# Spoonfuls of sugar for the premium plan changes

**URL:** <https://forum.beeminder.com/t/spoonfuls-of-sugar-for-the-premium-plan-changes/2420>\
**Category:** Akrasia\
**Created:** [August 13, 2016, 7:54am UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/spoonfuls-of-sugar-for-the-premium-plan-changes/2420 "2016-08-13T07:54:31Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 32

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**Author:** ![dreev](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.beeminder.com/dreev/32/4311_2.png) [@dreev](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/dreev)\
**Post date:** [August 19, 2016, 3:13pm UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/spoonfuls-of-sugar-for-the-premium-plan-changes/2420/32 "2016-08-19T15:13:21Z")

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> [@agrajag](#):
>
> If I want to learn to play guitar, and a $10 pledge is sufficient to make me practice twice a week, that’s cool. But if it takes $2000 to make me actually practice twice a week, then I’m probably better of hiring an actual guitar-teacher.

I think you’re under-appreciating the [beauty of the exponential pledge schedule](http://blog.beeminder.com/exponential/)! If you’re Richie Rich and it takes $2430 to motivate you to practice guitar, that means that you derailed at all the previous amounts – $0 + $5 + $10 + $30 + $90 + $270 + $810 – which adds up, not coincidentally, to exactly half of the $2430 you now have at stake. So you coughed up $1215 but now you’re at the ridiculous pledge of $2430 and that should keep you practicing for years without spending another dime.

For me $810 tends to be the point where I consider it out of the question to derail and diligently stay on the road indefinitely.

> [@agrajag](#):
>
> And the person who is STRONGLY motivated not to derail at $10, is probably also strongly disinclined to sign up for $16/month of costs, no?

It depends a lot on the goal. I just called $810 my [motivation point](http://blog.beeminder.com/glossary/#m) but that’s for things like writing blog posts (classic case of a “one more day won’t matter” slippery slope of doom). For my pushups goal, $5 or $10 is plenty because it’s too silly to pay really any money just to not do some damn pushups. If I just set alarms or something I’d never follow through because I wouldn’t feel like doing them at that moment. I always prefer “later” or “tomorrow”. But a small nudge from Beeminder suffices to make me just do them.

Maybe the real counterargument to your theory that Beeminder’s motivational schema is self-defeating as your wealth increases is just the [case studies](http://blog.beeminder.com/buzz9/) like PhD theses that wouldn’t have happened without it. We know of many massively high-value things that Beeminder made possible (not least of which being Beeminder).

Or maybe the most fundamental counterargument is that [Beeminder is profitable](https://www.beeminder.com/meta/derev), and unless these premium changes have generated a jump in short-term revenue by cannibalizing long-term revenue (we’ll learn that soon!) then we’ve now achieved [what we hard-committed to](http://forum.beeminder.com/t/mildly-panicked/1907) for 2016 for Beeminder to survive into 2017 and beyond. Phew!

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