Last Tuesday I paid Beeminder $5 because I didn’t floss my teeth when I promised that I would. That evening, I was the one collecting $270 from Beeminder…

In case you’re not familiar with me, I’m outstandingly lazy. I really dislike having to do anything at all. I’m totally fine with choosing to do things, but I push back pretty hard against the universe when something has to be done. This is why I’m so big on automation, it reduces the things to have to be done by me, and allows me to practice efficient laziness.

But there are some things one simply can’t automate; flossing your teeth, running a business, doing one’s taxes, getting some exercise. While I might be able to write digital agents that can assist me with those tasks, fundamentally they’re things that I have to do. The problem is, left to my own devices, I rarely will.

However, there is one time when I’ll take action, and that’s when presented with the threat of imminent failure. If you’ve read WBW’s excellent article on procrastination then you’ll understand that the panic monster is one of the few things that will get chronic procrastinators to actually move.

For tasks with big, looming deadlines such as my talks, there’s a very clear, and visceral threat of failure. They’re even worse than most deadlines, because they’re public speaking, which is already flat out terrifying, and most of my talks are given in Australia, where everything is trying to kill you.

Generally, if I need to get something done, I’ll promise to present a talk on it, safe in the knowledge that the fear of public ridicule and the thought of my audience taking me to the beach will be enough to terrify me into action.

Yet there’s a problem. Small things which I should be doing regularly, like flossing my teeth, or doing exercise, come with with no dramatic failure cliffs. And let’s face it, planning to live one’s life by only doing the most terrifying things at the last possible moment isn’t exactly the most optimal way to live. This is where Beeminder comes in handy.

Beeminder provides the ability to establish commitment devices. In the same way that I’ll promise to give a talk on software I would like to write, I can use Beeminder to promise to do something that I would like to do, but which I know future me will be unlikely to achieve.

Beeminder is exceptionally good at taking large or ongoing tasks, and splitting them into smaller, more achievable goals. It then draws the most friggin’ nerdtastic graphs ever, with rolling averages, goal lines, predictive curves, and all sorts of goodies, so you can see just how well you’re doing. The most important of these is the ‘yellow brick road’. If you’re on that, then you’re on track.

So I might achieve my long-term task of good dental hygiene by having a goal to floss three times each week. Or I might turn my goal of writing a 5,000 word essay into the task of writing 250 words per day for 20 days. Beeminder makes it very easy to see if I’m achieving my goal, or if I’m at risk of falling behind. And if I over-perform (maybe by writing 1000 words one day), then Beeminder will cut me some slack.

However the real power of Beeminder is that you can pledge an amount of money against your goal. Promising that I’m going to floss my teeth thrice weekly may not be very motivating, but knowing that I’ll lose $5 if I don’t make my flossing deadline is enough to have me stumble into the bathroom before bed, rather than promising to myself that I will do it later. And while I can change my goals at any time, I have to do it at least a week in advance, so I can’t weasel out of something just because I don’t want to do it right now.

While I pay out on the occasional pledge, those amounts have been absolutely worth it. Overall I’m paying about $0.20/week for good dental health, and maybe $0.08/day to keep my inbox under control. A Beeminder pledge has also kept me attending my last 30 dance lessons, by giving me just enough of a nudge to not come up with excuses as to why I’m too busy to go, and I’ve not paid a penny to Beeminder for that goal, as I’ve never got behind in my dance lessons when I’ve promised to be there.

There’s a lot of cool cognitive science behind Beeminder, but one of the neat things is they’re very committed to using their own system to ensure that important tasks like user-visible improvements, blog-posts, and general support get done. And by very committed, I mean that the Beeminder team will pay out pledges to users that call them out if they fall behind on one of their goals.

And that’s what happened last Tuesday. One of the founders hadn’t spent enough hours on Beeminder that week, and I ended up $270 richer as a result, and that was one of the smaller pledges they have on the line.

Of course, being me, I don’t want to feel I have to check if any bounties are payable, so I’ve written some code to check for me. I’ve got no qualms about being efficiently lazy when it comes to motivating others. ;)