My mom recently lost $5,000 to my brother in a commitment contract gone wild. That was started in part as an experiment early in Beeminder’s beta period before we’d thought of things like the exponential pledge schedule. Believe it or not, it was actually a pretty positive outcome: my mom gradually lost a tiny bit of weight (more importantly: didn’t gain weight!) for over 2 years, thus paying my brother on average $179/month for that fitness program. Not very cost efficient, but quite socially efficient!
I’m sure not many people are keen to emulate that experiment with my mom and brother, but it really hit home for me how valuable Beeminder’s exponential pledge schedule is. With that $5k contract it was a lot of stress to decide on such a high amount and make sure there was no inadvertently toxic fine print (even amongst family!) and to actually take the plunge and have the contract officially start.
The way it works in the current Beeminder is just infinitely better. By the time you hit motivating amounts of money all the doubts, fears, and uncertainties have been quelled. Beeminder has earned something for its trouble and you’ve got yourself nicely self-bound with quantified confidence that you can stay on track from now on, perhaps with a tweak of the road dial.
If that new crazy amount keeps you on track for years (like it did for my mom) then maybe eventually it will lose its sting (like it did for my mom). Well, if so, we hope you’ll feel like Beeminder earned its money by then. And the next even crazier pledge level should motivate you for even longer.
Foreshadowing
“Once you get to those amounts we’re all but guaranteeing that you won’t actually pay.”
There’s another reason we’re so pleased with ourselves for coming up with the exponential pledge schedule: It’s how we make all our money (currently about midway between ramen profitability and day-job equivalency). We get you hooked when it’s free and then charge you more in proportion to how valuable you find us, as demonstrated by the severity of the kick in the pants it takes to keep you on track. Before we figured all this out, we used to get dollar signs in our eyes when gung ho users wanted to jump to commitment contracts with hundreds or thousands of dollars at risk. Eventually we learned that there’s approximately no chance that people will derail with that kind of money at stake the first time.
That’s especially true given how generous we are about what counts as a legitimate derailment. We pretty much only make you pay if the derailment was due to akrasia. [UPDATE from the far future (2021): We don’t exactly endorse that statement these days. Commitment contracts should have nice bright lines and things can get pretty weaselly if you contest any derailment for which you have any excuse.] But no one is so akratic that they let themselves derail on an $810 goal (well, one person has been; no one at $2430). So once you get to those amounts we’re all but guaranteeing that you won’t actually pay. That’s why we decided to actually charge money directly if you want to jump to higher pledge amounts.