Among the biggest challenges with setting goals for our future selves is that we haven’t met our future selves yet, so we don’t know what we’ll want. When I’m facing this issue, I usually go on the assumption that my future self will have similar motivations and ways of expressing them as my present self, even if the details are different.
The tricky bit is that many people, myself included, struggle to realistically analyze their current/past self. For me, the key to making good assessments is the idea of revealed preference. Once I have a clearer sense of the person I actually am right now, I can make better plans for the path towards being the person I want to be.
As an example: imagine that someone you just met online in a casual context asked “So, what do you like to do with your spare time?” You might start listing off some hobbies you have. But are those actually how you spend your spare time? If you’re anything like me, revealed preference says that the answer to that question is “Spending time on Facebook and surfing the internet.”
At a surface level, that’s not how I think of myself as a person - which is exactly why it’s not what I think to say when someone asks how I spend my time. It seems like an admission that I’m wasting time when I could be productive. But if I poke a bit harder, it’s a way of spending time that’s actually in line with some parts of my life I strongly value. How do I spend my time on the internet? Reading interesting articles, chatting with friends who don’t live nearby, paying attention to causes that are important to me, and having thoughtful conversations like the ones on this forum. So what revealed preference actually says about me is that I like to think, learn, form strong relationships, and make a difference in the world - but that I’ll take the path of least resistance (Facebook) to get there.
Going through this process helps me distinguish whether I want to change who I am (a real struggle that requires more than new habits) or whether I want to change what I do (comparatively straightforward, especially with Beeminder’s help.) In my example, I might decide I’m pretty happy with values that motivate me (who I am), but that I want to find more effective ways of expressing them (what I do).
So what does this have to do with Beeminder? In my life, Beeminder has a twofold purpose. It is definitely instrumental to my success when I’m making changes in the “what I do” realm. But I find its real value, and the reason I keep coming back to it, is that it gives me a concrete, low-risk way of gathering data about my revealed preferences. The escalating pledge scheme means I can put specific bounds on the question of “How much is (not) doing this worth to me?” Sometimes I find it’s worth $10 to avoid doing something for a few days. If I pay attention, that gives me extremely valuable information about what else matters to me. Derailing is also a clear breakpoint, a chance to take a breath and check in with myself about whether I still want to pursue this goal. That’s why I don’t see a derailment as a failure - in fact, what I learn by choosing to derail is often more valuable than staying on the road.
I’d agree with the author more if pledge caps didn’t exist. If my pledges kept escalating, instead of being capped at the level of “Task X is worth Y to me,” they’d eventually reach a point where they did indeed represent a threat to my finances rather than a decision about my values.