Tag Archive

To Break From Routine Is Human

Thursday, May 16th, 2013
To Break From Routine Is Human

This is crossposted on AndyBrett.com. The third James Bond movie, Goldfinger, opens with an amphibious mission to destroy an illicit chemical processing facility. After emerging from the water and planting the explosives, Bond strips off his drysuit to reveal a perfectly pressed white tuxedo and calmly affixes a red carnation... »

Precommit to Recommit: The Third Great Beeminder Epiphany

Tuesday, February 12th, 2013
Precommit to Recommit: The Third Great Beeminder Epiphany

The First Great Beeminder Epiphany was the Yellow Brick Road, for bringing long-term consequences as near possible. The Second Great Beeminder Epiphany was the Road Dial... »

Beeminder is S.M.A.R.T., Overcomes Bias

Thursday, August 23rd, 2012
Beeminder is S.M.A.R.T., Overcomes Bias

Katja Grace, long praised by economists and now collaborating with one since joining Robin Hanson’s OvercomingBias blog, just wrote a pretty amazing article about how much Beeminder improves her life. She made several important points, one of which is particularly reblogworthy, especially if we take the liberty of rephrasing it like... »

Synonyms for Self-Binding

Saturday, July 21st, 2012
Synonyms for Self-Binding

We’ve been collecting a list of synonyms for the crazy lifehack that sites like Beeminder facilitate. In addition to us being shameless SEO-whores, it seems like this list could be genuinely useful for humans, especially the kind of humans who read the Beeminder Blog. Here’s how a co-founder of StickK defines, with admirable rigor, exactly... »

Getting Back On The Wagon

Friday, May 25th, 2012
Getting Back On The Wagon

This is a guest post by Philip Hellyer who can walk on water and outrun bullets, with the help of Beeminder. He eloquently describes what we think is currently the single biggest pain point (though there are many) with Beeminder right now — how to keep from procrastinating indefinitely on... »

Layaways and Lamentations

Monday, February 13th, 2012
Layaways and Lamentations

Say you have a hard deadline in a month and you know you’ll end up down to the wire. You check the exact time of the deadline and see that it’s 9am. Groan! That portends a brutal all-nighter. Why (oh why) couldn’t they have made it 9pm the previous night? (Same story for deadlines that... »

The Road Dial and the Akrasia Horizon

Wednesday, August 31st, 2011
The Road Dial and the Akrasia Horizon

Previously on the Beeminder Blog… How can we set up a commitment contract with minimal risk that we’ll regret it? It’s a tricky balancing act. You want something solid enough that you’ve truly committed yourself to your goal and can’t weasel out whenever a friend bakes some brownies (or whatever). But... »

BMNDR vs StickK

Thursday, June 16th, 2011
BMNDR vs StickK

This is a guest post by Josh Jordan. While waiting for a Beeminder beta account, I tried using StickK to help me lose some fat. StickK is a brilliant concept and I hope they succeed in a big way, but I don’t like their weekly weigh-ins, for two reasons: It’s way too easy to »

TimeCarrot = StickK + RescueTime

Friday, June 10th, 2011
TimeCarrot = StickK + RescueTime

We hate to promote our competition but TimeCarrot.com is an interesting idea (albeit rough around the edges) that some of you will be interested in. Most of you know about StickK.com, which facilitates commitment contracts on arbitrary goals (but no visualization or automatic daily accountability, like with Beeminder). You also may have... »

Unintended Consequences

Sunday, May 22nd, 2011
Unintended Consequences

David Reiley is an economist and a Beeminder beta user, albeit one who has yet to partake of a commitment contract. He asks the following: For those of you who have given yourselves big incentives to do something, do you ever find that you are shortchanging other important areas of your life as a... »