I am trying a new commitment mechanism, vaguely modeled after the Beeminder concept. I want to keep a journal every night, but the last few times I have tried this I have failed to maintain the habit. In order to maintain it, I am offering my girlfriend $5 for any night that she reminds me to write in my journal but I don’t. I think this approach offers the following advantages:
Like Beeminder, it makes the cost of failure more salient by including a financial penalty,
It incentivizes someone to give reminders, both through the financial incentive and by signaling that I care about maintaining the habit,
It may create social pressure to maintain it.
I will post again when I have some results to report.
Consider modifying the habit—maybe journaling at night is harder for you to maintain than in the morning, or around lunch, or something like that? (This was my experience—I tried journaling at night for years and repeatedly failed; now I journal in the morning, and it’s been easy and pleasant. I don’t know any special reason why this would work for you, but it’s cheap to share the idea.)
You might want to set a specific deadline now about how many nights count as enough results worth reporting. And decide what victory looks like before the data comes in (losing $5 a month? $0? $20?).
I think having a specific deadline is a good idea, since it decreases the bias in whether I will report anything. I will report my results in the early February rationality diary, which will be ~4 weeks worth of data.
As for a definition of victory, I don’t think victory is a boolean variable here; keeping the commitment 7 days a week is better than 6 is better than 5..., and I don’t expect there to be any threshold or satiation effects worth caring about.
I am trying a new commitment mechanism, vaguely modeled after the Beeminder concept. I want to keep a journal every night, but the last few times I have tried this I have failed to maintain the habit. In order to maintain it, I am offering my girlfriend $5 for any night that she reminds me to write in my journal but I don’t. I think this approach offers the following advantages:
Like Beeminder, it makes the cost of failure more salient by including a financial penalty,
It incentivizes someone to give reminders, both through the financial incentive and by signaling that I care about maintaining the habit,
It may create social pressure to maintain it.
I will post again when I have some results to report.
Consider modifying the habit—maybe journaling at night is harder for you to maintain than in the morning, or around lunch, or something like that? (This was my experience—I tried journaling at night for years and repeatedly failed; now I journal in the morning, and it’s been easy and pleasant. I don’t know any special reason why this would work for you, but it’s cheap to share the idea.)
It seems to me that journaling at other times of day would be less useful, because the day’s events would be either less fresh in my mind.
Oh, agreed! Still, journaling in the morning has been rather more useful than failing to journal in the evening.
You might want to set a specific deadline now about how many nights count as enough results worth reporting. And decide what victory looks like before the data comes in (losing $5 a month? $0? $20?).
I think having a specific deadline is a good idea, since it decreases the bias in whether I will report anything. I will report my results in the early February rationality diary, which will be ~4 weeks worth of data.
As for a definition of victory, I don’t think victory is a boolean variable here; keeping the commitment 7 days a week is better than 6 is better than 5..., and I don’t expect there to be any threshold or satiation effects worth caring about.
Also, I intend to report my results regardless of what they are. Failures provide useful information, and selective reporting makes reported result less trustworthy.