Nothing like a bee sting to get you moving
Writing this post fees like cheating, I’ll tell you why in a few lines. Sometime ago somewhere I heard about Beeminder, but never had courage to use it. This changed a couple weeks ago after an unfortunate online psychological quiz that told me I work best when held accountable.
I’m an honest procrastinator, by honest I mean I know what I am and I’m always working to mitigate the problems caused by it. I keep revising goals, maintaining tasks lists, alerts, checklists, ... but one ingredient was missing; of all methods I use none hold me accountable if I fail, but Beeminder can.
For those who don’t known what Beeminder is I will sum it up. Set a goal, commit money to reach it and track it. There’s two possibilities after this or you meet your goal or you do not. If you accomplish what you set out to do you are fine, if not, the money goes away the committed amount rises and the cycle restarts. Sounds tough?
Let’s check, this is my progress chart on blogging from Beeminder.
After analyze this chart you’ll see I’m on the hook to publish a post on my blog or I lose ten bucks. And that’s why this post feels like cheating. But this post is the whole point.
When I mention to colleagues about it most of them tremble with the thought of losing money by not fulfilling self-imposed commitment. I relate to that as this was my reaction when I heard about Beeminder. But as the more I think about this the more this fear of commitment makes little sense. Why should us be afraid of pursuing our own goals? What drives us to assume we have no control? If not by thoughts like this, the fear of committing is unjustified. I leave you to think about it as I’m thinking about this too.
Cheers.