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If this sounds appealing, but you want a nice UI to go along with it, check out https://www.beeminder.com/home https://www.beeminder.com/home. Not affiliated wi

If this sounds appealing, but you want a nice UI to go along with it, check out https://www.beeminder.com/home https://www.beeminder.com/home. Not affiliated with them, just a happy customer for several years.

grahamplace 4y ago
Also a happy Beeminder customer! Note that Beeminder allows manual entry of data — I use this to track “work out 3x / week” type goals, but also has plenty of integrations (e.g. Apple Health data) for goals like “walk 10k steps / day” The latter makes it much tougher to cheat yourself
- pjh 4y ago
  it always boils down to cheating yourself, the integrations just make it easier to remove temptation
wpietri 4y ago
Huh. I like most of the idea, but there's no way I'm going to incentivize a company such that they do better if I fail.
- savanaly 4y ago
  It was never a problem for me. Between reading their blog posts about the theory of motivation and actually experiencing their UI (and interactions with their customer support when something went wrong and I was accidentally charged) I believe they really do want you as a happy customer above all which means helping you with your goals.
  - wpietri 4y ago
    I can certainly believe it has worked for you. But there's just no way I'm putting myself in that situation. Maybe they are the kind of people who are truly able to spend their lives minimizing revenue. But I'd still always have to be on my guard for that changing. And even it went well, I would then feel bad that I'm not properly supporting people from whom I've gotten a lot of value. I'm glad it works for other people, but the glaring conflict of interest makes it a hard no for me.
    - dreeves 4y ago
      Hi! Beeminder cofounder here! I'm pretty excited to see all the positive comments but of course I've homed in on this negative one first. I think Beeminder is incentivized to make you fail at your goals the same way eBay sellers are incentivized to not actually send you your stuff after you pay them. Anyway, we have a whole elaborate essay on why there's very much the opposite of a conflict of interest: https://blog.beeminder.com/defail/ https://blog.beeminder.com/defail/ (about how Beeminder revenue is proportional to induced user awesomeness) There's a key faulty assumption that may make it seem like our incentives are more perverse than they are. Namely, it's not the case that Beeminder goals are binary things that you either succeed or fail at. They're things you make long-term graphs of, like averaging 10k steps per day or working 40 hours per week. You pay Beeminder because your overall progress is much greater with Beeminder than without it, even though the specific moments you pay are kicks in the pants when you've deviated from your commitment. I'm definitely interested to hear if any of this is persuasive. We hear the perverse incentives thing a lot so we need to figure out how to convey our apologia much more concisely in our intro material! (And thank you for voicing it!)
      - wpietri 4y ago
        Again, I am perfectly willing to believe that you are the rare kind of people who can ignore the perverse incentives. But people change. Companies change. Companies get sold, sometimes to people who are only in it for maximal short term revenue. Who then run the companies right into the ground either in the usual way or the private equity way. As somebody who's spent decades supporting the Long Now, I believe that a lot of what's wrong in our society is people incorrectly understanding their long-term incentives and focusing on the short term. And I'm happy to believe here that Beeminder's long-term incentives really do work out to be mutually beneficial when handled by you. But there's just no way I need the mental overhead of wondering all the time whether me paying you when I fail in a given instance really conforms to the ultra-long-term, 12-dimensional-chess understanding of conflict of interest. And then if/when it does, whether I'm failing enough to give you sufficient money so that there's a balanced exchange of value. That is way too much overhead, especially for a tool I'll be using in areas where I'll be hitting my cognitive limits on the regular. I totally believe this works for some people, maybe most of them, but for me it's a non-starter.
- fredoliveira 4y ago
  Just make a similar bet with a friend or family member instead.
- mellosouls 4y ago
  Your argument only works in the short term - if you fail consistently in the long term you will realise the service is not working for you and they will lose you as a customer. Failing intermittently in the short term - and losing money for it - will cause any rational actor motivated by the financial argument - as you clearly are - to try and work out why and fail less, hence proving their service is working for you.
  - wpietri 4y ago
    I am not particularly motivated by money, so no, that's not me. In the long run, there are no scams, no dubious businesses, no casinos, no ponzis. In the long run, we're all dead. But in the short term, people lose money all the time on stuff that doesn't work for them. Is this one of them? Apparently not for some people. On the other hand, MLMs have plenty of people who talk them up while losing money, so it's hard to say from the outside.
- tomjen3 4y ago
  They don't do better in the medium term if you fail. If you don't get any use of out Beeminder, you will stop being a customer. I have been a customer of theirs since 2014. The few times I have had to interact with support they have always helped me (and to be clear I only remember having to contact support when I had a legitimate reason not to complete some work for a given day).
staindk 4y ago
This looks great but I'm surprised there isn't any % of the paid money going to charities, good causes or something. I'd like something like this that pays into my retirement, a long-term investment or donates to charity, with maybe 1-20% going to Beeminder or whatever.
- ImprobableTruth 4y ago
  If failure means you pay out to something you like (retirement, charity), then you're incentivized to fail.

grahamplace 4y ago

Also a happy Beeminder customer! Note that Beeminder allows manual entry of data — I use this to track “work out 3x / week” type goals, but also has plenty of integrations (e.g. Apple Health data) for goals like “walk 10k steps / day” The latter makes it much tougher to cheat yourself

pjh 4y ago
it always boils down to cheating yourself, the integrations just make it easier to remove temptation

wpietri 4y ago

Huh. I like most of the idea, but there's no way I'm going to incentivize a company such that they do better if I fail.

savanaly 4y ago
It was never a problem for me. Between reading their blog posts about the theory of motivation and actually experiencing their UI (and interactions with their customer support when something went wrong and I was accidentally charged) I believe they really do want you as a happy customer above all which means helping you with your goals.
- wpietri 4y ago
  I can certainly believe it has worked for you. But there's just no way I'm putting myself in that situation. Maybe they are the kind of people who are truly able to spend their lives minimizing revenue. But I'd still always have to be on my guard for that changing. And even it went well, I would then feel bad that I'm not properly supporting people from whom I've gotten a lot of value. I'm glad it works for other people, but the glaring conflict of interest makes it a hard no for me.
  - dreeves 4y ago
    Hi! Beeminder cofounder here! I'm pretty excited to see all the positive comments but of course I've homed in on this negative one first. I think Beeminder is incentivized to make you fail at your goals the same way eBay sellers are incentivized to not actually send you your stuff after you pay them. Anyway, we have a whole elaborate essay on why there's very much the opposite of a conflict of interest: https://blog.beeminder.com/defail/ https://blog.beeminder.com/defail/ (about how Beeminder revenue is proportional to induced user awesomeness) There's a key faulty assumption that may make it seem like our incentives are more perverse than they are. Namely, it's not the case that Beeminder goals are binary things that you either succeed or fail at. They're things you make long-term graphs of, like averaging 10k steps per day or working 40 hours per week. You pay Beeminder because your overall progress is much greater with Beeminder than without it, even though the specific moments you pay are kicks in the pants when you've deviated from your commitment. I'm definitely interested to hear if any of this is persuasive. We hear the perverse incentives thing a lot so we need to figure out how to convey our apologia much more concisely in our intro material! (And thank you for voicing it!)
    - wpietri 4y ago
      Again, I am perfectly willing to believe that you are the rare kind of people who can ignore the perverse incentives. But people change. Companies change. Companies get sold, sometimes to people who are only in it for maximal short term revenue. Who then run the companies right into the ground either in the usual way or the private equity way. As somebody who's spent decades supporting the Long Now, I believe that a lot of what's wrong in our society is people incorrectly understanding their long-term incentives and focusing on the short term. And I'm happy to believe here that Beeminder's long-term incentives really do work out to be mutually beneficial when handled by you. But there's just no way I need the mental overhead of wondering all the time whether me paying you when I fail in a given instance really conforms to the ultra-long-term, 12-dimensional-chess understanding of conflict of interest. And then if/when it does, whether I'm failing enough to give you sufficient money so that there's a balanced exchange of value. That is way too much overhead, especially for a tool I'll be using in areas where I'll be hitting my cognitive limits on the regular. I totally believe this works for some people, maybe most of them, but for me it's a non-starter.
fredoliveira 4y ago
Just make a similar bet with a friend or family member instead.
mellosouls 4y ago
Your argument only works in the short term - if you fail consistently in the long term you will realise the service is not working for you and they will lose you as a customer. Failing intermittently in the short term - and losing money for it - will cause any rational actor motivated by the financial argument - as you clearly are - to try and work out why and fail less, hence proving their service is working for you.
- wpietri 4y ago
  I am not particularly motivated by money, so no, that's not me. In the long run, there are no scams, no dubious businesses, no casinos, no ponzis. In the long run, we're all dead. But in the short term, people lose money all the time on stuff that doesn't work for them. Is this one of them? Apparently not for some people. On the other hand, MLMs have plenty of people who talk them up while losing money, so it's hard to say from the outside.
tomjen3 4y ago
They don't do better in the medium term if you fail. If you don't get any use of out Beeminder, you will stop being a customer. I have been a customer of theirs since 2014. The few times I have had to interact with support they have always helped me (and to be clear I only remember having to contact support when I had a legitimate reason not to complete some work for a given day).

staindk 4y ago

This looks great but I'm surprised there isn't any % of the paid money going to charities, good causes or something. I'd like something like this that pays into my retirement, a long-term investment or donates to charity, with maybe 1-20% going to Beeminder or whatever.

ImprobableTruth 4y ago
If failure means you pay out to something you like (retirement, charity), then you're incentivized to fail.