Here’s a theory: This “self-blackmail” critique may not be a legitimate critique of Beeminder, but may be an emotional trap that some users fall into depending on their habits as they get to know how Beeminder works for them.
This is based on my own experience:
I am overly ambitious about what I can and want to achieve on the regular, and have often felt actually oppressed by my idealistic and unrealistic-about-time Past Self’s Beeminder goals. When I have regretted committing to a goal, the ability to archive the goal one week in the future was cold comfort, as I still experienced either (a) a week of frustration spending time doing something it turned out I really didn’t want to do, or (b) paying up to bail out, which I generally processed as a failure (no good for the self-worth), and was often materially difficult, depending on my income at the time.
I’ve learned to do a gut check when beginning a new goal, and ask myself:
- How confident am I that I really can follow through?
- Am I in any doubt? Be pessimistic.
- No, really. Are you being appropriately pessimistic?
If I am in doubt about either my commitment to a goal or my capacity to achieve it, then I’ve learned to set an extremely low bar — often even with flat roads, so I am essentially not committing to anything, simply testing a theory about what I want to do.
You might view this as letting akrasia back in through the back door: I’m short circuiting Beeminder’s imposition of Past Self’s intention. But this is not a problem: Past Self was consciously aware that his own intentions were in question, and the question my Present Self is asking isn’t only whether I want to do this right now, but whether I want to do it at all. When the answer is “yes”, then I increase my commitment to something meaningful after a week or two.
This is an orientation to the Beeminder tool that I have only learned through years of halting experience. I began enthusiastically, became disillusioned with my inability to be realistic, burned out, came back years later, went through a similar but less extreme cycle again, then again, and have recently become a pretty happy user (by which I mean I’ve little to no bad feelings towards my Past Self).
Years ago, I might have been persuaded by the “self-blackmail” critique, because negative feelings toward Past Self’s commitments turn into negative self worth feelings for Present Self — What is wrong with me? Why can’t I act rationally? Is my willpower worth nothing?… (The author of the critique claimed the argument isn’t about bad karma with the word “blackmail”, but… I don’t really believe that.)
These days, I know how to avoid making rash commitments in a self-defeating way. I’ve gone through a maturation process with how I think about and use Beeminder. (To this day, my Past [at time of goal-setting] Self still occasionally forgets to apply this lesson. So this is an ongoing process, and the discipline for me is remembering to be thoughtful and mindful instead of impulsive when creating new goals.)
I suspect that this need for a maturation process is not uncommon. I wouldn’t have come back to Beeminder without investing significant time reading blog and forum posts and dialoging with the founders. It is interesting to imagine how the application could help newbees accelerate this process, and help them avoid a “Self-blackmail Yuck!” phase.