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Beeminder?
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90 reviews of this app found across Reddit:
This is a little more homespun and combines several different approaches but:
Pretend that after every lecture you must give your own lecture to the class on the same topic. You may merge topics together, condense the information to a shorter form (no less than a TED Talk's length of time) but the holy rule is that you must be able to teach what you just learned to someone within 48 hours.
You will find that you will tend to invent your own metaphors, find strange connections between different courses you are taking and (hopefully) feel more inspired by the material when your task becomes "Explain what you just learned and why it matters." While I can't attest to a specific study done and while I'm but one data point, it has worked quite well in the past.
EDIT: A few further points: between textbooks, online lectures and other free or previously purchased resource it is possible and indeed preferable to never be surprised by a lecture. By previewing what is about to be formally learned you can anticipate sticking points, invent plausible explanations on why what you are learning is true and generate intelligent questions to ask in or after class. If you are caught up, it can help to try to get further ahead of the class. I have a certain amount I am committed to studying my core classes every week Proof so if I already got a firm grasp of the material I'll find lectures on courses I haven't taken just yet. That way I have a birds eye view of the road ahead and I'm not so nerveous about the unknown
Apologies for any typos the edit was done via smart phone
Blocking can be helpful. I've had some trouble with gear-shifting with it anyway. I'll get sucked into the thing I'm doing enough that the timer goes off and I'm right in the middle of something and it feels really jarring to try to just drop it. And with some tasks, say programming, I'll want to stop just as soon as I finish this feature — but it's SO easy for finishing up a feature to linger and drag out as I find little things that could be polished or made slightly better.
Tricks like these are definitely things people with ADHD should try; some will be helpful. I'm as functional as I am largely because I've accumulated a lot of little things like this that work — like always trying to be really early and just reading while I wait, and keeping EVERYTHING important that I might forget in my backpack so I'm unlikely to forget it (doesn't work on my phone because I leave it out to charge).
In the end though doing time management with ADHD is kind of like someone with bad knees climbing the stairs, figuring out ways to use the handrail to make it easier. It's doable, and sometimes they have to do it to achieve their goals in life, but it's difficult. Having other people's support and understanding goes a long way!
So really all I'm trying to ask is that you imagine people complexly. Different brains work quite differently, and what might be easy for you might be quite difficult for others — even if they expend a lot of willpower on it, or try the same things that work for you. Psychological conditions are especially hard to deeply understand without firsthand experience or spending a lot of time around people who have and understand them. Hell, I didn't even realize I had ADHD for 21 years because my conception of it was so wrong.
EDIT: Shoutout to Beeminder for being one of the only incentive schemes that works for getting me to do things like consistently wake up before 10.
Losing weight is mostly a matter of eating less. I've never been terribly fat or out of shape, but I've had to get rid of flab. I don't see this recommended often, but what works best for me is fasting for a few days at a time.
I also don't like small portions, and since each small-portioned meal ends up a willpower battle I often lose, the solution for me is to put temptation far away. The hunger usually peaks around 8 hours or so after the last meal, and I actually feel better the second day. When I really feel like eating I have coffee or gum.
It becomes a bit of a game seeing how long I can streak, and I get satisfaction just going about my day and exhaling carbon that used to be in fat cells. I usually only go for three days or so, then eat a big delicious meal (usually if I'm invited by someone I know) that tastes 5x better than it would otherwise that I get to anticipate while I'm fasting.
Beeminder's a rationalist-developed app that has actually succeeded in forcing me to run every week. You can email them if you derail and they won't charge you, but the email exchange where you explain the slip up or whatever is awkward enough you're not tempted to just weasel out instead of run. Another thing that works well for me exercise-wise is keeping a set of modular weights in my room. I don't have to make a trip to the gym, but do sets almost every day before jumping in the shower and have noticed results.
You could also look at obtaining stimulants like amphetamines for a helping hand. Bariatric surgery works amazing as a last resort if you're serious and nothing else works.
Or an indication that wanting something isn't enough to make it happen. Akrasia is a great concept. People look for ways to force themselves to do things they want and struggle with weakness of will or other barriers all the time. Isn't that a huge part of why the rationality subculture sprang up--the realization that humans are not rational agents and act against their own self-interest constantly?
This is a big part of why people go to college, or buy self-help books, or check themselves into rehab. It's a big reason not everyone is self-employed. They can't count on themselves to always do the things they want to do, so they shove themselves into structures that will make sure those things happen whether they feel like it or not.
I mean, from SSC's sidebar, Beeminder forces you to pay if you don't accomplish goals. That app would not exist if people were good at doing the hard things they want to do. TED talks about procrastination wouldn't get 20 million views if people were good at doing the hard things they want to do. Really, most of the structures and incentives we've built up around productivity would not exist if people were good at doing the hard things they want to do.
If you claim to genuinely want something, but you're not making effective progress at achieving it, chances are you are human, running into one of the oldest and deepest problems of being human.
I heartily recommend https://www.beeminder.com/ - it has the graphs, syncs with a few different services, and the way the numbers are processed, really motivates you to keep working on a consistent basis.
You only pay when you fail to reach your goals, or in fact, you don't even have to pay at all, but for me having a little money on the line really helps. Check it out.
My general tactic is letting pre-planning work against impulse.
It might help do something like set an alarm for 1pm, 7pm, 11pm to log any foods you missed. That'll make sure it's always on your mind and hopefully you'll start logging for lunch / dinner as soon as you eat instead of waiting for the alarm. That probably wont help with keeping accurate portion sizes though.
Would leaving your credit cards at home keep you from buying food for lunch?
Could you order ahead of time from somewhere with posted nutrition facts instead of hunting at lunch?
Some other options are sites like https://www.beeminder.com/ or http://www.habitica.com/ which can help with remembering a list of goals. If you forget to meal prep until 11pm on Sunday, you can set a task for Sunday morning. If you forget to buy food for the next week until it's too late, you can set a task to help remember that too. I've fallen into the trap of ignoring habitica when I know I'm not making progress on my goals though.
I committed to a 365 creative challenge to do this. There are places onine that will give you a prompt or you can get Noah Scalin's book and just do drawings.
On Instagram #100dayproject kicks off today/tomorrow (depending on where you are in the world)
You can grab an ArtBuddy over at /r/ArtBuddy
I set up an Beeminder account that will deduct $5 from my credit card if I do not post my daily art to a site because I was really serious about doing this - and yeah up to day 286 and no deductions yet ;)
I use Beeminder. You tell them how much of something you want to do and they charge you money if you fail to do the thing you wanted to do. They have integration where it'll count words automatically if you use certain services for writing, or connect to things like IFTTT to count if you post to a blog (or anything else that IFTTT can do).
Your timing is uncanny. I actually just started taking weight loss and temperance wrt food seriously last week. I bought a scale, opened a beeminder account, and planned out a diet.
My diet will consist mainly of soylent and plain air-popped popcorn (to help me ease out of the whole "feeling full all the time" thing). This is a good check against eating decadent foods justified by staying within caloric limits. If I'm being honest, it also has something to do with not liking healthy foods and my own inability to cook my way out of a loaf of bread.
Let's pray for each other.
StickK.com and https://www.beeminder.com facilitate monetary commitment contracts on arbitrary goals. Others that might work as well Fitocracy and Lift.do, Aherk.com, FatBet.net, LoseItOrLoseIt.com, 21habit.com
I put this in that thread, but might as well put it here.
A little while ago, some people from the Less Wrong community developed Beeminder, an anti-akrasia tool that allows you to financially punish yourself for procrastination.
The landing page is pretty explicit. A pre-commitment manager with real world penalties for missing your pre-commitments. Supposed to help with motivation, thoroughness, reliability.
$300 per month. Metered out as $75 per week. (I track it using beeminder) I never violate that budget for any reason, no matter how good a "deal" something is.
$300 per month is enough that I have to think long and hard about every purchase, but $3600 per year spent intelligently is enough for a huge wardrobe upgrade.
I chose $300/month because that lets me save a grand a month. I can afford to do that because all my non-clothing discretionary expenses are negligible.
If the betting aspect doesn't appeal to you, you might try Beeminder instead. It punishes you if you fail, but there's no payoff at the end. That might help keep some people more honest.
I'm worried because I use Beeminder (https://www.beeminder.com/kingviv/french) to ecourage me to do my daily lessons... you have to pay up when you fail to meet your goal.
Now it looks like I'll lose money because of this issue.
On a more serious note, Malcom Ocean's Beeminder might be helpful.
It lets you, among other things, put money on "hoc" until it's verified that you've finished your task. If you don't finish in the time frame you want, it donates your money to charity.
It can also be used to do the timer/buzzer thing that /u/waylandertheslayer recommended, I think.
Individual Vision
- Be proud of how I spend my time and energy
Individual Goals
Be fit physically
- Weight less than 80kg
- ~~Get my resting heart rate below 70bpm~~ DONE
- Get my waist circumference below 90cm
Be fit mentally
- Learn to play a music instrument
- ~~Increase my meditation sessions to 15 minutes~~ DONE
- Increase my journaling sessions to 3 times a week
Accountability
This week I'm paying the price of being spontaneous! A friend invited me to a music festival this weekend so I altered all my productivity plans from Thurdsay to Sunday.
Exercise: 2/3 days
Meditation: 5/7 days
Fitbit on green: 3/7 days (As usual, the weekly average is good)
Journaling: 2/2 days
Read every day: 7/7 days
Eat below my calorie limit: 1/7 days. This is awful!
Review my budget: 2/2 days
Actions this week
Exercise: 3 days
Meditation: 7 days
Fitbit on green: 7 days
Journaling: 2 days
Read every day: 7 days
Eat below my calorie limit: 7 days
Review my budget: 2 days
Unplanned wins
No unplanned wins this week
Help Needed
Not yet
The habit - Do 5 push-ups after every bathroom break.
Goal: I want to get into the habit (and mindset) of exercising, with my hectic schedule.
How do I do this (tiny habits with incremental gains method): 1. Super easy habit with clear triggers - toilet, then push-ups. 2. Super easy demand (5 push-ups aren't that hard). 3. Can be done anywhere and at any time during the day. 4. Doing it even once a day is a success.
Why I doing this habit (very important and resonates with me): I want to get stronger. I want to prove to myself that I can build a habit of my choosing and make it stick (and in time build larger habits as a result). I want to get into an exercise mindset (versus a specific routine)- something to build on for life (health, self-growth, etc.)
Thus far: It's really easy to do and I feel great by doing it. I plan to increase by one as I go (6 push-ups next week, 7 on week 3 and so forth). Bonus - I find myself thinking of doing other exercises.
EDIT: and I've bet 5$ that I won't deviate from this for the remaining 6 weeks through Beeminder
Hey dude, I was diagnosed with ADHD a year and a half ago and I've dealt with depression recently because I couldn't get my shit together in school. I know it's not easy trying to build a sense of self-esteem when it seems like you're always handing assignments in late, you can never stick to working consistently on the projects you start because you're a huge procrastinator, and so on. I don't have any good advice per se, but if you're going the self-improvement route as outlined by others ITT you may want to check out Beeminder—it forces to stay on track towards completing your goals. That's what I'm doing this summer. Best of luck.
Haven't been on reddit in a while, but I started on the 29th after a really rough weekend which inspired a few life changes. Had a MO last after seeing someone on the street plus the stress.
Tracking this via Beeminder if anyone is curious: https://www.beeminder.com/mjb4263/goals/super_powers
Beeminder cofounder here. It sounds super perverse, I know, but the reason we think it turns out not to be is that Beeminder is fundamentally a Quantified Self tool that's all about visualizing your progress and showing you graphs and giving you data to export and whatnot. (Actually, fun fact: in a recent iteration of the Duolingo smartphone app they were borrowing some of our visualization ideas, like we have a "yellow brick road" that you follow to stay on track and you can build up safety buffer and whatnot.)
Anyway, the point is, you can think of it as paying for all that stuff, but if you never need Beeminder's kick in the pants then the fee is waived. People who never go off track never pay and those people surely didn't really need Beeminder in the first place so that works out fine for everyone!
Also, really appreciate the candid reaction. As you can imagine, that kind of feedback is insanely valuable for a small startup like us. So don't hold back! If the whole concept still seems icky after hearing this we'd be grateful to hear that too.
PS: Direct link to our Duolingo integration: https://www.beeminder.com/duolingo
A big portion of beating procrastination is simply getting tasks started. I've had the most success with Beeminder, which has you set concrete goals and put money on the line. For example, you could set a goal of getting an hour of homework or study done before any Reddit 4-5 days per week. I've done something similar, which can be seen here in the 'techlast' goal.
> Isn’t there an app for discipline?
Well, there are apps like Beeminder and Habitica, but you could still "trick" them by entering that you did your hour of study (or whatever) when you did not. So ultimately, only you can discipline yourself.
Interesting concept. While it's not exactly the same, you might gain some inspiration from https://www.beeminder.com, a service I've been using for years. It's more about commitment than experimentation, but they've done some really creative work on data integration, which will be key to adoptions from users who don't get excited about keying data into a website (95%+ of prospects.)
One kinda aggressive way is to use Beeminder: You set a goal and if you don't succeed, you have to pay whatever amount you pledged. In the start, it's probably gonna suck being forced to do it. But it'll become easier as it becomes more of a habit.
Also, working distraction-free allows you to be more focused and get done faster.
I started a blog this year, and I recently wrote a post on how I established my goals and made time to do them. The whole post might be helpful, but to save you some time, the link skips straight to the part about time management.
The TLDR is to think about the task you want to do (say writing a blog post) ask yourself two questions:
- Does it seem realistic that this amount of effort will get me to my goal in a reasonable amount of time?
- How hard will it be to block off this amount of time in my day?
If the answer to (1) is “no,” then work on creating more time in your day. One obvious thing here would be to utilize your commute to do outlining or research or something. Even if you’re driving, you might be able to do something like an audiobook to make progress. Likewise with the shower… I listen to Spanish in the shower to get more language learning input.
If the answer to (2) is “hard,” then you should add commitment devices to make sure that you are using the time you do have more effectively. Basically reward yourself for taking the time and punish yourself for failing to do so. My favorite punishment right now is Beeminder, which fines you money if you get off track. Works great for me; your mileage may vary.
Hope this helps… I have a bunch more ideas if you’re interested.
I've been using Beeminder on-and-off for a couple of years, since I saw the ad on the SSC sidebar.
At times I find it really useful. It's best when you have some concretely achievable goal and an end-date to aim for (not too far in the future.) I don't usually use it for to-do lists though, more for things like going to the gym, keeping my inbox up to date, etc.
https://www.beeminder.com/, I think they have a codeschool integration and they definitely have a github integration. Beeminder is entirely responsible for allowing me to be a self-taught freelance web developer. I track time spent on coding related task with rescue time and have to pay out money if it drops below a minimum each week.
So, JaNoWriMo (January Novel Writing Month) begins! I'm writing my yaoi paranormal romance novel (yes, really).
Yesterday was almost a write-off because I slept so badly following my "spending NYE playing board games sober" party, but I forced myself to write something so I would have no 0 days.
Of course, once I started writing it flowed easily (I chose something that was easy to write, though), and I enjoyed writing, though I hate the result (it was written after a night of poor sleep). It is definitely not ready for even basic feedback.
Here's my beeminder goal if anyone wants to keep tabs on me: https://www.beeminder.com/mad/janowrimo
Something that just occurred to me: the main character is a vampire. How do I bring this up? In an opening scene do I just sort of take it for granted that the reader knows that the main character is a vampire, or do I have to go into a basic description of vampire society, lore, etc? How do I do that? Does anyone have a link to something available online that introduces the concept of vampires to the reader? My Vampires Are Different, of course, but all the reader needs to know for now is that he can't go in the sun and has better senses than a human - you know, the usual; they can find out the rest later as the vampire's lover does.
Things I need to do to fix the scene I wrote yesterday:
Rewrite it entirely (really)
Find out what the level of warfare technology was in 550 CE
Describe what people are wearing
Goals today:
Write a completely different scene
Aim: 3,000 words
There are habit building sites out there that can do things like this - and there is a device like this already (though you'd have to tell it this is your goal) the "Pavlok" shocks you and such.
Beeminder punishes you when you stray: https://www.beeminder.com/
This is similar to one of the "punishments" (or you could say a negative feedback loop) which I initially considered. The reason I decided against implementing that into this test is because I really wanted to isolate this style of reward by itself to see how much pull it has as a standalone thing without adding other stuff.
But yes, your script idea sounds cool. I think there are services which do something similar too so I imagine there are reviews out there which talk about what they did and didn't like about it.
One example I recall is Beeminder
And yes I agree with you. I feel the same way about bribing myself with my own money. But in this case, what I'm doing isn't any set amount of money at the end. And because it's not that, it actually feels different to know that the reward is changing right before my eyes on a daily basis. In addition to that, I realize that I already buy things for myself just because I want them; figured it would be a better use of my time to position that sort of self-pleasure in a way that felt more like a reward than just doing it because I can. In this way, I don't see the harm in bribing myself since ... I'd do all the legwork to get [whatever] previously without it even being a reward.
Oh I just remembered. When I first started combating my own bad habits and cases of sunk cost fallacy beeminder helped me a lot.
It's a website where you can state goals and are reminded to follow them. You decide the pace at which you want to advance. If you want you can actually pledge real money on something you want to pursue, which will make the website take your money if you don't follow your own plan. I have never pledged money, but the general mechanic makes it easier because you have that little goal of keeping on track for as long as possible instead of some distant, unclimbable mountain.
I love this post because I can rely to it so well. All these stories and information gathering keep you away from the WORK that needs to be done.
Almost most bloggers who write about productivty say the same. They recommend to stay away from Blogs (lol), Facebook, TV, news etc. and focus on the important stuff.
It's so easy to get addicted (not to mention other things like porn, funny sites, etc.)
For me the only solution was to use a distration blocker called focusme.
Now I limit myself to only "waste" a certain amount of time per day and basicly block everything else except the tools that I need (like scrivener, evernote or my WordPress site). The great thing is that I don't have to use any willpower to stay away from distracting sites like facebook (or even reddit) or other tools that I do not need to get stuff done.
Probably I will try to use beeminder next to really commit to my goals because I sometimes still fall of track. Sometimes it's "wasting" my time on reading books without a clear intention. It's nice to consume more information but often times it does not help me solve a single problem I am facing as an entrepreneur.
Check out Beeminder. It helps you track and achieve any quantitative goal. You can submit data via web, text, email, phone app, or API so it's accessible no matter where you are.
I also recommend Bullet Journal for all the non-quantitative stuff.
Individual Vision
- Be proud of how I spend my time and energy
Individual Goals
Be fit physically
- Weight less than 80kg
- ~~Get my resting heart rate below 70bpm~~ DONE
- Get my waist circumference below 90cm
Be fit mentally
- Learn to play a music instrument
- ~~Increase my meditation sessions to 15 minutes~~ DONE
- Increase my journaling sessions to 3 times a week
Accountability
This week has been awful. I've failed in almost all the habits :(
Exercise: 2/3 days
Meditation: 0/7 days
Fitbit on green: 2/7 days and I haven't got to 10000 daily steps on average.
Journaling: 1/2 days
Read every day: 6/7 days
Eat below my calorie limit: 6/7 days.
Review my budget: 2/2 days
Actions this week
I'm starting a shorter work schedule this Wednesday. I plan to use the extra time to do productive stuff, let's see how it goes.
Exercise: 4 days
Meditation: 7 days
Fitbit on green: 7 days
Journaling: 2 days
Read every day: 7 days
Eat below my calorie limit: 7 days
Review my budget: 2 days
Unplanned wins
No unplanned wins this week
Help Needed
Not yet
I am late to this discussion, but I hope I have a usable idea.
Basically I think you cannot simply willpower-muscle it. People follow desires and needs. I.e. they do stuff in order to get what they want or not get what they don't want, the first is called desires and the second called needs.
To get off your ass and change something... you need to have either a burning desire or a need. If neither, nothing will change.
I mean this is really how humans and also animals and everything really works. A lion will get off his ass when is hungry enough, not before.
Given that you have no burning desire... you need to make yourself needs.
To give you a really brutal example, what if you join the army. From that point on, you are set, because they give you orders, and you either fulfill them or get punished and this is what I mean under needs, a soldier needs to avoid getting punished, because it sucks, so he just does what he is told.
For example, you could sign up to a martial arts class and brag abut it to all your friends and relatives on Facebook. That is how you make needs. From then on you need to get there, or else you will get ridiculed, and you need to follow the orders and exercise because you get kicked out otherwise.
Beeminder https://www.beeminder.com/ is a good needs maker.
https://www.beeminder.com/testimonials
This is also good: http://zenhabits.net/impossible/
Individual Vision
- Be proud of how I spend my time and energy
Individual Goals
Be fit physically
- Weight less than 80kg
- ~~Get my resting heart rate below 70bpm~~ DONE
- Get my waist circumference below 90cm
Be fit mentally
- Learn to play a music instrument
- ~~Increase my meditation sessions to 15 minutes~~ DONE
- Increase my journaling sessions to 3 times a week
Accountability
Another great week!
Exercise: 2/1 days
Meditation: 6/7 days - Definitely sticking!
Fitbit on green: 2/7 days - Lower than usual. I miscalculated the impact of my days off
Journaling: 2/2 days.
Read every day: 7/7 days
Eat below my calorie limit: 3/7 days. Not very good.
Review my budget: 2/2
Actions this week
I'll be visiting my hometown most of the week so again exercise is lower than usual.
Exercise: 1 days
Meditation: 7 days
Fitbit on green: 7 days
Journaling: 2 days
Read every day: 7 days
Eat below my calorie limit: 7 days
Review my budget: 2 days
Unplanned wins
No unplanned wins this week
Help Needed
Not yet
Individual Vision
- Be proud of how I spend my time and energy
Individual Goals
Be fit physically
- Weight less than 80kg
- ~~Get my resting heart rate below 70bpm~~ DONE
- Get my waist circumference below 90cm
Be fit mentally
- Learn to play a music instrument
- Increase my meditation sessions to 15 minutes
- Increase my journaling sessions to 3 times a week
Accountability
Very proud with myself this week. I was feeling awful last Tuesday and I was pretty unproductive but the rest of the week has been a blast. I've practically cleared my to-do list!
Exercise: 3/3 days
Meditation: 7/5 days - Awesome!
Fitbit on green: 4/7 days - I tried to compensate the rest of the days so the average is over 10.000 steps daily
Journaling: 3/2 days.
Read every day: 0/7 days - I need to get back to reading again! Damn you Phoenix Wright!
Eat below my calorie limit: 6/7 days. Very good!
Actions this week
Standard week. I'm focusing on getting back to reading.
Exercise: 3 days
Meditation: 5 days - Increased to 15 minutes
Fitbit on green: 7 days
Journaling: 2 days
Read every day: 7 days
Eat below my calorie limit: 7 days
Unplanned wins
A couple of unplanned wins this week!
I've set up a personal budget using You Need A Budget. The system looks great, let's see if it sticks!
I've started using Beeminder, an app that tracks your habits and charge you money if you don't keep them. I found out I work harder to avoid punishment than to reach goals so let's see how it goes! This is my list of goals (very similar to the ones here)
Help Needed
Not yet
I love this kind of counting to say whether I'm "winning" or "losing" my goals. One thing you might be interested in: I like [url=https://www.beeminder.com]Beeminder[/url] to take care of it for me, provide pretty graphs, and penalize me should I fall short.
Exact same situation right here, with the LSAT in September. I did not anticipate having this much burnout from graduating at all. I'm going to make several tiny goals instead of one overarching one by breaking up the chapters of my books. In a different thread, /u/askyfullofstars talked about Beeminder, a website that tracks your progress on goals and takes money from you if you slack off without providing a really good reason. I'm about to start using it; I think I'll buckle down more with short-term consequences. Maybe you can check it out too. Good luck!
I think the payment aspect makes people feel more responsible and pushes them to do something "worthwhile". In some sense it provides a tangible value to things you are doing. There is a whole website (https://www.beeminder.com/) where you pay to make sure you stick with your goals.
I saw another redditor mention Beeminder a few weeks ago, which looks really good. I made my own setup with the Google Graphs API before I found Beeminder, but if I knew about it then I would have used it.
here's mine: https://www.beeminder.com/rodguze/weight
i weigh myself just about daily, but i was to lazy to import all that into that chart. you can tell when i started using beeminder for this as the dots get denser (1 data point per day since then).
fwiw, i highly recommend beeminder for tracking your weight. along with a nice chart of your data, it gives you some basic statistical analysis.
Seems like this is as good a place as any to link Beeminder, an anti-akrasia tool developed by some people at Less Wrong.
It effectively allows you to financially punish yourself for procrastination.
I use Beeminder to track my progress studying Arabic. I set my required progress very low, and I earn breaks when I go on a study binge. Right now I'm trying to avoid binging, so I can make sustainable progress and go on making it just as well every day after the last. I have set two goals with somewhat arbitrary measures that are working really well for me:
(1) my Clozemaster score should go up by 280 points per day, on average. This number is enough to get to 300,000 points by the end of the year. (I hit 200,000 points on December 31! I've been doing this for a while, this is a fast pace, but not really for me at this point.) https://www.beeminder.com/yebyenw/arabiya
(2) my stack of cards "waiting for review" should be smaller than a given amount each day. If there are more than 1843 cards in my stack at the end of the day, I lose. https://www.beeminder.com/yebyenw/reviewstack
A third goal, abstract and not really monitored by Beeminder, is that I should stay close to the line. If I've done too much review, I need to play more new cards in order to beef up my stack again. A fun trick is to say "how low can I set the dial and keep my score that low, while still finding a way to challenge myself to make meaningful progress?"
There are other ways to punish yourself: giving away money when you relapse. An app exist called https://www.beeminder.com/.
In the end, it is how bad you want overcome this addiction.
Any clue as to when we can expect Apple Health integration for nutritional data? Love MacroFactor, but I sync Apple Health with Beeminder, so I might stick with MyFitnessPal until then.
You're welcome. For me I also like a visual reminder of my habits, so I have a 7x7 grid I printed out (based on r/theXeffect) for each goal, taped to my desk, and I use a red sharpie to put an X in each box when I do at least the minimum goal that day. I've used habit tracking apps, but the problem with apps is they exist on the most addictive, distraction-creating device ever created by humans. Printed works better for me.
I've also been playing with Stickk to keep me consistent with my most important goal. If I don't do the bare minimum for my important habit that day, my debit card gets hit for $20. Puts my money where my mouth is. If you experiment with this, I recommend starting with just 1 day or 1 week with just a single goal and a low dollar amount, so you learn how it works. I'm doing a 49 day challenge with one goal and a very minimum daily commitment, but it really does help me to stay consistent. An alternative to Stickk which has more options and is more geeky is Beeminder, but I prefer the simplicity of Stickk (do it or pay $).
I've had great success with Beeminder. You make a contract with the app to do something on some schedule. For example 10 minutes of mediation a day or 70 a week.
Each day you enter how many mediation minutes you've done and it tracks how you're measuring up. If you fall short of your promise it charges you $5. More details about how it works in the F.A.Q
I really like the James Clear stuff mentioned by another user. I feel this is a good concrete way to implement it. You can set reminders and deadlines which act as your cues. The motivation from not losing money means you can start at a more challenging (and rewarding) start point. Doing 2 mins in a day didn't move the needle enough to get me excited about continuing the habit. 10 mins is a sweet spot for me.
This is what worked for me: Beeminder, blockers like FocusMe, get up early, intermittent fasting.
In addition to all said before. https://www.beeminder.com - Here you can set up your Card goal and punishment for not doing cards. It charges 5$ (min amount) from your card if you not moving on your goal.
https://www.beeminder.com/ is slightly related. It's a pay-when-you-fail based commitment device. It can take its data from automatic data sources, so you could make e.g. screen time go into the commitment - if it exceeds the limit you set, they will charge you.
In theory, with some plumbing, you could probably connect two separate data sources, such as screen time and data from a training app (distance run etc.), make one of them make up for the other, and if it nets out too low they will charge you money. That's not too far from what you described.
My top three habits.
- Meditation: Helped me become aware/conscious of when digital distractions are taking over my attention (e.g. mindlessly surfing Reddit)
- Analog activities: I've noticed that when I'm engaged in my analog activities and dedicate more hours to them, it leaves less room for digital activities.
- Optimal use of digital: Finding ways I can use digital tool to meet my goals. For example, I use Beeminder to track my habits. This was much more effective for me, than keeping an analog habit tracker.
In essence this is what Beeminder is.
If you want to put your money where your mouth is, you hook up your credit card and they charge you when you don't hit a quantifiable goal (e.x. ten hours in an IDE to improve your coding, or ten hours in Photoshop to improve your design skills).
I'll be the first to admit I haven't needed that to do what I'm truly motivated to, but if that's what you're looking for, it's productized already.
Personally, I think part of it is self-acceptance of the fact that sometimes you just won't want to work on things, and it doesn't make you personally deficient. With that in mind, I recommend making a plan (much like a student course-load) and keeping it reasonable, and using self-accountability tools like Focusmate and/or beeminder to keep yourself on track.
Between Courses, textbooks, online guides, and even some community curated curriculums on GitHub, I think the problem for most is less access to the knowledge or structured learning and more a challenge in building discipline to get through it all
> I really want to cut porn and masturbation out from my life entirely, but I think I need some outside help, in the vein of Stephen King’s short story “Quitters Inc.” In the story, a company helps men quit smoking by electroshocking their children, cutting their wives’ fingers off, and enforcing harsh consequences for partaking in the habit. I am interested in a toned down version of this-if someone on this forum wants to participate, all you would have to do is send me a message each day asking me if I masturbated that day. If I did, you would be entitled to 100$. Let me know if anyone would be willing to help me out.
Do you think this would still work if automated? Beeminder does pretty much what you're asking for.
Have successfully used Habitica for almost a year to keep up with small habits (like 4 glasses of water a day, meditation, etc.) Beeminder (https://www.beeminder.com/) helped me to stick to a reading habit for about a year as well, but at some point I felt I spend too much money on fines.
The best thing that happened to me by far, discipline-wise, was finding a good accountability buddy; we don't even use an app, just a google doc, to be accountable for goals, and it works amazingly well.
Have you heard of the website/app beeminder? You can make an account and set a goal of any sort, as long as you can make it into a number - e.g. you do 16:8 5.5 days a week. And if you don't, you pay them money. It sounds weird and it's not for everyone but it can be the nudge to get things done.
I feel bad for Beeminder, they've spent thousands of dollars having their ad on the sidebar of every one of my blog posts for the past five years, yet they've so clearly failed to connect to their intended audience.
Check out https://www.beeminder.com/ , I promise I'm not just shilling them for the money.
I have my anki linked to beeminder so I never forget because I'm a massive tightwad.
https://www.beeminder.com/mad/anki-combined
(The data it's graphing is essentially "cards that are not due that day", so the goal is for that number to increase or at the very least not to decrease because it can be considered to be the number of cards I've currently memorised)
I was a member of Yes.Fit for awhile—I got bored with it pretty quickly, but it's super-motivating for a lot of people.
Same with Beeminder—I don't respond well to being punished for missing a workout, but if you do...
I love Zombies, Run!, as I mentioned above, and they're starting to add non-zombie content, too.
I also really enjoy the digital badges I get from Garmin and Smashrun.
And I haven't tried any of Shikudo's games, but they look kind of cool.
You may already be familiar the X-Effect but I think it's a good place to start. It's essentially just habit tracking, but I think there's a lot of great stuff to glean from this post outside of just the basics of the system - hence the posts popularity. Some key things are:
- Starting small (don't start too many habits at once). If you're really down and out, you can also forego some of these really great habits (meditating, working out, etc.) and start with something with a low barrier of entry (I started with teaching myself how to shuffle cards really well for 10-minutes a day. Reminded me how to learn and gave me some more immediate "little wins")
- If you miss a day, you MUST do your habit the following day (this small rule has helped me more than I can tell you)
- And to find some outside accountability. Whether you think he's a snakeoil saleman or a genius, Tim Ferriss has a quote I always remember: "A goal without real consequences is just wishful thinking."
That last point might be the most important but the hardest to convince yourself to do since putting your potential failure on display sounds horrible. That's also why it's so effective once you actually get started. For that, you have a few options:
- The above-mentioned post actually started the community r/theXeffect where people post their cards as they go. Very helpful.
- You can go the nuclear option and try something like Stickk or Beeminder
Good luck, my fine friend. We're here as you need us, picturing you out there in the world succeeding your butt off. Cheers!
I know that it's off-topic, but I ran into the same problem and set to myself a goal using Beeminder (https://www.beeminder.com/). Whenever I read, I start a Toggl timer and I have weekly reading goals between 2 and 5 hours depending on how busy I am. Works like a charm for me for the last 9 months or so, and it's very satisfactory to see how much reading hours I accumulated since the beginning of the year.
Beeminder is saving my PhD. Set a goal to do so many pomodoros of reading each week, mindlessly keep track of how you do, and the magic of monetary incentives will do its work.
While any form of external accountability can boost your results, at least for a short term, vlogging seems like a very effort-intensive way to do it - and, as it was mentioned, it can generate more causes for distraction than actual benefit. I would experiment with other ways of external accountability - from private pledge to friends / commitment on social media to apps like beeminder or stickK - before trying something as time-demanding as vlogging.
Gotta be honest, this is a shit idea. Source: everyone I've ever see try this route.
It sounds like you don't even want to do your goal. You just think you should and you're shitting on yourself for not getting it done. There's no way to force you to do something you don't want to do.
There is no app for pointing a literal gun at you, or locking you outside. You can try stickk or beeminder and put an obscene amount of cash on the line, but you'll likely game the system like most people do.
There are ample resources for you to utilize.
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<strong>Beeminder</strong> comes to mind, it's $8 per month. Seriously, that's dirt cheap considering it can help you regulate your life.
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<strong>If This Then That</strong> is a free resource that will trigger a reaction when an action happens.
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Scenario: getting out of bed at 9AM
- <strong>This is where you utilize If This Then That (IFTTT)</strong> as a helper. Do not click on this link if your goal is anything else, and immediately exit the page when you have set your timer and linked IFTTT to Beeminder. Do not go to any other pages or applets.
- Immediately check the Weaseling Weasle box! This is your scaffolding!
- Stick with one goal until you are past your akrasia line
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Also, if you are comfortable with sharing your daily activities and what activities you feel you should be doing, I will make a schedule for you. I have done this for myself for 18 years and am adept at estimating a realistic ADHD'd timeframe.
​
Beeminder household chores:
- Say there are six major tasks you feel you should complete every day.
- You make a Beeminder goal to do 3 tasks per day
- check the Weaseling Weasle box
- check pessimistic presumption box (this will force you to enter a datapoint every day, whether it be a zero for not having done any task, or a 3 if you have completed all the tasks.
​
​
Doing all six tasks will give you an immediate reward of having a buffer.
Keep up a streak of three tasks from then on, and your buffer won't deplete. That's the immediate consequence and reward you require.
It's weird you got tired of forcing yourself and that's a bug; for me it was a feature. I had a goal to finish the required reading from the textbook by the end of the semester and each page was a chore (it's a textbook, not exactly Grisham!), and every day I read 2 pages so that I wouldn't be dinged made me more motivated to read 15 pages on days when I could so I wouldn't have to go through that again.
Graph: https://www.beeminder.com/mad/leeniemanbook
You can see I start out having frequent emergencies and towards the end I end up building up huge bits of buffer because I decided I didn't like the "eep" feeling as beeminder calls it. Which was great because it meant I was doing my reading at better than my goal pace!
At the end of the day it's personal preference, if you found a system that works for you then awesome! But thought I'd offer my perspective on how I benefited from the same feeling that made you stop using the service.
Can vouch for beeminder, been using it since launch. Wrote ~50k words of my novel last year using it, and also read my friggin assigned readings from my textbook (which I normally suck at) one page at a time with a goal for it.
Exactly. That was definitely an influence. https://www.beeminder.com/ is another huge influence. these are both commitment contract with yourself though. I wanted to create something you could use between two people.
Use Beeminder to charge yourself money if you don't go at least once a week. Either you'll develop a good habit or you'll discover that you'd rather pay $30 than go to the gym and you will stop idly thinking about it and spend $30 on something you do want to do like rock climbing gym.
I posted this elsewhere in this thread but I think it might help you out - I've hooked beeminder up to draftin to do that sort of thing automatically, even though its concept of "word count" is "words added or removed" to reward you for editing too. Perhaps that might work for you, if you don't mind the way draftin looks? (I prefer google docs, but that might be because I'm used to it...)
Here's mine anyway: https://www.beeminder.com/mad/janowrimo
I recommend Beeminder It charges you money if you procrastinate. It's actually kind of insane how well the threat of losing money works. You might find it's too effective
The term for what you're suffering from is called Akrasia if you want to google for it. There are lots of approaches out there, and lots written about it. The long and short of it is you get a quick easy dopamine hit from doing something pleasurable now, whereas your brain gives you much smaller dopamine hits for rewards that are potentially far in the future.
> It's not painting yourself into a corner so that you CAN'T smoke
I don't think you really tried this, though. Throwing away your pack isn't "painting yourself into a corner", it's just putting an annoying obstacle in the way of smoking.
Have you heard of Beeminder? The general idea behind it and services like it is that you sign a contract (when you're fully lucid and reasonable) with someone else, that obligates you into something you really don't want to happen if you (when you're not fully lucid and reasonable) decides to do something stupid. For example, you can set up a contract that says that if you smoke a single cigarette, you're now obligated to give some idiot you hate half of your next paycheck.
That's how you paint yourself into a corner. It's not about incapability; it's about feedback loops. If you get punished for doing something, you stop doing it. It's [extinction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_(psychology\)), the opposite of addiction.
Do what you set out to do, or they'll start charging you money.
Either that, or fill up you schedule more, so you don't have time to not get up, or fit in things were you can.
To follow up:
I was unable to get HTTPS working on device, but did find a very straightforward way of doing it off-device. stunnel [https://www.stunnel.org/] works for precisely this use case. I've set it up on my OpenWRT router, but any other computer will also work. It accepts regular connections on an arbitrary port, sets up a TLS connection to a target server and proxies the content both ways.
The only change needed to the configuration was to configure the target. My stanza is as follows:
[beeminder] client = yes accept = 6135 connect = www.beeminder.com:443
This accepts a connection from the esp on port 6135, then transparently proxies it through to https://www.beeminder.com
I used it and passed Florida.
I provides you with outlines, an MBE question bank, and audio lectures.
It does NOT give you essays, nor any sort of grading service. This is pretty much the bare minimum you should count on for bar prep.
I recommend:
Pulling down past essay questions for your state and doing them. Grade yourself to at least see if you're spotting the issues.
Taking the outlines they give you and convert them into flashcards. I used Anki (which is a free software) for mine, and it has a smartphone app so I was doing flashcards in all my free time. Except when I was in the car, and then I was listening to audio lectures.
SETTING UP A SCHEDULE and force yourself to stick to it. This is the hardest part as it requires lots of discipline. There are apps and such that can incentivize you to this end (like https://www.beeminder.com/) but at the end of the day you are counting on self-motivation. You have to be able to get your studying done and power through hundreds of questions even when you would rather be doing anything else.
So if you know this is something you can handle, I think it works.
The fact that I spent ~$120 on Bar prep materials whilst my friends were spending $2000+ meant I had money freed up to spend on other things... or to save. But I can say that I did somewhat miss getting to go to lectures with and otherwise study alongside my friends.
Individual Vision
- Be proud of how I spend my time and energy
Individual Goals
Be fit physically
- Weight less than 80kg
- ~~Get my resting heart rate below 70bpm~~ DONE
- Get my waist circumference below 90cm
Be fit mentally
- Learn to play a music instrument
- ~~Increase my meditation sessions to 15 minutes~~ DONE
- Increase my journaling sessions to 3 times a week
Accountability
Exercise: 0/1 days - The only day I could go to the gym was Monday and I was ill. I slept less than three hours so I needed to rest.
Meditation: 5/7 days
Fitbit on green: 6/7 days - More than 108.000 steps in the week! My record! The missing day was Monday for the reasons above
Journaling: 2/2 days.
Read every day: 5/7 days.
Eat below my calorie limit: 3/7 days. I need to improve on this.
Review my budget: 3/2
Actions this week
Exercise: 3 days
Meditation: 7 days
Fitbit on green: 7 days
Journaling: 2 days
Read every day: 7 days
Eat below my calorie limit: 7 days
Review my budget: 2 days
Unplanned wins
No unplanned wins this week
Help Needed
Not yet
Individual Vision
- Be proud of how I spend my time and energy
Individual Goals
Be fit physically
- Weight less than 80kg
- ~~Get my resting heart rate below 70bpm~~ DONE
- Get my waist circumference below 90cm
Be fit mentally
- Learn to play a music instrument
- ~~Increase my meditation sessions to 15 minutes~~ DONE
- Increase my journaling sessions to 3 times a week
Accountability
Another great week!
Exercise: 4/3 days
Meditation: 6/5 days - Definitely sticking!
Fitbit on green: 4/7 days - Not bad. As always I tried to compensate it to get to the weekly average
Journaling: 2/2 days.
Read every day: 3/7 days - Improving from previous weeks but I'm better than this!
Eat below my calorie limit: 6/7 days. Very good!
Actions this week
I have a couple of days off this week and I'll probably be away so I'm scaling some habits down
Exercise: 1 days
Meditation: 7 days
Fitbit on green: 7 days
Journaling: 2 days
Read every day: 7 days
Eat below my calorie limit: 7 days
Review my budget: 2 days
Unplanned wins
No unplanned wins this week
Help Needed
Not yet
Yup, trying to make it perfect is counterproductive: Key is just getting on your shoes and out the door. Once you're that far, the rest happens. Don't plan on using the track right now unless your neighborhood really isn't walkable. Reduce the friction between you and your goal until you've built the habit.
I have a fitbit and use beeminder to commit to a certain number of steps per day. If I fall too far off my goal, it costs me money: helps motivate me to get out there and just do it.
But none of that is necessary. An alarm for a time you put on your shoes and get out the door might work for you, or play ingress, or ...
I weigh every time I pass a scale and upload to beeminder. It does the math for me and draws a pretty chart that has my trailing averages. You can set a goal with them, but if you don't want to commit to pay you can just set a super easy to achieve goal and never fail.
Currently using Beeminder which is similar for my exercise goals. It really helped me when I was first getting started with my exercise and now it is more of a daily reminder since I am not having trouble with motivation.
Aww I was going to make a post on this in a few weeks when I had more data. Oh well I probably will anyway :)
I use http://www.beeminder.com for my daily weigh ins, it keeps all the data online for anyone to see. I'm happy for people to refresh my graph to see how I'm going.
The link for my data is https://www.beeminder.com/waggerz/goals/waggerz
When you look at the data points you can see just how much is changes, but what is most important is the trend of the data. No matter how big the jump up is, the overall trend is down.
For me, I would hate to be back on a weekly weigh in. What if my weigh in day just happens to line up with one of those days I jump in weight or retain water? On a weekly weigh in it would look like I've lost nothing, but in fact I might have just retained an extra pound of water or didn't get a good sleep.
I can also use my graph to imagine a trend line for when I might get to my goal.
Daily weigh ins are my biggest driver at the moment.
Setting up an accountability system was crucial for me. I've been using Beeminder and a Withings scale for since July to make sure that I'm making my goals. I weigh in several times per week. If I don't come in under my target weight, I owe them money. I haven't had to pay up yet. Just set your goal to be something achievable -- 1lbs/week or so.
I've found this gives me the right amount of flexibility in my diet. If I'm way ahead, I can relax for a bit. If I'm behind, it's time to make sure that I get to the gym and pay close attention to what I'm eating.
Not sure about beeminder's whole "you pay if you don't perform", but I spent some time importing my historical data and that was the result. I love their graphs. :P
Now, if only I could get it to pull the data from my google doc... or how to embed their graph...
So you lost 50lbs during those first 6 months? That sounds pretty good. Did you have to lower your calorie intake after losing that weight? I agree with daily weight tracking as a person's weight can easily fluctuate 4-5 lbs day to day. As long as the numbers are collected in a way that you can see progress through randomness. Do you have any charts like this: https://www.beeminder.com/example/goals/weight2
Ultimately whether you exercise or not, you're going to need to maintain that calorie deficit. Check out the FAQ for bodyweight exercises, as I mentioned above. Unfortunately, due to my lack of weight loss experience I can't say much more than that.
You need commitment devices so you actually stick to your plans.
I would suggest having a buddy or personal trainer to keep you motivated, and/or Stikk or Beeminder to keep you on track.
Beeminder have a good blog post on akrasia and why we don't always achieve what we set out to do.
(Note, I'm not affiliated with any of these services, although I am using beeminder to ensure I habitualise certain behaviours and mindware upgrades.)
If you need structure and punishment to get things done, I'm a fan of beeminder You make a graph of your goals and pay them money if you screw up. I make sure to check it every day and I have metrics for study time in all courses, workout dates, and my Bicycle Odometer.
That way if I fail to self motivate, I have the prospect of losing money to coax me.