Can someone help me, it looks confusing. How do I report that I stuck to my goal? I want to start my goal tommarow, and I want the goal to be Sticking to my eating plan everyday. So how do I report that if it is a yes or no answer? Where do I report it so I dont have to give up 5.00?
I used to do alot of stickk, so this is different and I am not sure what is going on with all this stuff. Can someone explain the system to me, with the goal I want to do?
I would make a “Do More” goal, and call it something like “Following Eating Plan” or even just “Eating better”.
I would say the “unit” is “days”, and every night before going to bed, or in the morning if you tend to eat late night snacks or something, I would either enter a 1 or a 0. 1 means “I stuck to my eating plan”, and 0 means “I did not stick to my eating plan.”
I would set your “rate” to be an easy number for now, like 3. That means you have to stick to your plan for 3 days a week, and any days you stick to your plan beyond that count as safety buffer for later. (Being absolutely perfect would be a rate of 7, which means 7 days per week.) After you get into a good habit of entering your data, I would increase your rate to something more like 6, which means you get one “whoops” per week, or 6.5, which would be one “whoops” every 2 weeks.
(You can also choose to get a free week of safety buffer at the beginning.)
Also, if this is one of your first goals, the first time you “derail”, or mess up, you actually don’t have to pay, but the second time, you do! (Also, don’t worry. If the derail is due to a mistake or you messing around with the website trying to learn, you can email them after a derail and they won’t charge you for it.)
If you stick with it, and find out you have too much safety buffer and need to get rid of it or you won’t actually make progress on your goal, throwing away your safety buffer is called “retroratchet.” It is easy to accidentally derail when retroratcheting, but the support team has your back and can help you out.
Phew! (I really like Beeminder… I have lost nearly 40 pounds since February!)
Thank you!
How do I set up how much they charge me? I lost 70 lbs with Stickk but I am not doing stickk right now. I used to set up 17 dollars a week on stickk if I did not follow my commitment, so how does that work on beeminder? I want enough money set up so that I am motivated to stick with the goal ?
If I pledge 5.00 when does the first 5.00 come out if I mess up?
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I am less certain about most of these details about payment.
Beeminder has an increasing pledge rate, which goes: $5, $10, $30, $90,
$270, $810, $2430. You can set a maximum level that it will never go past.
I think you need a “premium” plan to skip to a higher rate than you would
be at.
The idea is that if you “need” to be charged $30 to motivate yourself, it
will quickly get there on its own, after you mess up the first three times.
(But if you are on a “freebie” plan, or one of the first goals you set up,
you actually aren’t on the hook until the first time you derail.)
You can see your current pledge in the top left side of the page for the
goal. There are up and down arrows, but I don’t quite remember when they
are active (they might need a premium plan… I forget.)
You can “short circuit” to a higher pledge with no premium plan at any time. You can also reduce the pledge amount, but this is subject to the “akrasia horizon”. This means there is a week before your changes have an effect, in order to stop you from sneakily cheating to get out of paying more.
Thanks so much, @adamwolf, for the beautiful explanation!
As for the question about adjusting the pledge, the down arrow, as @dutchie explained, has a delay of one week so you can’t lower your pledge when you’re about to derail, defeating the point. And, to correct the first part of what @dutchie said, the up arrow indeed requires a premium plan. That’s called short-circuiting the pledge schedule.