The "chain method" is incredibly frustrating for me. After a first 2-3 slips I tend to quit whatever I tried to start, with incredible feeling of guilt. And slips are inevitable (the more I say I'll not slip this time, the more inevitable they become).
So, I found something better: the accumulation method. I have a intermediate goal of, say, 10,000 push-ups. If I'll do only 10 push-ups a day, it will take me 1000 days to reach this goal — almost 3 years. Or I can do more — then I'll get to it faster. There is no frustration, I can skip any days I want, but if I want to reach this goal, I have to move forward.
The problem is, doing more on some days to make up for others when you did nothing is well known not to be as effective as consistent daily progress : http://jonkarpman.blogspot.co.uk/
It's unwise to extrapolate from one domain into another that doesn't follow the same models/rules.
If I walk 20 miles and my ultimate goal is to get to 10,000 miles, then 20 miles of effort translates into 20 miles of distance covered. It's a linear one-to-one no frills relationship. The units don't even change.
But if I'm doing push ups, my goal of 10,000 is actually a proxy goal for things like upper body strength and physical well being. In that context, the biological impact of 20 push ups x 3 days ≠ 60 push ups x 1 day, and no push ups the next two days.
You could plausibly resolve that by tracking an accumulated measure of consistency - ie: % of past N days that you did X, where X is the daily-stable goal.
I went through many iterations of trying to find a workout routine that I could stick with. In the end, I decided to focus on the journey and not the destination. I do a one weight training exercise every day, rotating through different exercises so that muscles have time to rest and increasing reps and/or weight slowly. The key, for me anyway, was to allow some slack time without going outside the rules. I can miss one day, but no more than one in a row, unless I am on an actual vacation away from home. If I'm slacking about exercise, I can skip every other day. If I'm not, I get many days in a row. For me, building the habit was more important than intensity, and working some slack time into the rules was what allowed me to build it.
Requiring myself to do it every day with no flexibility works for me only until the first day I miss, and then it's basically all over except for the death throes. YMMV.
I think the trick is to pick the right goals for the chain method. Something like "walk 10 miles every day" is too constraining of a goal, because realistically there are going to be days where that is impossible (e.g. when you've got a 20 hour flight to China, or a broken hip.)
Instead, you need to make a goal where "work towards that goal" is not concretely defined so that you can do work towards that goal under virtually any circumstance. For example, if your goal is to get a certain time in a 10k race, then you can read books about race strategies or training methods on your flight and count it as progress towards your goal. If you're recovering from a broken hip, you can mark physical therapy or diet decisions as progress towards your goal.
In some ways, it's the fear of facing that guilt that makes the "chain method" work so well. The tricky part, when you miss a day, is figuring out a way to cope with that guilt and frustration without letting it undermine your efforts in general. Especially if you miss multiple days in a row, for instance. Which is hard, because that requires a lot of motivation--which is one of the things the "chain method" is meant to enforce. So in some ways, it's a chicken and egg sort of problem. You just have to hope that you've done it enough that, when you wind up facing a missed day, you've built up your motivation for the task enough to get back into it.
That was my experience with calorie tracking in MyFitnessPal. Did it for months, had a solid streak, then skipped a couple of days while traveling. I've done it on and off since then, but never got reliably back on the tracking wagon.
I've found that creating an exception list beforehand is a great way to survive "breaking the chain", as then it's not really breaking the chain.
For years I tried to keep a chain of exercising every day. It would work wonderfully for 8 months or so, and then inevitably every summer the chain would break when I was up for several days partying. Then I would start thinking "what's another skipped day" and end up with months of no exercise. After a few cycles of this, I redefined my chain as exercising every time I wake up. This works nicely for me, because my primary reason for initial breaking was that I was exhausted. I've managed to keep this new chain unbroken for years.
I haven't seen this approach before, and I like the idea of it. Dunno if it fits for all goals though. Would it be effective if you just measured total hours?
Yes, but 1 hour is quite a big quantum (if you work out for 55 minutes, then stop, then what — all effort is lost?) Measuring minutes is better.
Another thing: the goal should be quite bold, bigger than you'd think first (something you can think of reaching in 2-3 years; don't worry, it will be faster). Some examples: do 10,000 push-ups. Save $100,000 (or give $100,000 to charity, whatever suits you best). Run 2,000 kilometers. You start slow, but your progress accumulates, and then accelerates.
There's certainly arguments for accumulating towards a target number. You can also combine this with the streak method and say "through date xx aim for yy frequency" - in effect having a goal number and the rate at which you plan to reach it.
Regardless, I like having end points on these projects because they give you a sense of relief at the end. It also helps to aim for low frequency with each goal so that your daily schedule isn't rigid - a 15 minutes per day investment is actually quite a lot.
As much as I like the idea and would love to use it, but I am not really motivated by the fact that you are taking the money, you are not offering any service, just using people's procrastination to make money, I don't know about others but I really don't like that.
It could be much better if the user has to choose a charity that money goes to, I understand that you also have costs for running this app, but I think I will write my own app and besides that, it's not always about workouts, it might be about reading , FOSS, self development, or whatever of that things, would love if it had something like that.
Currently working on a similar app and I definitely agree that if you're going to be charging it should be towards a charity. This seems like a terrible cash grab with something that does not even provide an enticing service.
If you believe the point is to "make people feel bad if they fail" then you really deserve nothing from this. It conflicts with the stated purpose entirely. The goal should be to entice people to succeed, not punish them if they don't.
Edit: For reference, the original comment I responded to stated "If you charge towards the charity then a user doesn't feel bad when he/she fails."
To solve this, Stickk (a similar service) has "anti-charities."
StickK's list of 23 anti-charities (their anti-ness, of course, being in the eye of each goal-setting beholder) includes: The George W. Bush Presidential Library, the William Jefferson Clinton Presidential Library, the NRA, the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence, and various fan clubs of opposing sports teams.
I feel like your answer comes from you wishing to charge money for a product (understandable obviously) more so than it comes from any actual scientific or even observational basis.
The latter doesn't require an account, lets you log some additional data and is of course absolute beta.
I really didn't plan to publish it yet, but I haven't done anything else to reach my goal today.
Yeah good point, upon rereading that comment he's just saying he didn't invent it, not that he's never used it. But he calls it "the dumbest non-idea", which would suggest he doesn't think very highly of it...
My main goal in life is to be happy. I have other goals, but if working on them for the n-th straight day comes in conflict with my main goal, I'm gonna take a day off.
Isn't sacrificing their own happiness a little bit like happiness by proxy then? Maybe that's too broad an interpretation. It leads to the (old) question of whether there is true selflessness.
Cool project, but where's the money going in the event the user has a "Zero Day" or otherwise fails to meet their deadline? I'm not trying to be judgemental about where, just genuinely curious.
Also, it's probably a good idea for people to establish a bare minimum as to what constitutes progress for them. Chronic procrastinators will simply pass off even the most miniscule items as progress (I know; I am one). Granted, that's not necessarily a bad thing if they're escaping the throes of depression, but in normal situations such justifications may constitute slacking.
I can't imagine long term sustainability for any business that depends on their users failing.
I once heard a really smart marketer say that self-help is the best niche to target because perfection is impossible, so once you get a customer, you have one for life.
In reality though, any app or service that the business interests are misaligned with the users best interests, can't keep users forever. The users who benefit wont make you any money and the ones that fail will resent the service and leave.
While I see where you are coming from, this is an extremely shortsighted monetization strategy.
A better strategy would be gentle push reminders to not let the day go to waste, tools to make it easier to see progress, and monetize with premium add-ons.
In short, our interests and our customers' interests turn out to be highly aligned, even though it seems prima facie perverse.
Another way of arguing the point: a manufacturer of physical goods has the perverse incentive to make pieces of crap that last just long enough to make it out of the store. Ok, maybe that's commonplace enough that I'm totally not helping my case with that analogy! :)
Ok, better argument! Beeminder has been around 4.5 years which probably wouldn't happen if we were myopically making people fail to get their money.
It seems to me that Beeminder has put a ton of thought and effort into the experience that triggers a penalty with the user always in control. I see this as much more flexible than the non zero day app. It also appears that beeminder has a freemium offering and this payment/penalty is a feature more than the whole point. In other words, I see the charges on beeminder to be similar to paying for extra lives on candy crush as a one time in app purchase... as opposed to model that the pricing gimmick is basically the core offering.
Hooray! New user! :) Our biggest issue right now is that we've gone so far down the rabbit hole with our hardcore superfans that it's a little overwhelming for newbees (as we call them; our 2nd biggest issue is our obsession with bee puns).
So we'd be super grateful to hear about things you find confusing/frustrating/offputting as you try setting up some goals.
I am a very happy beeminder, but for me it wouldn't be nearly as useful if money wasn't on the line - I have now been more than a year in the inn in Habitica for example - even though I never have had to actually pay them money.
I don't know the specifics or their attrition rates, but the barrier of leaving an app seems much simpler than canceling a gym membership and finding a new one. Plus, the value proposition of a gym is independent to their pricing gimmicks. Odds are, the gym member is planning on using a gym, and many factors go into the choice (location, hours, environment, etc...)
For me, just the thought of leaving my gym creates all sorts of anxiety of dealing with jumping through hoops to cancel and finding a good replacement gym. Just not worth the hassle.
Bottom line, a gym that charges more for using the gym less is a not business thats model entirely depends on their members failing. It is just helped along by the reality. (Its actually quite clever because no one signs up to a join without plans to go regularly,and once you sign up, cancelling is a huge pain.)
That's great and all, but when you've got multiple goals in multiple domains, something is going to fall to the bottom, or, more likely, right off it. There is only triage and its attendant guilt.
The whole point about focus and discipline is that you shouldn't need someone to track you and "make" you do positive things towards your goal. It should come naturally.
Plus, apps like these can end up being counter-productive if they force us to make some kind of token contribution (just to meet our "quota") but which may actually move the project forward (and by jiggling context, may actually move it backward).
(That post also includes a link to what we think is the best Don't Break The Chain app, if you decide the complexity of Beeminder's graphing -- not to mention the whole commitment device angle -- is too much.)
I am really confused by this idea, because the author seems to assume that it is so normal to have goals of a sort for which this service or technique might be useful that it is not necessary to explain what those goals might be or why they might matter so much.
I can think of literally nothing in my life for which this strategy would be relevant: nothing significant enough to be classified as a primary goal in life, such that it would be worth making a special effort to schedule my time around it, which is still somehow trivial enough that routine daily action would provide meaningful progress toward achieving it. The things I imagine as goals for my life aren't generally things one can measure in the first place, much less count as having definitively achieved or not achieved.
Happiness, generally. Being part of a mutually-supporting community. Remaining open to new things so that life can continue to surprise me. Learning everything that can possibly be learned about everything there is to know. Understanding myself, understanding the people close to me. Using my (reliably!) good luck and high tolerance for risk not just to entertain myself, but to help blaze a trail so that people who have more to lose can still make it up to the frontier and help build an awesome future.
Career-wise, it would feel good to have contributed significantly to some piece of systems infrastructure that serves to distribute power over information away from big industry or government organizations and toward individual people. Pursuing this goal has generally conflicted with the goal of living a happy life, and I don't know whether that is merely happenstance or due to some intrinsic conflict in these goals. Perhaps I simply haven't found my moment yet; perhaps I never will. I'm going to keep my eyes open for opportunities in this direction but I don't know whether I will ever be able to realize this goal. It isn't really about me, it's about the world around me and whether other people want to do what I think we'd all be happier doing.
I am sure there are personality types (probably over-represented among the readership of HN) for whom rigid structure like this is very helpful.
IMHO being able to firewall e.g. a three-day trip with the family from other concerns is worth far more than putting in a token 10 minutes in service of an abstraction like this.
I would myself take more pride in not having e.g. looked at a screen for three days, than having checked off three more boxes.
This is a variation on the idea that you need to show up every day. Send some e-mails, talk to your loved ones, write some code, cook dinner, go on a jog, etc. Being goal-focused helps a lot, but I think the secret is to always show up.
FWIW this rendered poorly on both chrome and Firefox on my android phone. The first 4 or 5 chars on the left hand side were cut off. I had tobuse the little book thingy in Firefox in order to be able to read it.
The philosophy hits the nail in terms of battling procrastination. It doesn't burden you with guilt of not doing enough but just tell you to make an effort to take the first step which will make you take the second. Sadly, where it can fail is same as where it succeeds - It is easy to slack off another day, if you slack off on one.
There is no magic pill for procrastination that will fix everyone's problems even if you follow every productive hack out there.
Rather unfortunate that you must sign in with a fitness app. Any way around this? I don't really want to connect my Jawbone/FitBit account to a random app.
I have been doing this using browser startup tabs. Since I open the browser only once in the morning when I come to the office, I will launch the browser and review all the tabs and remember to do things.
http://lifehacker.com/use-your-browsers-startup-settings-to-...
Sometimes not working towards a goal for a day gets me closer than working badly towards goal. And sometimes, waiting until the moment is right is better than trying to seize the moment.
It's a very fine line though and can become a good excuse not to get things done or let circumstance drive us around. But I for one do not believe in working on a goal every day. Just most days.
If it's just a punishment, then it's not going to work well. Rewards are a better way to get going. Punishment may be a way to break a bad habit, but it's not the way to build up a good one. And inducing guilt negates whatever gains you get and then some.
I use Githubs tracker (though its a private repo), though half the days I don't have code to submit. So if its something like I wrote some emails, or did some data analysis, or similar I'll add that to the repo and commit it. Just so i can get the streak credit.
The real trick is breaking your goals down as small as possible. Then accomplishing those tasks building up to your ultimate goal. Most people fail or get frustrated/give-up because they define their goals in terms of end goals.
Am I missing something? Your website doesn't really say anything aside from explaining the base principle then it tells me to sign in and let you handle it for me? Seems like it needs more info.
This is great! Today I already got 1/4 of the way toward my goal. Tomorrow I'll get 1/9 done, the next day 1/16 and so on. Slow and steady wins the race!
So, I found something better: the accumulation method. I have a intermediate goal of, say, 10,000 push-ups. If I'll do only 10 push-ups a day, it will take me 1000 days to reach this goal — almost 3 years. Or I can do more — then I'll get to it faster. There is no frustration, I can skip any days I want, but if I want to reach this goal, I have to move forward.