Do you consider beeminder discipline?

1

Let’s say we have Bob and Jim.

Bob and Jim. Both decided that they wanted to better themselves by going to
the gym 3 days a week.

Both have failed in the past to be consistent with this goal. They both try
again this time however Jim has the help of beeminder.

Bob loses nothing if he doesn’t make it to the gym. Jim loses $100 if he
doesn’t.

They both consistently go for a year and have great results!

Is Bob more disciplined than Jim?

I want to say that I absolutely love beeminder. It’s helped me be
consistent with not just one habit but a handful of habits all at once.
Something I would have never imagined happening prior to learning about
beeminder. I would have just followed the rules of learn one habit at a
time etc. I’ve been consistent on 6-7 now all at once because of beeminder.

I ask the question because I wonder about the long term affects of
beeminder. Is there any discipline being built when using beeminder? I find
that when I tried habits before I had a lot of will power drain when
forcing my self to do the habits. However with beeminder I by pass all the
will power drain/struggle and simply do it because I’m going to lose money
if I don’t. there’s no questioning whether I feel like it or not.

Just some thoughts I had in the shower today after reaching my running goal
for the day :stuck_out_tongue:

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2

I think what you’re doing is leveraging the willpower you have in one area
for the purpose of shoring up weaker willpower in another area. For
example, I have anti-lying willpower, but very little “do all of the
things” willpower. Beeminder allows me to leverage one in service of the
other. (Since I know I have the willpower to report the derail, I know I
have to do X or pay the fee.)

As far as building discipline goes, apparently even just making your bed
every day helps increase willpower. (Sorry, you’ll have to google the
citation; it’s been a while since I read it and I don’t have it at hand).
So it seems likely, that Beeminder increases willpower, but it might depend
on whether the action was coerced or not (and one could say that the sting
is coercive… I mean, that’s kind of the point). Maybe if you make a point
of trying to keep all graphs in the green or even the blue and to avoid eep
days you’re building a kind of willpower. Also, I suspect that as the
habits become ingrained, they require less willpower, freeing it up for
other things, but that’s just a wild guess.

(Procrastinating by responding to AkAn… Yup, that sounds about right.)
Essy

On 20 July 2014 21:11, Kenny Yang yangkennyk@gmail.com wrote:

Let’s say we have Bob and Jim.

Bob and Jim. Both decided that they wanted to better themselves by going
to the gym 3 days a week.

Both have failed in the past to be consistent with this goal. They both
try again this time however Jim has the help of beeminder.

Bob loses nothing if he doesn’t make it to the gym. Jim loses $100 if he
doesn’t.

They both consistently go for a year and have great results!

Is Bob more disciplined than Jim?

I want to say that I absolutely love beeminder. It’s helped me be
consistent with not just one habit but a handful of habits all at once.
Something I would have never imagined happening prior to learning about
beeminder. I would have just followed the rules of learn one habit at a
time etc. I’ve been consistent on 6-7 now all at once because of beeminder.

I ask the question because I wonder about the long term affects of
beeminder. Is there any discipline being built when using beeminder? I find
that when I tried habits before I had a lot of will power drain when
forcing my self to do the habits. However with beeminder I by pass all the
will power drain/struggle and simply do it because I’m going to lose money
if I don’t. there’s no questioning whether I feel like it or not.

Just some thoughts I had in the shower today after reaching my running
goal for the day :stuck_out_tongue:

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“Akratics Anonymous” group.
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