I posted a few months ago about hiring a virtual assistant to call me every morning, ask about my manually-updated goals on Beeminder, and update them for me on the website. At the time I was thinking of this as principally a wake-up call, with the updating largely a way to keep me on the phone for long enough to be sure I was fully awake (like some alarms make you solve a math problem). But now that I’ve done it, the element of having someone else update my goals for me is just as important on its own.
I’m using GetFriday on the 10-hr plan and while they seemed charmingly surprised by this task at first, they’ve done a great job with it. One wrinkle is that they only work M-F so they can’t call on the weekends, which means they ask me about three days’ worth of data on Monday morning, but that seems to work well enough.
I’m not sure why this works so well for me but mentioned a couple takeaways in an email exchange with Daniel, which he suggested I post here for further discussion:
we naturally feel much more accountable to another human than to any automated system, or to ourselves routed through an automated system with whatever level of obfuscation and time-delay, and we acclimate to other human “minders” and start to tune them out much more slowly than automated ones. I mean, that’s probably obvious, and I know you (and others) already incorporate some social features for this reason – it’s the degree of difference where I feel like a bit of an outlier among your current user base (I didn’t detect a lot of interest in my virtual-assistant idea in the forum) but among your broader target population, possibly less so? I’ve noticed for example that every single non-tech person I know who has a Fitbit and actually wears it regularly is doing that “leaderboard” thing with their friends. I’ve literally never met anyone who stuck with their Fitbit without that.
it’s highlighted to me how resistant people are to getting up at the same time every day, 7 days a week. (Because the fact that I do that is another reason I could never use a single PA and/or one in the same time zone.) To me it’s one of the most basic pieces of scaffolding for so many other types of self-improvement and habit formation, and lots of writers and gurus have recommended it – I remember first reading it ten years ago at Everyday Systems – but NO ONE seems to want to give up sleeping in on weekends, even people who are making other huge and inconvenient changes to “optimize” their lifestyle. Anyway i have no particular insight about this but it’s really striking.
So fascinating! For just this the 5 hour plan on GetFriday would more than suffice, right? So this should cost at most $65/month?
Btw, what about CollegeInfoGeek’s system using Buffer and Twitter and Beeminder? http://collegeinfogeek.com/early-waking-with-buffer/
Seems like it might be a way to get similar benefit of automation and social accountability without spending money.
Sounds to me like @plewis22 his semi-automated all of his goals, not just the wakeup time. Similar to one of the features of our old Beekeeper programme but without the coaching.
He still has to collect the manual-data, but this ensures that every one of his goals gets updated, every day. Could cobble something together with callbacks or Zapier/IFTTT, but would need to configure it for each new goal.
His update makes me want to figure out how to fit something like this into my own system. It’s kind of like paying for an accountability buddy. Brilliant.
I find it so weird that GetFriday don’t work weekends. But then I find it weird that we still have ‘week ends’. ymmv.
I like that I can Beemind without having to talk to a human.
Can you elaborate on this?
For just this the 5 hour plan on GetFriday would more than suffice, right? So this should cost at most $65/month?
I think the minimum billing increment is 15 minutes, so 5 hrs would cover 20 calls, not quite enough for every weekday.
Btw, what about CollegeInfoGeek’s system using Buffer and Twitter and Beeminder?
Yeah I’ve seen that, it doesn’t really appeal to me. I guess the whole idea of negative reinforcement through monetary penalties or public embarrassment just doesn’t motivate me nearly as much as (1) just the act of consistent tracking on its own and (2) an element of human contact.
He still has to collect the manual-data, but this ensures that every one of his goals gets updated, every day. Could cobble something together with callbacks or Zapier/IFTTT, but would need to configure it for each new goal.
Exactly – why go through all these contortions to avoid simple human accountability? I mean, if the issue is cost, why not pair up Beeminder users to call each other every day and update the other person’s data?
This would be hard for me for a few reasons: I get up very early (5:30) and I’m on the East Coast so someone who got up at a more typical time in another time zone would likely be in the middle of the ocean. And there’s not another consistent time that I (and someone else) could commit to 7 days / week. But I’m sure there are lots of other potential pairs of users here who could make it work.
I find it so weird that GetFriday don’t work weekends.