It is also possible that blogging is just not a good thing for this person to be doing right now, if they don't want to do it, it can be an informed conclusion of the brain. Setting up an authoritarian system to force blogging might just be that, an imposition, and not an aid to the life process.
I think the only issue is on some things, rewards can undermine intrinsic motivation... external rewards work for tasks where extrinsic motivation works well
I think this mainly comes down to how good you are at systematic thinking. For example it's really hard to build a habit without some form of reward mechanism, but once that habit is built the reward comes from the consistency of keeping the habit. This type of reward oriented behavior is probably quite good for that initial difficulty most people have in building a habit, but once you have the system in place it becomes second nature to keep doing the task and as a consequence usually introduces some negative association with skipping it. Think the gym for example.
I did this for a year or two when my first kid was born... I assigned penalty dollars with actions that I knew weren't good for me... didn't run for a week (outside of travel) 10$ to the kids account... stopped for fast food as opposed to having a real meal, 10$.
It was surprisingly effective for what was a stressful time and in the end gave some real benefit to their compound interest long term... all because I was being lazy and grabbed a burger for lunch :)
How does this interact with Structured Procrastination? Im a huge fan and avid strut-castinator. This is an entirely different approach to accomplishing goals though, as I'm frugal and hate to waste money. https://www.structuredprocrastination.com/
Interestingly enough, this is how I tricked myself into quitting smoking.
I withdrew $100, and told my good friend that I’d give it to him if I used anything with nicotine in it. It worked pretty well since it turns that first cigarette into a $100 cigarette. Not worth it at all.
Good job! But I would caution that you probably were just not addicted to nicotine. You may not have the genes for addiction, or it just was not yet activated.
This actually sounds like a great idea. I procrastinate a lot. I also play a lot of Raid Shadow Legends. I should totally gate those purchases behind hitting my goals.
Much of blogging (and creation in any form) is often exactly that: an existing idea remixed or reconsidered from someone else’s perspective.
After-all, the telephone wasn’t all that an original idea for a long while before the idea finally reached a salient and effective point.
My take has always been: just because you and I have heard the concept before does not mean everyone has. And if one person finds it helpful to read in this way, that’s a nice thing to have provided the world. :)
> "publicly tweeted that I would send 30€ to a friend of mine if I didn’t have a blog post online by the end of the month."
Publicly tweeted huh? Well geez you're really on the hook now. Call me back when you've finished the app that forces you to place the money in a secure escrow which checks your blog's RSS feed to determine whether or not to return the cash.
On a more "serious" note, there have been quite a few of apps/concepts around a monetary penalty for not doing something - I think going to the gym was a big one. Probably be pretty easy to implement an app where you have to meet a GPS radial condition for X minutes per week.
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