Ever thought of doing a reverse Beeminder?

[lazymanlosemoney]

Instead you load up an amount of money and pay yourself back by completing tasks/achieving goals etc…

Probably more annoying from an accounting perspective.

I’m sure you’ve already thought of this, just curious.

[dreev]

Funny timing, we just blogged about that:

Contra Positive Reinforcement: Why Beeminder Is A Glutton For Punishment

There’s also some interesting debate about it in another forum thread:

Pro Positive Reinforcement: Zedmango's rebuttal

[[This was posted in the Common reactions to Beeminder thread but it was too much of a tangent there so I’m moving it here. I’m not sure if my admin powers let me change the post author to @zedmango but all of the following is by them! See also Positive reinforcement vs. punishment]] I don’t find that persuasive: Could Beeminder hold your money and give it back to you or use other tricks to reward you for success instead of punish you for failure? This phrasing is a bit of a straw man, sin…

[dreev]

I really love this. I feel like it’s precisely the best of both worlds. Let Beeminder focus on the punishment, and you arrange your accounting in whatever makes that most motivating for you.

I know others think I’m wrong and that Beeminder could be more powerful by holding on to people’s money – that you can’t replicate that by shuffling money in your own bank accounts – but, well, those people should make a Beeminder competitor that works that way! I’m declaring, ex officio, that monetary positive reinforcement is counter to Beeminder’s philosophy. But we very much endorse the @physicsgal strategy of reframing Beeminder’s stings – or lack of them – as payouts via the magic of YNAB budget categories.

[luismmolina]

I did this for almost a year. I paid myself every time I made a 3D model. The reward was random and I could spend the money in whatever I wanted to, specially books.

This is the machine I build