How To Do What You Want: Akrasia and Self-Binding
2011-01-24 • by dreeves[A version of this article was originally published at Messy Matters by Daniel Reeves.] Many of us have a problem following through on our intentions. And it’s more than just a difficulty in predicting our future desires. It’s not like “Gee, I thought I wanted to get in shape but it turned out there was...
February
Weight Loss: Really Easy, Really Hard
2011-02-02 • by melzaHere’s the bottom line on weight loss: unless more calories are being used than consumed, no weight loss will happen. There’s no magic. There is plenty of confusion and struggle, however. Simply eating less backfires and it’s because of hormones. Your body really doesn’t want your weight to change. Oh,...
No Preemptive Eating
2011-02-20 • by dreevesHere’s a simple yet powerful weight loss tip: Don’t eat when you don’t want to. I mean, maybe you shouldn’t always eat even when you do want to but at the very least don’t eat when you don’t want to. Like because it’s there, you’re bored, or to prevent being hungry later. If you have other tips and tricks,...
March
Food Habits
2011-03-01 • by Kevin McGowanContinuing the theme from our last post, this is a guest post by Beeminder beta user Kevin McGowan. I am not an expert of any kind and I have no training. I’m just a guy who used to be pretty uncomfortable (5’10” 230lbs) and now is a much happier 175lbs. Danny thought the lifestyle changes I used to make...
To Buy or Not To Buy a Gym Membership
2011-03-22 • by Jill RenaudThis is a guest post by Beeminder user Jill Renaud. I hate my current gym. It is a budget gym with no classes, machines in disrepair, and the other members can be downright rude. I can be patiently waiting for a machine and be cut off by a gym rat. A literal rat. (Kidding. It’s not quite that bad.) So...
April
Productivity Hack: The Sedimentary Filing System
2011-04-01 • by dreevesA lot of people are at one extreme or the other when it comes to organizing papers on their desk. Either it’s an unmitigated disaster or it’s a model of anal retention that they seem to spend far too much energy on. For years I’ve been achieving a reasonable middle ground by sticking to three categories:...
Beeminder on Rails
2011-04-29 • by dreevesYou may have noticed the shiny new design of Beeminder. For nerds who know about such things: we switched to Ruby on Rails. For non-nerds: we added buzzwords to our internets! Either way, it was kind of a big deal, even though it doesn’t look like much just yet. Step one was to replicate everything that...
May
Unintended Consequences
2011-05-23 • by dreevesDavid 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 result?...
June
Akratics Anonymous
2011-06-01 • by dreeves“I did all the right things and it didn’t work” The kind of people who say that, Beeminder is not for them. Beeminder is for goals you know you can achieve, and definitely want to achieve, yet historically have failed at. Some people don’t relate to the psychology there. Apparently you didn’t want it...
Summer Solstice PSA
2011-06-28 • by dreevesThis is a friendly reminder about our friendly mass of incandescent gas. For beemindees in the northern hemisphere (i.e., all but one or two of you, I believe), this is a reminder that the days are as long as they are going to get right now and are getting shorter from here on out. So if you’re beeminding...
July
Force Majeure, Or Beeminder's SOS Clause
2011-07-01 • by dreeves[UPDATE 2015: We’ve learned that we don’t need to be this uptight or hard-nosed about derailments. Just reply to the email asking if the derailment was legit and say why you don’t consider it to be. We will believe you. If you want something closer to the original vision articulated in this old blog post...
Backfiring Workouts
2011-07-27 • by dreevesHere’s a question from a user: “Sometimes it seems like a hard workout makes me gain weight. My question is: WTF?” Melanie, Beeminder’s resident fitness expert, has an answer: Temporary weight gain for a day or two after a hard workout is common. Your body is storing glucose — quick energy
September
The Road Dial and the Akrasia Horizon
2011-09-01 • by dreevesPreviously 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...
Buzzing BeeBot
2011-09-22 • by guestThere’s an old saying that the only person who ever changes you is your mother because she does two things: she always has a simple message (eat your vegetables, brush your teeth) and she keeps repeating that message over and over. When we set out with Beeminder to help people modify their behavior, we...
October
Beeminder Open to the Public
2011-10-13 • by bsouleBeeminder is now officially launched and open to the public. Invite all your loser friends who need a kick in the pants! If you’re just tuning in, here’s the three-sentence version of what Beeminder is: Beeminder is like StickK.com (cash commitment contracts to force yourself to lose weight, not procrastinate,...
The Want-Can-Will Test for Akrasia
2011-10-24 • by dreevesFailing to live a healthy lifestyle is or would be, for most of us, a classic failure of rationality — not acting in our own overall best interests. There certainly are people (including the terminally ill, but others as well) who are exceptions, for whom an unhealthy lifestyle is rational. For example,...
November
It's Chunky Time!
2011-11-03 • by dreevesHere’s a question that keeps coming up. To paraphrase, Beeminder is great for stuff that needs to happen every day, but for stuff that happens sporadically in large chunks of time, won’t I quickly run off Beeminder’s smooth daily ramp? Au contraire! Beeminder allows brilliantly for chunkiness of time....
PSA: T Minus One Week to Thanksgiving
2011-11-18 • by dreevesToday is one week before Thanksgiving in the US. One week is also Beeminder’s akrasia horizon. That means if you would like to stuff yourself silly a week from today, or slack off, or otherwise make your bright red line do the opposite of what it normally does, then now is the time to adjust your commitment...
December
Beeminder Dashboard Widget
2011-12-01 • by dreevesWe’ve been using a simple Mac dashboard widget that esteemed co-founder Bethany hacked up to keep an eye on our Beeminder goals since before Beeminder was Beeminder. Here’s what it looks like on Dreeves’s computer: We mostly use it for TagTime-based goals, where the data is added automatically. For other...
Quantified Self
2011-12-16 • by dreevesThis is crossposted from the Quantified Self blog. Bethany Soule and Daniel Reeves have presented at New York City QS meetups (here and here) on a couple ideas that came together and turned into Beeminder, which they co-founded in 2010. Through much personal experimentation they’ve developed unique ideas...
About
Beeminder is goal-tracking with teeth. We plot your progress on a graph with a Bright Red Line (formerly Yellow Brick Road). If your datapoints cross that line, we take your money.
The Beeminder blog is a hodgepodge of productivity nerdery and behavioral economics written by the founders and various friends.
Start Here
Does Beeminder sound super crazypants? Just confusing? One of the first things you may want to check out is our User's Guide for New Bees. Check out other posts we're most proud of by clicking the "best-of" tag below. If you're a glutton for honey, the "bee-all" tag has everything we still think is worth reading. Other good ones are the "rationality" and "science" tags, if you're into that.
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Beeminder Community
Most of the action is in the Beeminder forum. Or if you want to be slightly social without risking getting distracted arguing on the internet, you can do pomodoros online in sync with other Beeminder users and productivity nerds in the Beeminder coworking room on Complice.
Akrasia
Akrasia (ancient Greek ἀκρασία, "lacking command over oneself"; adjective: "akratic") is the state of acting against one's better judgment, not doing what one genuinely wants to do. It encompasses procrastination, lack of self-control, lack of follow-through, and any kind of addictive behavior.