On making Beeminder more appealing to a wider audience

[tjb]

@narthur

Once the desktop interface is completely responsive, you could package those web views into the apps, ensuring the apps have all the functionality of the website without having to duplicate the features in multiple places.

Please don’t get make the app rely on an internet connection. I often use “no internet” as a commitment device to get some serious thinking done.

[zedmango]

@tjb

distractingly many goals. (I can only expend mental effort toward three things.)

Definitely disagree here. I have many more than three things I need to do.

@tjb

over-reliance on willpower (e.g. accumulate more and more directly stated goals instead of using B. J. Fogg’s 3tinyhabits and beeminding systems).

Is that you? What on earth are you talking about here?
What’s wrong with directly stated goals?

@tjb

perverse incentives (e.g. browers extensions to track unproductive time, instead of todos done)

I don’t understand this one.

[tjb]

Actually, my main point is, Beeminder should unobtrusively minimize the skill it takes to set good goals.

@zedmango

distractingly many goals. (I can only expend mental effort toward three things.)
Definitely disagree here. I have many more than three things I need to do.

We all have a lot of things to do. But focussing on core priorities gets better results.

I’d suggest the wellness package gives you 10 example goals, and you can pick any two at once. Adjust the numbers as you wish, the point is focus.

@zedmango

over-reliance on willpower (e.g. accumulate more and more directly stated goals instead of using B. J. Fogg’s 3tinyhabits and beeminding systems).
What’s wrong with directly stated goals?

It feels crazy: people with more willpower tend to use less willpower. Instead, they will expend willpower to set themselves up for success. E.g. if you want to run in the morning, it’s way more successful to lay out your running clothes in the evening and make time in your calendar and find a running mate. E.g. if you want to keep a diet, it’s easier to control your shopping than your eating. Finally, setting yourself up for success can often me made into a habit that runs on autopilot.
(BTW, I’m not B J Fogg)

@zedmango

perverse incentives (e.g. browers extensions to track unproductive time, instead of todos done)
I don’t understand this one.

I’ve found RescueTime etc make me just go through the motions. That’s worse than procrastination because it’s even more easy to fool myself.

Thank you for showing me that I need to explain things much better.

[zedmango]

I still don’t understand what you mean about directly stated goals. With beeminder, I don’t need willpower, because once a goal is in beeminder it sets me up to do it and it runs on autopilot.

I also don’t understand what you mean about perverse incentives.

[tjb]

@zedmango

I still don’t understand what you mean about directly stated goals. With beeminder, I don’t need willpower, because once a goal is in beeminder it sets me up to do it and it runs on autopilot.

I call that precommitment. You decide once on your Beeminder goal, and when it’s time to put in the work, you don’t need to go through the decision making process again. But you still need to focus on the task and brave all those emotions of laziness and possibly think ahead for all the preparations you need. That’s not enough for lasting behavior change.

A habit, you don’t need to have in mind at all. When did you last need to think about brushing your teeth? You probably just thought about going to bed. Same for picking up your phone when it rings - you probably thought about what you want to say rather than about the button on the phone. That level of “autopilot” is what gets you lasting behavior change.

Only once you’ve got lasting behavior change, you can use Beeminder to attack the next problem without backsliding on the first.

So a good Beeminder goal should act on the formation of habits. And it should drill down on the specific critical moves where the good behavior starts to differ from the bad behavior. Read Switch for more info. It takes a lot of experimenting to get this just right, and that’s why a predefined package can shepherd a wider audience from try-it-out to get-results.

@zedmango

I also don’t understand what you mean about perverse incentives.

Maybe Paul Graham explains it better. Tracking time spent on bad things just encourages what he calls Type B Procrastination, i.e. you end up doing something useful, but way less useful than the task at hand. A lot of popular Bee-goals fall into this trap.

[nichlemn]

I had a look at stickk.com and I think it sets a good example. The home page prominently displays the slogan “Ready to stickk to your commitment?” and then prompts you with “I commit to… [drop down menu of common goals, or custom goal]”.

On the Beeminder homepage, you have to read some small print (or watch a video) to have any idea whatsoever what is going on. That seems really bad and should IMO be a top priority to fix. Whatever slogan you think best summarises Beeminder (maybe “Flexible Goal Tracking With A Sting”?) needs to be prominently displayed, perhaps also with a useful visualisation (or a prompt with common goals, similar to stickk’s).

[nichlemn]

@tjb

We all have a lot of things to do. But focussing on core priorities gets better results.

I’d suggest the wellness package gives you 10 example goals, and you can pick any two at once. Adjust the numbers as you wish, the point is focus.

Yeah, that’s probably better than having a single fixed package. There could still be “default picks” for the truly lazy, but having a handful of other options would probably strike a good balance between choice and analysis paralysis.

Although I wonder whether the stickk approach of prompting you to get started with just one goal could be best. Though that could still be consistent with a “package” - it might start you with one goal, but then periodically suggests new ones after a certain amount of time/success.

[tjb]

@nichlemn

Whatever slogan you think best summarises Beeminder (maybe “Flexible Goal Tracking With A Sting”?) needs to be prominently displayed, perhaps also with a useful visualisation (or a prompt with common goals, similar to stickk’s).

I explained Beeminder to my mother-in-law’s friend as “an app that breaks down a big task into small chunks and really makes me do them every day.”

[nichlemn]

Sure, but that’s a bit of a mouthful for a home page slogan

[daerdemandt]

deprecate the web interface and move towards being mobile-only

I’m not sure it’s a good idea though - I’ve been using the Beeminder for like a year before I had to carry a smartphone

But I agree that having functionality split between the app and the website is bound to be suboptimal for someone’s use-case.

[illuscat]

deprecate the web interface and move towards being mobile-only

I think it’s a great idea to develop the mobile app, since so many people rely on their phones. As someone who lives the somewhat radical lifestyle of not having a smartphone (personal akrasia issues), I am happy that Beeminder’s web interface is fully functional. With so many services now mobile-only, I really appreciate those that still allow for more than one point of entry.

[ezdoesit]

I use Bee on my Windows 10 PC and cannot conceive of using it on my android phone. I set up goals that I integrate with RescueTime. This requires a workstation. I can see the value of making Bee mobile-friendly but mobile-only is a horse of a different color.