How is this different from Beeminder — afaik popularised "commitment contract".
I'm an active user of Beeminder; have 4 active commitments. More than feature to feature comparison, Beeminder has an amazing blog, and an ever supportive community to lean on to.
Beeminder is great. However, it's all automated and you cannot set huge penalties for single goals. Also, It's limited to things that can be verified from fitness trackers and other apps thats many people do not use.
WorkOrPay tries to add more human interactions. We text users daily to make sure they aren't starting slack off. We help them form reasonable goals. Do verifications manually, so the goals can really be anything.
For my whole life, I have been dealing with bursts of motivation where I am extremely productive for several days, followed by weeks-long slumps. This yo-yo behavior does not let a person develop their skills or build anything substantial.
According to my observations, people usually start working towards a goal following a temporary spike in motivation. It lasts a few days at most. Usually, it is not enough for people to move past the hurdle that is the first 2 weeks. In the first 2 weeks of starting anything new, you are garbage at everything. It’s hard work, and not very rewarding because you are constantly getting things wrong and not being able to get in flow.
However, after 2 weeks so, People start appreciating the task. They finally see hints of progression in their abilities. Are able to work for longer stretches at a time before running into something frustrating. This allows them to get into flow. Together this starts to produce consistent internal motivation that allows the person to actually stick with the new habit long term. But 99% of the time people give up before getting here.
To address this issue, I created WorkOrPay
WorkOrPay: Set goals. Form contracts. Pay the penalty if you fail.
We let you form contracts in which you agree to reach a goal before a deadline. You then deposit some money. If you fail to accomplish your goal before the deadline, your deposit is lost and donated to a charity of your choice.
Basically, we provide you with external motivation (by holding your deposit hostage), so you get stuff done even when you don't feel like it. In addition, we text you daily to keep tabs and make sure you stay on track.
WorkOrPay's mission is to bridge the gap in motivation from the initial spike and the more consistent motivation that appears a while later. The idea is that if you make a contract for the frustrating 2 weeks where you want to quit. The pressure of potentially losing your deposit will provide enough external motivation for you to continue until you reach the promised land of consistent internal motivation.
I hope others who have the same problem I had, can use this service to break out of the loop. Without wasting years of their life.
I think you are correctly identifying the problem, but implementing the wrong solution, by your own admission.
> People start appreciating the task. They finally see hints of progression in their abilities. Are able to work for longer stretches at a time before running into something frustrating.
This part hits the nail on the head. Appreciating the task and enjoying the progression.
To me, trying to make this experience happen earlier is the solution to the problem, not creating artificial constraints that dance around the problem.
For all the people asking how this differs from Beeminder: my first reaction was "finally, a version of Beeminder that lets me pay $1000!"
Beeminder is obviously amazing, but it really "loses its sting" when you can't set a penalty higher than $25 (give or take -- I don't know what the current limit is).
> Beeminder is obviously amazing, but it really "loses its sting" when you can't set a penalty higher than $25 (give or take -- I don't know what the current limit is).
Beeminder's model is a bit different, in that the payment amount keeps going up if you keep falling off track. The current upper amount you can pay is $7290 (as in once you hit $7290, it will keep charging you that amount).
I’ve recently got a loan (~35k) with the idea of using that money for marketing once I’ll be done with development. It kind of works the same way - I’ll either launch the product and pay it off early (paying just 3% of the amount in this case) or keep paying 9% interest rate for 6 years. An important difference is that this money can actually work for me, when I’ll launch the product which provides positive motivation for me.
I was about to get a subscription when I spotted this
> Choose a deadline as short as 3 days or as long as a month!
Why the 3 days? Is it to lessen the burden on the support staff who do the daily check ups? If I'm eager to subscribe to a service like this it means I want to use it to get stuff done I need to do starting right now, today, not something I need to get done in three days.
I like the idea of adding financial incentive to stick to habits etc, but i would be uncomfortable with having to deposit money, why not just take a CC and charge it if I break the contract?
also: what prevents me from just lying about whether I did the thing I promised to do?
From what I have seen, depositing before making the commitment makes you much more likely to succeed. Seeing the money leave your account creates a lot of psychological pressure that otherwise doesn't exist.
The verification system is not fool proof. If you put some effort into forging proof you will succeed. However, I do not believe most people who willingly sign up for this would do that.
A lot of us know what's good for us... doesn't mean it's always easy to do. This is just another way of making it a little easier to actually do what you know is good for you.
- Suppose you have a project worth $10,000 to you in some intangible form if successful, with a 20% chance of success. You use a penalty site to pay $2,000 if you make no progress. You set this high enough to put some non-productive entertainment out of your budget. Your hope is that when evaluating what you want to do, entertainment goes from being "$20" to "$20 plus $2,000 penalty". In your thinking, this promotes work on the project! You will not actually have to pay the penalty, since you intend to work on the project. You hope to influence yourself to increase your happiness by an intangible $2,000 (expected value of $10k * 20%) for free, by manually pricing entertainment out of your budget.
- What happens if another project is worth $500 billion to you in some intangible non-monetary form, for sure? You definitely need to do that now. You are out the $2,000 if you don't also do something toward the first project, though. Thus, the penalty which had been intended to keep you from goofing off becomes an extra burden also on something worth an intangible $500 billion to your happiness. The "here's your incentive to be happy and productive" becomes: "here's your penalty for being hyper happy and productive" (on a new, temporarily very valuable project.) Clearly a misalignment of incentives: an unintended consequence.
- Note that if you are independently rich this contract could still help you make some progress! Suppose you committed to pay $2,000 as a penalty for stopping work, but stopped work since you have something guaranteed to give you $500b in intangible happiness. Now it is strictly better to hire someone such as an intern or assistant and pay them anything less than $2,000 as long as this counts as progress and avoids tripping the penalty. i.e. a loss of $1900 paid to an assistant (counting as some marginal progress) is strictly better than a penalty of $2000 (and zero progress).
- Could this explain why rich people hire personal assistants and project managers? It is an automatic penalty: once the assistant / project manager is on staff their salary goes out the window. You might as well use them to do what you, as a rich person who can hire personal assistants and project managers, want to get done.
Is their behavior of hiring assistants and project managers why rich people get so much done?
If so, the moral of the story may be to set aside $2000 to be handed over to project managers you deploy strategically on any project you want done.
If it works for wealthy people, it could work for you - if you pay the cash for it. While disincentives could be nice, as the saying goes, you have to spend money to make money.
I remember using a gym app with a similar thing 10 yrs ago. I said I would run 7 days a week. Cancelled app after first week. I met my commitment and I never stopped since then.
I actually used to make my friends promise to give away my money if I failed to do whatever. But it never really worked that great because I would always make some plausible excuse and my friends would let it slide and eventually just give my money back.
I strongly believe external motivation kills the inner motivation. Maybe that is the goal here, by killing it completely so you can't ever think of depending on it(?). For me personally, I always found these kind of tools that helps trick one's self into doing or not doing things, very soul crushing. It's almost like trying to beat yourself into submission, disowning the part of yourself. If you can't make yourself to do something, maybe you shouldn't do it?
The role of this is to bridge the gaps between the spikes of internal motivation.
A lot of times people start working on something new and for the first few days they have enough motivation to stick with it. But when that disappears a lot of people just quit. They don't stick with the new activity long enough for the next surge of internal motivation.
We believe this service can help people grind it out for a week or two until they get a surge of internal motivation and no longer need us.
I've been down this rabbit role trying to find my inner motivation for half a decade already. I've tried everything, from recreational to prescription drugs, routine, exercise, nutrition changes, therapy, even became a parent. Nothing works consistently.
So when I find myself unable to be motivated, I just stack techniques as much as I can. I have a whole toolbox of maneuvers and mechanisms to achieve whatever I have to without any inner motivation.
It's the best way of coping with life I've found up until this point.
> If you can't make yourself to do something, maybe you shouldn't do it?
That attitude probably works if it’s some sort of leisure activity, but someone who struggles to do routine, necessary tasks might not want to just give up on them.
[+] [-] constantinum|3 years ago|reply
[links] https://www.beeminder.com/home https://blog.beeminder.com/ https://forum.beeminder.com/
[+] [-] khromem|3 years ago|reply
WorkOrPay tries to add more human interactions. We text users daily to make sure they aren't starting slack off. We help them form reasonable goals. Do verifications manually, so the goals can really be anything.
We are a mix between beeminder and a life coach.
[+] [-] khromem|3 years ago|reply
According to my observations, people usually start working towards a goal following a temporary spike in motivation. It lasts a few days at most. Usually, it is not enough for people to move past the hurdle that is the first 2 weeks. In the first 2 weeks of starting anything new, you are garbage at everything. It’s hard work, and not very rewarding because you are constantly getting things wrong and not being able to get in flow.
However, after 2 weeks so, People start appreciating the task. They finally see hints of progression in their abilities. Are able to work for longer stretches at a time before running into something frustrating. This allows them to get into flow. Together this starts to produce consistent internal motivation that allows the person to actually stick with the new habit long term. But 99% of the time people give up before getting here.
To address this issue, I created WorkOrPay
WorkOrPay: Set goals. Form contracts. Pay the penalty if you fail.
We let you form contracts in which you agree to reach a goal before a deadline. You then deposit some money. If you fail to accomplish your goal before the deadline, your deposit is lost and donated to a charity of your choice.
Basically, we provide you with external motivation (by holding your deposit hostage), so you get stuff done even when you don't feel like it. In addition, we text you daily to keep tabs and make sure you stay on track.
WorkOrPay's mission is to bridge the gap in motivation from the initial spike and the more consistent motivation that appears a while later. The idea is that if you make a contract for the frustrating 2 weeks where you want to quit. The pressure of potentially losing your deposit will provide enough external motivation for you to continue until you reach the promised land of consistent internal motivation.
I hope others who have the same problem I had, can use this service to break out of the loop. Without wasting years of their life.
Promo Code for HN members: hackernews
[+] [-] mynameisvlad|3 years ago|reply
Half joking, but you could have simplified these entire sections to "you have ADHD".
Speaking as someone who is diagnosed with it, you more or less described the dopamine ride of a person with ADHD.
The "deadlines give you superpowers" bit definitely reminded me of this video: https://www.instagram.com/reel/CcHQDI8NYzF/
[+] [-] itake|3 years ago|reply
> People start appreciating the task. They finally see hints of progression in their abilities. Are able to work for longer stretches at a time before running into something frustrating.
This part hits the nail on the head. Appreciating the task and enjoying the progression.
To me, trying to make this experience happen earlier is the solution to the problem, not creating artificial constraints that dance around the problem.
[+] [-] nathanaldensr|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] steve76|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] adamzerner|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nemo1618|3 years ago|reply
Beeminder is obviously amazing, but it really "loses its sting" when you can't set a penalty higher than $25 (give or take -- I don't know what the current limit is).
[+] [-] BeetleB|3 years ago|reply
Beeminder's model is a bit different, in that the payment amount keeps going up if you keep falling off track. The current upper amount you can pay is $7290 (as in once you hit $7290, it will keep charging you that amount).
[+] [-] khromem|3 years ago|reply
1) Theres no option to have a referee that isn't friends or family
2) Its automated, and no human actually checks up to see if you are staying on track.
3) You can't really set huge stakes
[+] [-] stansm|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] calmdown13|3 years ago|reply
Here is Kommit's Show HN thread for anyone interested: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29726228
[+] [-] maeil|3 years ago|reply
> Choose a deadline as short as 3 days or as long as a month!
Why the 3 days? Is it to lessen the burden on the support staff who do the daily check ups? If I'm eager to subscribe to a service like this it means I want to use it to get stuff done I need to do starting right now, today, not something I need to get done in three days.
[+] [-] nocobot|3 years ago|reply
I like the idea of adding financial incentive to stick to habits etc, but i would be uncomfortable with having to deposit money, why not just take a CC and charge it if I break the contract?
also: what prevents me from just lying about whether I did the thing I promised to do?
[+] [-] khromem|3 years ago|reply
The verification system is not fool proof. If you put some effort into forging proof you will succeed. However, I do not believe most people who willingly sign up for this would do that.
[+] [-] geranim0|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BeetleB|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] khromem|3 years ago|reply
We try to offer much more human support. Such as daily texts and manual verification of goals instead of just pulling data from an API.
[+] [-] _zfxr|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] logicallee|3 years ago|reply
- Suppose you have a project worth $10,000 to you in some intangible form if successful, with a 20% chance of success. You use a penalty site to pay $2,000 if you make no progress. You set this high enough to put some non-productive entertainment out of your budget. Your hope is that when evaluating what you want to do, entertainment goes from being "$20" to "$20 plus $2,000 penalty". In your thinking, this promotes work on the project! You will not actually have to pay the penalty, since you intend to work on the project. You hope to influence yourself to increase your happiness by an intangible $2,000 (expected value of $10k * 20%) for free, by manually pricing entertainment out of your budget.
- What happens if another project is worth $500 billion to you in some intangible non-monetary form, for sure? You definitely need to do that now. You are out the $2,000 if you don't also do something toward the first project, though. Thus, the penalty which had been intended to keep you from goofing off becomes an extra burden also on something worth an intangible $500 billion to your happiness. The "here's your incentive to be happy and productive" becomes: "here's your penalty for being hyper happy and productive" (on a new, temporarily very valuable project.) Clearly a misalignment of incentives: an unintended consequence.
- Note that if you are independently rich this contract could still help you make some progress! Suppose you committed to pay $2,000 as a penalty for stopping work, but stopped work since you have something guaranteed to give you $500b in intangible happiness. Now it is strictly better to hire someone such as an intern or assistant and pay them anything less than $2,000 as long as this counts as progress and avoids tripping the penalty. i.e. a loss of $1900 paid to an assistant (counting as some marginal progress) is strictly better than a penalty of $2000 (and zero progress).
- Could this explain why rich people hire personal assistants and project managers? It is an automatic penalty: once the assistant / project manager is on staff their salary goes out the window. You might as well use them to do what you, as a rich person who can hire personal assistants and project managers, want to get done.
Is their behavior of hiring assistants and project managers why rich people get so much done?
If so, the moral of the story may be to set aside $2000 to be handed over to project managers you deploy strategically on any project you want done.
If it works for wealthy people, it could work for you - if you pay the cash for it. While disincentives could be nice, as the saying goes, you have to spend money to make money.
[+] [-] j_autumn|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kderbyma|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] carlgreene|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mr90210|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hawthornio|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vaughan|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ge96|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] khromem|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ocdtrekkie|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrlonglong|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] johnthewise|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] khromem|3 years ago|reply
A lot of times people start working on something new and for the first few days they have enough motivation to stick with it. But when that disappears a lot of people just quit. They don't stick with the new activity long enough for the next surge of internal motivation.
We believe this service can help people grind it out for a week or two until they get a surge of internal motivation and no longer need us.
[+] [-] ravishi|3 years ago|reply
I've been down this rabbit role trying to find my inner motivation for half a decade already. I've tried everything, from recreational to prescription drugs, routine, exercise, nutrition changes, therapy, even became a parent. Nothing works consistently.
So when I find myself unable to be motivated, I just stack techniques as much as I can. I have a whole toolbox of maneuvers and mechanisms to achieve whatever I have to without any inner motivation.
It's the best way of coping with life I've found up until this point.
[+] [-] newsclues|3 years ago|reply
Maybe highly internally motivated people won’t understand this, but others will benefit?
[+] [-] KaoruAoiShiho|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] the_only_law|3 years ago|reply
That attitude probably works if it’s some sort of leisure activity, but someone who struggles to do routine, necessary tasks might not want to just give up on them.
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]