Tag Archive

Social Reality And The Canard About Keeping Your Goals To Yourself

Thursday, November 21st, 2019
Social Reality And The Canard About Keeping Your Goals To Yourself

It’s now been ten years since the publication of Gollwitzer et al’s paper about, as the internet interpreted it, keeping your goals to yourself. I think I’ve heard variants of “did you hear that science shows that you’re... »

Motivational Archetypes

Wednesday, September 11th, 2019
Motivational Archetypes

Which motivational archetype do you most identify with: Philosopher — better understand the universe, live the life of the mind Hedonist — go on adventures, have wild romances Caregiver — have meaningful relationships, raise children Creator — make beautiful things, make enduring things Politician — lead and influence people, improve the world I would call myself a Philosopher, then Creator/Politician, followed... »

Slytherin 404 Errors

Thursday, July 19th, 2018
Slytherin 404 Errors

UPDATE for webdev nerds: We realized we meant “403 Forbidden” rather than “401 Not Authorized”. Here’s a little information leak we noticed and fixed some months (ok, the better part of a year — blush!) after we publicly launched in late 2011: Say our user Alice has two goals. One is her book reading... »

Does Practice Make Perfect?

Saturday, April 7th, 2018
Does Practice Make Perfect?

Ivana Kurecic is a PhD student in quantum information theory who beeminds dozens of things. One of her hobbies is translating incomprehensible scientific papers into stuff you should care about, at Happy Turtle Things, and today we’re lucky to get a taste of that (with... »

Negative Reinforcement ≠ Punishment

Friday, January 12th, 2018
Negative Reinforcement ≠ Punishment

Prof Michele Gregoire Gill is back! In her previous post she mentioned that Beeminder, in large part, motivates her via negative reinforcement. If you think that makes her sound... »

Psychoanalyzing Beeminder

Wednesday, November 22nd, 2017
Psychoanalyzing Beeminder

We’re excited to have Prof Michele Gregoire Gill guest blogging for us! She’s a bonafide expert in what Beeminder is trying to do. Also she personally is a dedicated Beeminder user for the last 3 years. She’s here to tell us about how... »

The “I Will” System

Wednesday, August 9th, 2017
The “I Will” System

“80% of success is showing up.” — Woody Allen “It should be completely implausible to describe a startup’s CEO as a flake.” — Paul Graham and Jessica Livingston’s heuristic for successful startups “Let your ‘yes’ mean yes, and your ‘no’ mean no. Anything more than this comes... »

Team Black vs Team Yellow: The Two Styles of Beeminding

Thursday, August 25th, 2016
Team Black vs Team Yellow: The Two Styles of Beeminding

This is a guest post by Oliver Mayor, an avid Beeminder user for going on four years. He’s a software developer who’s interested in human-behavior-shaping technology and often has pretty deep insights related to Beeminder. We were especially... »

Walking On Custard

Thursday, April 14th, 2016
Walking On Custard

When we were smaller we’d take pains to point out that our guest bloggers weren’t just friends of ours. I mean, they usually are friends of ours, but they’ve generally been Beeminder fans who then became friends. (Turns out hardcore beeminding is a strong predictor for us liking you a lot!) ... »

What Is Willpower?

Monday, March 21st, 2016
What Is Willpower?

Our previous post, “Ego Depletion Depletion,” generated a lot of discussion and I found I was contradicting myself on the question of what willpower is exactly. First a recap, hopefully in plainer English, about what all the fuss is about. A big finding in... »

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