would pay $200 per month for one that works. But are they willing to pay that much for each one they try till they find the one that works? The data is clear that they don't. There is little innovation in this particular offering. Why go with this service vs other ones?
stansm 4y ago
I’ve recently got a loan (~35k) with the idea of using that money for marketing once I’ll be done with development. It kind of works the same way - I’ll either launch the product and pay it off early (paying just 3% of the amount in this case) or keep paying 9% interest rate for 6 years. An important difference is that this money can actually work for me, when I’ll launch the product which provides positive motivation for me.
mizzao 4y ago
How's this different from https://www.beeminder.com/ https://www.beeminder.com/ which has been around for 10+ years?
- deleted 4y ago
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- deleted 4y ago
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ocdtrekkie 4y ago
The anti-charity model seems like it could be truly, truly motivating.
logicallee 4y ago
Microeconomic analysis: - Suppose you have a project worth $10,000 to you in some intangible form if successful, with a 20% chance of success. You use a penalty site to pay $2,000 if you make no progress. You set this high enough to put some non-productive entertainment out of your budget. Your hope is that when evaluating what you want to do, entertainment goes from being "$20" to "$20 plus $2,000 penalty". In your thinking, this promotes work on the project! You will not actually have to pay the penalty, since you intend to work on the project. You hope to influence yourself to increase your happiness by an intangible $2,000 (expected value of $10k * 20%) for free, by manually pricing entertainment out of your budget. - What happens if another project is worth $500 billion to you in some intangible non-monetary form, for sure? You definitely need to do that now. You are out the $2,000 if you don't also do something toward the first project, though. Thus, the penalty which had been intended to keep you from goofing off becomes an extra burden also on something worth an intangible $500 billion to your happiness. The "here's your incentive to be happy and productive" becomes: "here's your penalty for being hyper happy and productive" (on a new, temporarily very valuable project.) Clearly a misalignment of incentives: an unintended consequence. - Note that if you are independently rich this contract could still help you make some progress! Suppose you committed to pay $2,000 as a penalty for stopping work, but stopped work since you have something guaranteed to give you $500b in intangible happiness. Now it is strictly better to hire someone such as an intern or assistant and pay them anything less than $2,000 as long as this counts as progress and avoids tripping the penalty. i.e. a loss of $1900 paid to an assistant (counting as some marginal progress) is strictly better than a penalty of $2000 (and zero progress). - Could this explain why rich people hire personal assistants and project managers? It is an automatic penalty: once the assistant / project manager is on staff their salary goes out the window. You might as well use them to do what you, as a rich person who can hire personal assistants and project managers, want to get done. Is their behavior of hiring assistants and project managers why rich people get so much done? If so, the moral of the story may be to set aside $2000 to be handed over to project managers you deploy strategically on any project you want done. If it works for wealthy people, it could work for you - if you pay the cash for it. While disincentives could be nice, as the saying goes, you have to spend money to make money.
hawthornio 4y ago
I’m only interested motivation schemes where I can [pose as the meat in a human hotdog](https://streamable.com/z8i60 https://streamable.com/z8i60)
j_autumn 4y ago
Reminds me of gofuckingdoit.com from Pieter levels.
reggieband 4y ago
I recall a Twilight Zone movie "Cat's Eye" and a sketch from that including James Woods called "Dying For a Smoke". The premise is a man wants to quit smoking so he goes to a firm called Quitters Inc. where he signs a contract. If they catch him smoking they will escalate the punishments against him. After a few relatively tame punishments for sneaking a cigarette, he gets caught smoking again and so they kidnap his wife and daughter. They force him to watch as the company tortures his family and then they insinuate even worse fates for his family if they catch him smoking again. The sketch from the mentioned movie is a dark satire. It lampoons the kind of pseudo-logical thinking which simplifies problems by externalizing responsibility for our actions to external entities. Yet it is only when that external entity reflects the consequences of our action back on us that there is a chance we alter our behavior. However, once externalized we lose control of the process and in some sense become a slave to it. I feel that dystopian sketch is a satire directly aimed at this kind of application.
- deleted 4y ago
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- mpalmer 4y ago
  Originally a short story by Stephen King: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quitters,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quitters,_Inc.
mrlonglong 4y ago
But shouldn't we be paid for our time?
_zfxr 4y ago
Chargeback horrorshow.
calmdown13 4y ago
For those interested in an alternative with no monthly fees check out Kommit (https://kommit.to https://kommit.to). Disclaimer, I am creator of Kommit. Here is Kommit's Show HN thread for anyone interested: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29726228 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29726228
maeil 4y ago
I was about to get a subscription when I spotted this > Choose a deadline as short as 3 days or as long as a month! Why the 3 days? Is it to lessen the burden on the support staff who do the daily check ups? If I'm eager to subscribe to a service like this it means I want to use it to get stuff done I need to do starting right now, today, not something I need to get done in three days.
vaughan 4y ago
I remember using a gym app with a similar thing 10 yrs ago. I said I would run 7 days a week. Cancelled app after first week. I met my commitment and I never stopped since then.

83 points by khromem 4y ago

kderbyma 4y ago

who are these people? why not pay for a personal coach? this seems like Band-Aid.....

carlgreene 4y ago

This desperately needs a free tier, or at the very least a several month trial

mr90210 4y ago
Great advice.

khromem 4y ago

For my whole life, I have been dealing with bursts of motivation where I am extremely productive for several days, followed by weeks-long slumps. This yo-yo behavior does not let a person develop their skills or build anything substantial. According to my observations, people usually start working towards a goal following a temporary spike in motivation. It lasts a few days at most. Usually, it is not enough for people to move past the hurdle that is the first 2 weeks. In the first 2 weeks of starting anything new, you are garbage at everything. It’s hard work, and not very rewarding because you are constantly getting things wrong and not being able to get in flow. However, after 2 weeks so, People start appreciating the task. They finally see hints of progression in their abilities. Are able to work for longer stretches at a time before running into something frustrating. This allows them to get into flow. Together this starts to produce consistent internal motivation that allows the person to actually stick with the new habit long term. But 99% of the time people give up before getting here. To address this issue, I created WorkOrPay WorkOrPay: Set goals. Form contracts. Pay the penalty if you fail. We let you form contracts in which you agree to reach a goal before a deadline. You then deposit some money. If you fail to accomplish your goal before the deadline, your deposit is lost and donated to a charity of your choice. Basically, we provide you with external motivation (by holding your deposit hostage), so you get stuff done even when you don't feel like it. In addition, we text you daily to keep tabs and make sure you stay on track. WorkOrPay's mission is to bridge the gap in motivation from the initial spike and the more consistent motivation that appears a while later. The idea is that if you make a contract for the frustrating 2 weeks where you want to quit. The pressure of potentially losing your deposit will provide enough external motivation for you to continue until you reach the promised land of consistent internal motivation. I hope others who have the same problem I had, can use this service to break out of the loop. Without wasting years of their life. Promo Code for HN members: hackernews

nathanaldensr 4y ago
Where are you incorporated? Are you a non-profit? How do you make money?
- khromem 4y ago
  We are a New York LLC. We're not incorporated at the moment. We make money through a subscription model. We do not make anything from the contracts because it seemed wrong to profit from our users failing. We want our incentives to be aligned correctly!
  - gnicholas 4y ago
    > We do not make anything from the contracts because it seemed wrong to profit from our users failing. We want our incentives to be aligned correctly! I assumed that the monthly fee was on top of a percentage fee on lost bets, which other platforms charge. You should make this more prominent on the site — aligned incentives are great!
    - khromem 4y ago
      Good point. Just updated the site to make that clear. Thanks!
  - klyrs 4y ago
    > We do not make anything from the contracts because it seemed wrong to profit from our users failing. This is how naive good-meaning founders start evil parasitic businesses that don't realize their true potential until the buyout...
  - trhr 4y ago
    Since you're allowing people to donate to charities or "anti-charities," you should just allow the user to specify a % fee that goes to you. If I set up a $1,000 contract to go to some Nazi org if I fail, I'd much rather $1 go to the Nazi org and $999 to you.

ge96 4y ago

haha I tried this on my own before, donating to a food shelter every time I binged, it got expensive.

khromem 4y ago
I actually used to make my friends promise to give away my money if I failed to do whatever. But it never really worked that great because I would always make some plausible excuse and my friends would let it slide and eventually just give my money back.

constantinum 4y ago

How is this different from Beeminder — afaik popularised "commitment contract". I'm an active user of Beeminder; have 4 active commitments. More than feature to feature comparison, Beeminder has an amazing blog, and an ever supportive community to lean on to. [links] https://www.beeminder.com/home https://www.beeminder.com/home https://blog.beeminder.com/ https://blog.beeminder.com/ https://forum.beeminder.com/ https://forum.beeminder.com/

khromem 4y ago
Beeminder is great. However, it's all automated and you cannot set huge penalties for single goals. Also, It's limited to things that can be verified from fitness trackers and other apps thats many people do not use. WorkOrPay tries to add more human interactions. We text users daily to make sure they aren't starting slack off. We help them form reasonable goals. Do verifications manually, so the goals can really be anything. We are a mix between beeminder and a life coach.
- adamzerner 4y ago
  > However, it's all automated... Also, It's limited to things that can be verified from fitness trackers and other apps thats many people do not use. That isn't true. You can track progress on a goal manually, as well as automatically. For example, I used to use Beeminder to track how many push ups I did.
  - khromem 4y ago
    True, but if you add manually then there is no verification
- neya 4y ago
  >We are a mix between beeminder and a life coach This sounds like a great product idea. Screw automated follow ups. I have tried it abs it doesn’t work. I would prefer a personal touch anyday!

nocobot 4y ago

this reminds me of beeminder.com I like the idea of adding financial incentive to stick to habits etc, but i would be uncomfortable with having to deposit money, why not just take a CC and charge it if I break the contract? also: what prevents me from just lying about whether I did the thing I promised to do?

khromem 4y ago
From what I have seen, depositing before making the commitment makes you much more likely to succeed. Seeing the money leave your account creates a lot of psychological pressure that otherwise doesn't exist. The verification system is not fool proof. If you put some effort into forging proof you will succeed. However, I do not believe most people who willingly sign up for this would do that.
geranim0 4y ago
A lot of us know what's good for us... doesn't mean it's always easy to do. This is just another way of making it a little easier to actually do what you know is good for you.

adamzerner 4y ago

There's also https://www.beeminder.com https://www.beeminder.com and their competitors (https://blog.beeminder.com/competitors/ https://blog.beeminder.com/competitors/).

nemo1618 4y ago

For all the people asking how this differs from Beeminder: my first reaction was "finally, a version of Beeminder that lets me pay $1000!" Beeminder is obviously amazing, but it really "loses its sting" when you can't set a penalty higher than $25 (give or take -- I don't know what the current limit is).

khromem 4y ago
Exactly! I have used beeminder and stickk. But there were a few things that bugged me about them. 1) Theres no option to have a referee that isn't friends or family 2) Its automated, and no human actually checks up to see if you are staying on track. 3) You can't really set huge stakes
- BeetleB 4y ago
  > Theres no option to have a referee that isn't friends or family Has stickk changed? When it was new you could set anyone to be your referee. > Its automated, and no human actually checks up to see if you are staying on track. With stickk, isn't the human referee the one who checks up on your progress?
BeetleB 4y ago
> Beeminder is obviously amazing, but it really "loses its sting" when you can't set a penalty higher than $25 (give or take -- I don't know what the current limit is). Beeminder's model is a bit different, in that the payment amount keeps going up if you keep falling off track. The current upper amount you can pay is $7290 (as in once you hit $7290, it will keep charging you that amount).
- 1123581321 4y ago
  Even better, you can pay Beeminder money to jump to the big penalties right away. Very clever upsell since anyone who needs to lose thousands to be motivated won’t miss a fraction of that. :)

johnthewise 4y ago

I strongly believe external motivation kills the inner motivation. Maybe that is the goal here, by killing it completely so you can't ever think of depending on it(?). For me personally, I always found these kind of tools that helps trick one's self into doing or not doing things, very soul crushing. It's almost like trying to beat yourself into submission, disowning the part of yourself. If you can't make yourself to do something, maybe you shouldn't do it?

khromem 4y ago
The role of this is to bridge the gaps between the spikes of internal motivation. A lot of times people start working on something new and for the first few days they have enough motivation to stick with it. But when that disappears a lot of people just quit. They don't stick with the new activity long enough for the next surge of internal motivation. We believe this service can help people grind it out for a week or two until they get a surge of internal motivation and no longer need us.
- vasco 4y ago
  Why would you grind out something you found you don't want to do? Or on another note, if something really should get done, I think their argument is that this sort of crutch makes you lose the muscle of "just do it and get on with it".
  - MaulingMonkey 4y ago
    > I think their argument is that this sort of crutch makes you lose the muscle of "just do it and get on with it". I don't have that muscle when it comes to "internal motivation", and decades of floundering have not particularly succeeded in developing it. The right external motivation - for me, most typically, something along the lines of not wanting to let down the people who are depending upon me in a reasonable manner - means I can absolutely slay it when it comes to getting things done in a 9-5 work environment, and rather than being soul crushing, it's a relief that I can contribute value. I might grumble a bit at the start of my mornings, but getting into the grove of work quickly distracts me from said grumbling. johnthewise's experience is far from universal. Precommitment in the form of money laden goalposts and checkpoints alone aren't super effective for me, but they do accomplish something. > Why would you grind out something you found you don't want to do Because it will be valuable enough to have it done, to be worth it in the long run. My natural internal motivation is terribly shortsighted - to the point that I'll procrastinate on getting myself food when I'm only a little hungry, because cooking, walking, driving, or even ordering sounds like a bother and a chore. Does spending an extra hour or three hungry improve my day overall? It does not. It's 10AM, I've skipped breakfast, and I'm rather hungry for lunch. My natural instinct is to spend another few hours doomscrolling reddit or HN or otherwise making not particularly good use of my time, even when it comes to the explicit goal of leisure or relaxation. But, instead, I'm going to hunt down some socks, shoes, keys, wallet, sunglasses, mask, jacket, and go out into the beautiful sunny day that I've been hiding away from, and go grab some delicious food I've been looking forward to all week, and improve my day in the process. And I will grumble slightly along the way, because among other injustices, I will have to "get up".

BeetleB 4y ago

$20/mo is expensive. Beeminder charges $8/mo (and they stop charging if you stop using it).

khromem 4y ago
Beeminder is largely automated. We try to offer much more human support. Such as daily texts and manual verification of goals instead of just pulling data from an API.
- BeetleB 4y ago
  > We try to offer much more human support. Such as daily texts and manual verification of goals instead of just pulling data from an API. If people value this at $12/mo, that's great. It has no use for me, and will likely detract many from joining. When Beeminder raised their rates from $4/mo to $8/mo, they put in all kinds of mitigations for the customer: 1. Not charged if you don't have any active goals. 2. If you fall off track and have to pay an amount, they deduct that from the monthly cost. The key is to make it easy for people to sign up. Also, anecdotally, the majority of people will fail the first time round. My first stint with Beeminder was mostly a failure and I stopped using it for a few years. Then I came back to it with the lessons learned and use it much better now. If it cost me $20/mo, I'd probably never have returned to it.
  - rmbyrro 4y ago
    The bottom line are the results. I bet many people failed trying services like beeminder. The stakes are high. If it works, the upside is huge. If If doesn't, just a couple dozen dollars lost. Experimenting is a no brainer. If it works, 12 or 20 dollars/mo is ridiculously cheap. I'd pay $200/mo if it works and helps me achieve more in less time. Many would be able to recoup this investment in one or two productive days...
    - BeetleB 4y ago
      > I'd pay $200/mo if it works and helps me achieve more in less time. Think of fitness programs. Many would pay $200 per month for one that works. But are they willing to pay that much for each one they try till they find the one that works? The data is clear that they don't. There is little innovation in this particular offering. Why go with this service vs other ones?

stansm 4y ago

I’ve recently got a loan (~35k) with the idea of using that money for marketing once I’ll be done with development. It kind of works the same way - I’ll either launch the product and pay it off early (paying just 3% of the amount in this case) or keep paying 9% interest rate for 6 years. An important difference is that this money can actually work for me, when I’ll launch the product which provides positive motivation for me.

mizzao 4y ago

How's this different from https://www.beeminder.com/ https://www.beeminder.com/ which has been around for 10+ years?

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ocdtrekkie 4y ago

The anti-charity model seems like it could be truly, truly motivating.

logicallee 4y ago

Microeconomic analysis: - Suppose you have a project worth $10,000 to you in some intangible form if successful, with a 20% chance of success. You use a penalty site to pay $2,000 if you make no progress. You set this high enough to put some non-productive entertainment out of your budget. Your hope is that when evaluating what you want to do, entertainment goes from being "$20" to "$20 plus $2,000 penalty". In your thinking, this promotes work on the project! You will not actually have to pay the penalty, since you intend to work on the project. You hope to influence yourself to increase your happiness by an intangible $2,000 (expected value of $10k * 20%) for free, by manually pricing entertainment out of your budget. - What happens if another project is worth $500 billion to you in some intangible non-monetary form, for sure? You definitely need to do that now. You are out the $2,000 if you don't also do something toward the first project, though. Thus, the penalty which had been intended to keep you from goofing off becomes an extra burden also on something worth an intangible $500 billion to your happiness. The "here's your incentive to be happy and productive" becomes: "here's your penalty for being hyper happy and productive" (on a new, temporarily very valuable project.) Clearly a misalignment of incentives: an unintended consequence. - Note that if you are independently rich this contract could still help you make some progress! Suppose you committed to pay $2,000 as a penalty for stopping work, but stopped work since you have something guaranteed to give you $500b in intangible happiness. Now it is strictly better to hire someone such as an intern or assistant and pay them anything less than $2,000 as long as this counts as progress and avoids tripping the penalty. i.e. a loss of $1900 paid to an assistant (counting as some marginal progress) is strictly better than a penalty of $2000 (and zero progress). - Could this explain why rich people hire personal assistants and project managers? It is an automatic penalty: once the assistant / project manager is on staff their salary goes out the window. You might as well use them to do what you, as a rich person who can hire personal assistants and project managers, want to get done. Is their behavior of hiring assistants and project managers why rich people get so much done? If so, the moral of the story may be to set aside $2000 to be handed over to project managers you deploy strategically on any project you want done. If it works for wealthy people, it could work for you - if you pay the cash for it. While disincentives could be nice, as the saying goes, you have to spend money to make money.

hawthornio 4y ago

I’m only interested motivation schemes where I can [pose as the meat in a human hotdog](https://streamable.com/z8i60 https://streamable.com/z8i60)

j_autumn 4y ago

Reminds me of gofuckingdoit.com from Pieter levels.

reggieband 4y ago

I recall a Twilight Zone movie "Cat's Eye" and a sketch from that including James Woods called "Dying For a Smoke". The premise is a man wants to quit smoking so he goes to a firm called Quitters Inc. where he signs a contract. If they catch him smoking they will escalate the punishments against him. After a few relatively tame punishments for sneaking a cigarette, he gets caught smoking again and so they kidnap his wife and daughter. They force him to watch as the company tortures his family and then they insinuate even worse fates for his family if they catch him smoking again. The sketch from the mentioned movie is a dark satire. It lampoons the kind of pseudo-logical thinking which simplifies problems by externalizing responsibility for our actions to external entities. Yet it is only when that external entity reflects the consequences of our action back on us that there is a chance we alter our behavior. However, once externalized we lose control of the process and in some sense become a slave to it. I feel that dystopian sketch is a satire directly aimed at this kind of application.

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mpalmer 4y ago
Originally a short story by Stephen King: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quitters,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quitters,_Inc.

mrlonglong 4y ago

But shouldn't we be paid for our time?

_zfxr 4y ago

Chargeback horrorshow.

calmdown13 4y ago

For those interested in an alternative with no monthly fees check out Kommit (https://kommit.to https://kommit.to). Disclaimer, I am creator of Kommit. Here is Kommit's Show HN thread for anyone interested: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29726228 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29726228

maeil 4y ago

I was about to get a subscription when I spotted this > Choose a deadline as short as 3 days or as long as a month! Why the 3 days? Is it to lessen the burden on the support staff who do the daily check ups? If I'm eager to subscribe to a service like this it means I want to use it to get stuff done I need to do starting right now, today, not something I need to get done in three days.

vaughan 4y ago

I remember using a gym app with a similar thing 10 yrs ago. I said I would run 7 days a week. Cancelled app after first week. I met my commitment and I never stopped since then.