I wanted to share this service that I’ve been using for the past couple of months, Beeminder. The idea is that you pledge a small amount of money, e.g. $5, to doing a particular thing every day/week/whatever, and if you miss your target, they automatically charge your credit card.
I’ve found this works quite well for my Japanese studies, where I otherwise don’t have much incentive to stay on top of things! For Wanikani, my goal is to finish all pending reviews, at least once a day, 5 days a week (Mon-Fri). This gets automatically sent to Beeminder and made into a nice graph.
I’ve found it helps me to stay on top of my reviews every day and avoid a big review pile up. Anyway, I have a Google spreadsheet that performs the automatic link between Wanikani & Beeminder, so you can pick it up here if that sounds interesting. I’ve made it user-friendly with full set-up instructions inside.
By pledge it means give away your money for nothing to them if you go off track?
Not to sound rude but that sounds like a horrible idea, everyones goals people waiver, fall down, get back up.
Why would you pay money for no purpose? Is it meant to motivate you more? by fear of wasting money?
edit: i really just don’t understand, please explain it to me
I think it’s “power” is in being a horrible idea. If the money went to a charity you cared about, then you’d have a motivation to let up. By donating the money instead to the company that runs the app/website, you have the additional motivation of not squandering funds?
I could see how that might be a kind of encouragement, I guess. I don’t see what would stop me freezing the penalties and just hiatusing as I always do…but @zzap appears to be better on track than I ever have been, although so have lots of people, with no associated (risk of/) costs.
Sounds like a crappy motivation to me. Wanting to learn the language for your own reasons should be enough of a motivator. If you have to force yourself like this then I would question weather you really wanted to learn in the first place.
Does it just… go to Beeminder? Are you sort of paying them to keep you doing certain things?
Or do you… I dunno, pick a charity that might receive the money when you miss your deadline? That would be better.
…and I’ve just read the FAQ, and nope, they literally keep your money when you fail. Jesus! It’s good you’ve found something to motivate you, but this website is giving me the creeps. “You’re tracking your weight, but are still fat! Also we keep your money!”
TBH the day I find Japanese in itself boring enough that I need to have the fear of losing money in me in order to study, I’ll just stop studying.
Yes, the money goes to Beeminder if you miss your target. The “motivation” is to avoid wasting money and pay a company you shouldn’t have to pay! If it was a charity or a friend, then I guess you would have slightly less motivation because you wouldn’t mind paying that much. Obviously, the whole point is NOT to pay by maintaining your target.
Regarding motivation to learn, if you can consistently keep to your studies for your own reasons, then you don’t need this at all. I’ve found that motivation comes & goes over the years, and I see this as a tool to get over the temporary bumps in the road when you’d rather be doing something else, or you have competing priorities.
@Rincewind Hehe sure I don’t mind whether I pay you or Beeminder… but how do I know you will have the motivation to check my review queue every day for the next 12+ months?
@Rincewind can give me their credit card number and I’ll check to make sure that they are checking your review queue every day. If they don’t, then they have to pay me.
