Beeminder as the nuclear option means beeminding something as an insurance policy. You have a nice graph of your progress but you maintain enough safety buffer that you’re not in danger of derailing and getting stung (being charged money for going off track on your goal, for those just tuning in). In other words, Beeminder is there in the background but you find ways to not actually need it: setting up environmental triggers, instilling habits, social accountability, you name it. If those things should happen to fail, Beeminder’s got your back.
Being motivated by the threat of Beeminder’s sting sucks, you say? We don’t think it needs to feel that way but maybe it does for you. If, so our contention will be that, for certain goals, you still need Beeminder as emergency backup.
“If you aren’t certain … maybe don’t beemind it”
First, assume that your Beeminder goal passes the Want-Can-Will Test. Namely, you definitely want to do it, you definitely can do it, but based on your history you’re not sure you will do it. Sometimes people try to beemind Should goals — things they feel guilty for not doing but that they don’t genuinely want to do. This is important and a bit buried in our list of things you shouldn’t beemind so let us quote it here:
Vegetables are healthy but you enjoy candy more. Maybe being sweaty or out of breath is particularly unpleasant for you despite how good it is for you. Maybe YouTube is more engaging than textbooks.
We sometimes hear complaints about Beeminder, along the lines that it’s self-blackmail or unhealthily suppressing parts of yourself. You should take those warnings seriously! If you aren’t certain that more exercise or more writing or less TV, or whatever it is, is optimal for you, maybe don’t beemind it.
One way to make sure it’s a good idea to beemind something is to make the rate you commit to extremely easy. You unambiguously want to eat some amount of vegetables that’s a fair bit more than your current 3 servings per month. You definitely want to study more than 5 minutes a day. Start with such a lower bound and periodically dial the rate up as long it still feels easy and valuable. As long as Beeminder is making you do a bit more (or less, in the case of a Do Less goal) than you’d do if left to your own devices, that’s a win. Think rationally about how much more than that to push yourself.
With the want-can-will criteria established, our claim is that there’s one thing worse than the alleged suckiness of beeminding something: deciding that, due to said suckiness, you won’t beemind that thing and then failing to do the thing altogether.
So all the reasons you can think of for why Beeminder sucks too much and you can hit your bare minimum without Beeminder, absolutely implement all of those. Beeminder will just be a nice graph of your success. But also, Beeminder will be there juuuuust in case all those other things fail.
PS: This post is aimed at people who would rather be motivated in other ways than Beeminder. But many of us are inveterate edge-skaters and actively like being motivated in that way. We’re deadline-driven. That isn’t necessarily stressful, especially when we beemind self-indulgent things. For us, Beeminder isn’t just the nuclear option, it’s also the heavy artillery option and also the kitten-gently-nudging-you-with-its-fuzzy-head option.