Oh hey, I think I was that new user, but of course it took me a while to finish my original message and I didn’t notice this thread before posting there: Welcome to the Beeminder Forum (I’ve never been a big forum user, still some reflexes to build I guess)
So I’m moving my post here 
(hardly any changes, and added a tl;dr)
Indeed I saw introduction threads on other forums and find it cool if newcomers (and old-timers ) can share more specifically what brought them over 
Happy it’s working!
About me (you can call me Willit): of course I’m akratic, and I’ve been having trouble since I started (and ended up partly flunking) college. I do wish I had discovered Beeminder then, as I was trying many different ways to get myself to work regularly and not get distracted, but the tricks I tried would always end up failing a few weeks after setting them up (although I maybe would have had trouble admitting I needed such an “extreme” system as Beeminder at the time).
I’ve now been using Beeminder since end of March, and I’ve definitely already seen the benefits: doing more things, and better managing to align my expectations with what I actually can do (which has always been an enormous source of demotivation for me).
What convinced me of starting?
A particularly bad period, and Beeminder’s transparency (the post listing all competitors contributed a lot for example).
I set up very early 2 “meta” goals, and those have probably prevented me from dropping out altogether from Beeminder: beexpert (a goal to read the Beeminder blog articles) and goaladder (a goal to add goals).
A few discoveries:
why the Seinfeld chain fails (I beleived in this until the first time I derailed)
typebee: Which personality traits are required to be a user of Beeminder. I better understood my feelings about Beeminder and why others could be less interested (see below)
I’m as well thinking about ways my beeminding experience could improve (may it be addressable at my level or Beeminder’s level). Right now, here is what I have in mind and would like to work on:
- Set up goals in a smarter way. I’m currently quite constantly gritting my teeth on the constraints Beeminder enforces, but it may be because I don’t have the choice and I hate that (however I’m of course happier in the long run). And example of a smarter goal: the “mustdo”. This has been a very stimulating goal and I feel the one with the most positive impact, but if you had asked me ahead of time I would have had a hard time guessing this.
- Have decreasing pledge levels after a certain amount of time. I think it would be the fair thing to do, but I do understand it may represent a financial loss for Beeminder [EDIT: I now understand it’s maybe the oposite. See shortcircuit]. I think that’s a very interesting topic, and was about to search for discussions or posts when I read… somewhere that the feature was being considered (and now I can’t find where anymore).
- Figure out ways to allow more human support between us users. I know how much this can help, and on the other hand I often feel quite alone behind my beeminder dashboard. I did talk about it to some friends, but I’ve most of the time had either questionning, puzzled or vaguely uninterested reactions (I totally understand that, and it may be a culture thing in France too. Yup I’m French.). I of course have some more precise ideas, but I’m not sure what would be feasible and would work. Something really close actually: those online rooms. I’ll have to try!
- Use tagtime. That’s such a cool idea, and I’d like to test it, but I need dig the subject more.
- Have a way of sharing a goal in an anonymous way. There are a few people around me I’d like to not share my beeminder username with, but still show how things work and share a goal or two; for example at my job where I don’t wont people to be able to see all my goals. I know there are private goals, but I think keeping them public is a bit more useful to talk about them in the community here.
- Maybe a calendial goal ? But this system seems a bit complicated to me
I’ll be very happy to browse through the forum for those subjects and chip in where I find them, or create as needed new threads.
If you already want to start, don’t wait for me and feel free to open whatever is needed and/or tag me there (I may not be very very fast at it, I’m quite busy in the coming 2 months).
Thanks for reading!
tl;dr : I’m an akratic who’s had trouble for years, and now Beeminder seems to work I’ve still got some frustrations and plenty of ideas, among which: auto-decreasing pledges, trying the intend rooms, finding a way to share a goal anonymously (i.e. no tracing back to the username), wanting to set up tagtime and maybe a calendial goal.