An interesting idea. It sounds like it was structured more like a video game (get the highest score) than a budget. If you used the same system and assigned positive and negative point values to activities you want to do more or less of, perhaps with an appropriate sliding scale (e.g. the first half hour a week on tvtropes is free, but it gets pricey after that), I think you’d see less akrasia. Enforcement is obviously the big problem, though.
As it is, it sounds like you’re just pretending you want to do things that you don’t actually want to do and hope that getting a high score will be enough to motivate you to actually do them.
As it is, it sounds like you’re just pretending you want to do things that you don’t actually want to do and hope that getting a high score will be enough to motivate you to actually do them.
I often don’t care much for particular activities, but I definitely care about results, which require me to do the activities. Add hyperbolic discounting (effort now, results later) and risk aversion (efforts certain, results uncertain, probability for risk-aversion is irrationally sublinear) and you’ll see the problem.
An interesting idea. It sounds like it was structured more like a video game (get the highest score) than a budget. If you used the same system and assigned positive and negative point values to activities you want to do more or less of, perhaps with an appropriate sliding scale (e.g. the first half hour a week on tvtropes is free, but it gets pricey after that), I think you’d see less akrasia. Enforcement is obviously the big problem, though.
As it is, it sounds like you’re just pretending you want to do things that you don’t actually want to do and hope that getting a high score will be enough to motivate you to actually do them.
I often don’t care much for particular activities, but I definitely care about results, which require me to do the activities. Add hyperbolic discounting (effort now, results later) and risk aversion (efforts certain, results uncertain, probability for risk-aversion is irrationally sublinear) and you’ll see the problem.