This is part 2 in a 3-part series. Part 1 defined Pareto dominance and Pareto-efficient software. Part 3 is a case study.   I have some advice that now feels (to me, subjectively) too obvious to bother to tell you. But it was once pretty contentious here in the beehive. So I predict you’ll either find...

Content note: I started writing a post announcing a (Pareto-inefficient) change to the pledge cap interface and realized I first needed a post about what we call the Pareto Dominance Principle. But before that we needed a post about Pareto dominance. So, hooray, a whole mini blog series! Stay tuned...

Huge thanks to Malcolm Ocean, Christina Willner, and Sean Fellows for conversations that led to this post. PS: As for the startups used as examples in this post: Beeminder and Complice are BFFs and talk about each other all the time. (Really, allll the time.) Amazing Marvin is the newer kid on the...

It’s funny how universal it is for users (including programmers, including myself) to gravitate so strongly to “it’s probably just me / my crappy phone / my timezone / me not reading the webcopy / me not being deserving of love or working software / etc”. It might be an impulse to be kind and not blame...

On 2018-09-22 I gave a talk at the Quantified Self conference. This is that talk. You can also see an actual recording of it. I got a lot of encouragement afterwards about how people had a kind of lightbulb moment from it, which was nice to hear, and prompted me to say “I’ll turn it into a blog post”....

Lawrence Evalyn has been beeminding for almost 7 years and we’re very proud to have him guest posting for us. If this whets your appetite, check out his professional blog where he’s written about beeminding his comprehensive exams. (Graphs and charts and spreadsheets oh my!) And if you like spreadsheets...

“Potentially Paying Customers” We ended the last blog post with what you might think is an unfortunate epithet for new Beeminder users. Being buried at the end of a bunch of nitty-gritty about business reasons for the timing of collecting payment info, approximately zero percent of people noticed it,...

If you’re nervous about handing over your credit card number, let us start by solemnly promising that we’re super trustworthy. Wait, that’s exactly what a scammer would say. Ok, getting more specific: We promise you won’t ever be charged due to any kind of technicality, including confusion about how...

In case you missed our previous 12 press roundups (starting all the way back in 2012!), here they are: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, and twelve. Now that you’ve clicked on each of those and read each article, blog post, blurb, and podcast, we can fill you in on...

Malcolm Ocean has been on both sides of the accountability relationship. Among the many roles he’s played is professional accountability provider: initially as Beeminder’s beekeeper, and now also independently with people who use his app, Complice, and want 1-on-1 help. He also has experience making...