Outsourcing self-discipline?

[gretchen]

I’m curious to hear what he believes the harm in outsourcing self-discipline would be!

I find that using Beeminder to track commitments over the long term frees up mental energy that I can then apply to shorter-term tasks that require self-discipline. Eventually, I end up forming habits and the tasks then don’t require any self-discipline at all to complete. The sorts of goals best suited to Beeminder require consistent daily effort to succeed, and I still have to actually do the thing. Beeminder mostly keeps me from telling myself “I’ll do it tomorrow.”

You might be interested in the relatively recent post here discussing a related topic:

Rebuttal to Sinceriously's "Self-Blackmail"

I just came across a new blog, Sinceriously.fyi, whose second post is about self-blackmail and argues against Beeminder specifically. It’s a thoughtful argument so I wanted to give my rebuttal. Let me start with the things I like, namely the author’s invention of a self-fulfillingly self-enforcing commitment file: I once had a file I could write commitments in. If I ever failed to carry one out, I knew I’d forever lose the power of the file. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy. Since any succes…