I’ve only used it for ~3 months. You can start your goals with a $0 pledge, with goes to $5 once you miss your target. So I’ve “derailed” (missed target) on a couple of goals by now, which have gone from $0 → $5. I’m extra careful about those now. I haven’t had to pay any pledge yet. I’m careful to set my targets so they’re manageable.
I think in the long run you probably do end up paying a $5 pledge once in a while, but I think that’s good value for money in terms of the discipline it gives you across all your targets the rest of the time!
Unfortunately I’m another in the tsunami of voices who think this is a bad idea. Though in my case it’s not due to the money itself.
Motivation should always be positive, not negative. You get a reward for doing right, rather than a punishment for doing wrong. It’s how teachers teach our children, how we (are encouraged to) raise our kids and even how we train our pets. Just because you may be an adult doesn’t mean the concept no longer applies, it just means you may need to be a bit more creative.
I’ll explain what I mean with one of my own motivational techniques. I personally use a desktop computer a lot, it’s what I’m using to type right now. Out the corner of my eye while at the screen I can see a small whiteboard. On the whiteboard it has 3 simple words, “Today I Will _________”. Every night before bed, I write on a post-it note what my goals are for the next day, at the same time I remove the the note from that day and verify whether I did everything.
What I mentioned above is a motivation technique in itself (and quite an effective one if you stick to it) but I mentioned you should gain a positive reward rather than a negative punishment. For me, I give myself a checkmark for each day I complete my goals, then at the end of the week I get an award if I got enough checkmarks. This weeks reward is pho (cause I have been craving some for a while), it’s something I am quite looking forward to so I am motivated to do more.
I’m already
a) not paying Beeminder anything and
b) have a financial commitment to study via the money I’ve given to WK
…am I ahead of the game or what?
More seriously, if you don’t have WK lifetime, this is alreeady what happen. If you don’t do review, you won’t progress as fast and you’ll have to pay more subscription time. At least your money will go to Wanikani instead of some company exploiting the gullibility of people.
Just so that it doesn’t go unsaid, thank you for taking the time to put together this sheet. Whatever anyone thinks of the idea aside, more functionality is always good.
You report your data manually, or via some automated way like this spreadsheet (they have an API you can use). Of course you could lie when you report the data, but then no one is forcing you to use their service in the first place, so that would seem kind of pointless.
Also, if you miss a goal due to some circumstance beyond your control (got sick, internet was down, forgot to report data, etc), then you can write to them and they will reverse the charge. I haven’t tried that but I have no reason to distrust them.
If you’re paying a monthly WK subscription - then yes, you have some kind of financial incentive already. Although I would argue it’s subtly different, because the cost has been sunk already - there’s no downside to STOP using the service, because you’ve paid already.
It’s a similar logic to why many people sign up for a gym membership and end up not going: there’s a little bit of incentive there to use the membership which you’ve paid for, but at the end of the day you’re no worse off if you don’t use the membership (financially - I guess you might be morally worse off with a guilty conscience! ).
I’m a Nigerian prince, and in honor of my recently deceased uncle, I am willing to accept the pledge money to help you stay on track in your studies. Please send me your contact information.
Not that there has been any positive response to this, but have you considered working for Beeminder, cause the title has that click-bait advertisement vibe going on, and obviously brought in 35 comments, and likely many more views.
(And everyone, I know I’m responding to an 8 day old post, but seriously… She’s got a huge point.)
I think you and I feel exactly the same.
When I first read the OP, I was thinking that Beeminder rewarded you and paid out if you met your goals. However it’s the opposite! The second I realized that I was like “uh, nope! Definitely not for me!”
*goes back to reading the rest of the thread, because I’m expecting some interesting conversation if not drama…*
[EDIT: Oh no… I shouldn’t have necro’d this thread… Hope it stays down…]
Or you could try @musera’s reward idea, there’s a website and app for your phone that you also have to manually set goals yourself and hit your mark - only this one doesn’t charge you any money. You level up an RPG character and are able to win gold to purchase better equipment and fight monsters. It’s called Habitica.
(I was doing it for a while, but because of the “manually enter data” part, I fell out of doing it after about a month. It was just one more thing to do everyday (and so I literally had a goal to check of doing Habitica every day within Habitica) so I ended up dropping it.)
There have been at least one if not two or three threads on the subject, there was even a group of people on the forums all doing it together. Maybe I would have kept up with it longer had I been a part of that “party” instead of my two-person one. But I digress…
So maybe it would be better to put 1 € / $ / [currency] into a piggy bank every evening, if you’ve managed to do all your reviews.
And at the end of the week/month you buy yourself something nice - could be just fancy food or some silly cute stuff. Or donate it to a good cause and feel like a morally superior person. :>
Beeminder is the next best thing.
