Here’s my list of personality traits required for beeminding:
- Akratic (obviously)
- Ambitious/motivated (ironically)
- Self-aware (knowing the limits of one’s motivation)
- High-integrity (to not spoil the whole point by cheating/weaseling)
- And probably lifehacking data nerdery
What fraction of the population does that leave? Most people are
akratic about at least some things. It’s practically part of the human
condition. I don’t know where the ambitiousness threshold is but it’s
a sizable minority if not a majority. There’s some empirical evidence
to suggest 1/3 is the fraction of people with enough self-awareness to
appreciate the value of a commitment device. Integrity is another one
I don’t know how to estimate, but hopefully it’s at least 50%. And
we’re gradually lowering the bar on lifehacking data nerdery (and the
more competitors we have – blog.beeminder.com/competitors – the more
receptive the general population is to this kind of craziness!) but
we’re still clearly targeting the nerd elite.
Multiplying it out: 95% * 50% * 33% * 50% * 10% = nearly 1% of the population.
We are the 1%!
–
http://dreev.es – search://"Daniel Reeves"
Goal tracking + Commitment contracts == http://beeminder.com