I’m curious about usage of commitment tools such as Beeminder: What’s the income distribution among users? How much do users usually wind up paying? Is there a correlation between these?
(Selfish reasons: I’m on SSI and am not allowed to have more than $2000 at any given time. Losing $5 is all but meaningless for someone with $10k in the bank who makes $5k each month, whereas losing $5 for me actually has an impact. You might think this would be a stronger incentive to meet a commitment, but really, it’s an even stronger incentive to stay the hell away from commitment contracts. I’ve failed at similar such things before, and have yet to find a reliable means of getting the behavior I want to happen, so it looks like using such tools is a good way to commit slow suicide, in the absence of different data. But Beeminder is so popular in the LWSphere that I thought it worth asking. Being wrong would be to my advantage, here.)
I’ve never used Beeminder, but I find social commitment works well instead. Even teling someone who has no way to check aside from asking me helps a lot. That might be less effective if you’re willing to lie though.
An alternative would be to exchange commitments with a friend, proportional to your incomes...
I’m curious about usage of commitment tools such as Beeminder: What’s the income distribution among users? How much do users usually wind up paying? Is there a correlation between these?
(Selfish reasons: I’m on SSI and am not allowed to have more than $2000 at any given time. Losing $5 is all but meaningless for someone with $10k in the bank who makes $5k each month, whereas losing $5 for me actually has an impact. You might think this would be a stronger incentive to meet a commitment, but really, it’s an even stronger incentive to stay the hell away from commitment contracts. I’ve failed at similar such things before, and have yet to find a reliable means of getting the behavior I want to happen, so it looks like using such tools is a good way to commit slow suicide, in the absence of different data. But Beeminder is so popular in the LWSphere that I thought it worth asking. Being wrong would be to my advantage, here.)
I’ve never used Beeminder, but I find social commitment works well instead. Even teling someone who has no way to check aside from asking me helps a lot. That might be less effective if you’re willing to lie though.
An alternative would be to exchange commitments with a friend, proportional to your incomes...
Remember that it may work for you or it might not. Try and see.
Beeminder didn’t work at all for me, I found it was all sticks and no carrot.