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I really like the Seinfeld method. It works surprisingly well for me. I first came across it when I started using 750words.com, a journaling website. The websi

by Cor 13y ago

I really like the Seinfeld method. It works surprisingly well for me. I first came across it when I started using 750words.com, a journaling website. The website prominently displays your streak at the top of every page, and there are achievements and rewards for building up longer and longer streaks. At the moment my streak is at 572 days, which is testament to the effectiveness of the method. Unfortunately, the Seinfeld method, in my experience, isn’t perfect. For me, it’s only really good for small activities that can be done daily for small amounts of time. I’ve tried using it for work projects on several occasions (for example, doing 2 hours of extra work a day) and I’ve failed every time. I recently came across a fix, though - http://beeminder.com http://beeminder.com Beeminder is essentially a more configurable version of the Seinfeld method. I first tested it on a goal that I’ve tried (and failed) to do several times before - ‘read and make notes on business books for one hour a day, six days a week’. Not that hard, but for some reason, I’ve always fallen off the wagon with this particular goal. With Beeminder, I found it effortless. There’s something strangely satisfying about adding data onto the website. I ended up completing 30 days without much difficulty. Since then, I’ve added a ton of extra goals with Beeminder, and I’ve been accomplishing them surprisingly easily. I’ve been gradually ratcheting up the difficulty on each goal (for example: I recently started with the goal of ‘spend 3 hours working on own projects every week’, and I slowly increased the goal requirements at a rate of 3 hours extra per week; currently, I’m doing an extra 24 hours a week without much difficulty on my part), which I find works really well. I’ve also started using Beeminder for other goals like ‘meditate for 5 minutes every morning’, ‘go to the gym 3 times a week’, ‘cook at least 5 new recipes every week’, 'spend 30 minutes cleaning the apartment 3 times a week', and it’s worked incredibly well for each of them. Beeminder has inspired a massive change in me in a surprisingly short amount of time. I’ve always thought I had a procrastination problem, or that I’m simply lazy, but Beeminder is showing me that this isn’t the case. I recommend giving it a go.

GhotiFish 13y ago
WOH-HO Nope nope nope nope nope nope nope. That is just a flat out recipe for massive credit card charges and a boat load of pain. They have a monetary incentive to interpret your data as failing to meet your goals. That is a huuuuuuuge amount of trust to bestow on a random company.
- Cor 13y ago
  If they do misinterpret my data, I'll simply go elsewhere. If there isn't an alternative, I'll try to build my own. I haven't had to input my credit card details into Beeminder yet, so I don't see how they'd be able to take money from me, anyway. I don't use the pledge feature, and I've yet to fail any of my goals, so I've not had any problems on that front.
  - GhotiFish 13y ago
    it's optional? I can't believe the video said you needed a pledge to get back on track! It shattered my confidence in them.
    - dreeves 13y ago
      The way we think of it is that Beeminder is a goal tracking service that you pay for, except that if you never need Beeminder's kick in the pants -- if you keep all your datapoints on the yellow brick road -- then the fee is waived.
      - GhotiFish 13y ago
        ... So... not optional. I find the way some people are thinking in this discussion to be very off putting. It's like you're saying the demographic of people constituting your primary source of income are exceptions. That I can think of it is a completely free service since I am incapable of failure. How insane is that?!
        dreeves 13y ago
        I'm confused but I think I mean it the other way around: most users will pay Beeminder occasionally. There are some exceptional people who never ever fail who will never pay Beeminder (and those people apparently didn't really need Beeminder's kick in the pants anyway).
- mryan 13y ago
baby 13y ago
thanks for pointing out to 750words, I just wrote my first 750 words and I'll see how long this will go on for :)
dreeves 13y ago
Thank you so much for the kind words about Beeminder! (I'm a cofounder.) We do indeed view it as a more flexible version of the Seinfeld hack. I agree that the Seinfeld hack (aka, "don't break the chain") can be incredibly powerful -- but only once you have a long chain to not break. So there's a catch-22 until then -- you can sometimes keep failing again and again indefinitely, never building up the motivating chain. And that problem repeats every time the chain breaks. So you're always in a precarious situation where one bad day can precipitate many more bad days, where you go down a slippery slope of "one more day won't hurt; I'll get a new chain started tomorrow". (Extreme bias warning) With Beeminder you can commit to maintaining a certain average, like 3 posts/commits/pages/whatever per week. So it's not all-or-nothing like the Seinfeld hack. You can build up a safety buffer and then take some time off, without the danger that that will lead you down a slippery slope of sloth. With Beeminder's yellow brick road you've precommitted to not let your overall average dip too far. If the rate you want to maintain is exactly 7 per week -- 6.9 is unacceptable -- and if you can sustain that long term, then "don't break the chain" is probably perfect. For everything else, there's Beeminder!
- Cor 13y ago
  Oh, thank you, sir! Didn't expect to get a reply from the cofounder of Beeminder. I don't think it's possible for to fully explain how big of a difference Beeminder has made in my life. I was much like some of the folks in this thread (as in, starting projects but not finishing them; struggling to get stuff done), but since implementing Beeminder in my life, my productivity has gone through the roof. It's also given me a lot of self confidence in my abilities, which is pushing me to take on more ambitious projects and ambitious tasks. The focus on averages is definitely what I like most about Beeminder. On more than one occasion, I've fallen asleep without writing my daily 750 words, only to wake up 20 minutes later in a cold sweat, rushing to my laptop so that I can quickly write my words so I can get back to bed. With Beeminder, that's not a problem. I usually have reserves built up, or, alternatively, I can simply put in some extra time the next day. Case in point, last Friday, I went to the doctors for a routine asthma checkup and they gave me a flu shot that completely knocked me out. It effectively ruined my plans for the day. Instead of worrying, I went home, rested, and put in some extra time on Saturday instead. It's simply not possible to do this with the Seinfeld method. One thing I forgot to mention in my earlier post is that I heard about Beeminder through Nick Winter's book 'The Motivation Hacker'. http://www.amazon.com/The-Motivation-Hacker-Nick-Winter-ebook/dp/B00C8N4FNK http://www.amazon.com/The-Motivation-Hacker-Nick-Winter-eboo... It's cheap, it's a quick read, and it's got some great information inside. I made some notes while I was reading the book - I've uploaded them here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/9f6xofet38ka1x2/Nick%20Winter%20-%20The%20Motivation%20Hacker%20Mindmap.png https://www.dropbox.com/s/9f6xofet38ka1x2/Nick%20Winter%20-%... If anyone's on the fence about buying it, it's definitely worth picking up, in my opinion. There's a lot of great stuff in there that I didn't cover in the notes. Cheers again, man.

by Cor 13y ago

GhotiFish 13y ago

WOH-HO Nope nope nope nope nope nope nope. That is just a flat out recipe for massive credit card charges and a boat load of pain. They have a monetary incentive to interpret your data as failing to meet your goals. That is a huuuuuuuge amount of trust to bestow on a random company.

Cor 13y ago
If they do misinterpret my data, I'll simply go elsewhere. If there isn't an alternative, I'll try to build my own. I haven't had to input my credit card details into Beeminder yet, so I don't see how they'd be able to take money from me, anyway. I don't use the pledge feature, and I've yet to fail any of my goals, so I've not had any problems on that front.
- GhotiFish 13y ago
  it's optional? I can't believe the video said you needed a pledge to get back on track! It shattered my confidence in them.
  - dreeves 13y ago
    The way we think of it is that Beeminder is a goal tracking service that you pay for, except that if you never need Beeminder's kick in the pants -- if you keep all your datapoints on the yellow brick road -- then the fee is waived.
    - GhotiFish 13y ago
      ... So... not optional. I find the way some people are thinking in this discussion to be very off putting. It's like you're saying the demographic of people constituting your primary source of income are exceptions. That I can think of it is a completely free service since I am incapable of failure. How insane is that?!
      - dreeves 13y ago
        I'm confused but I think I mean it the other way around: most users will pay Beeminder occasionally. There are some exceptional people who never ever fail who will never pay Beeminder (and those people apparently didn't really need Beeminder's kick in the pants anyway).
mryan 13y ago

baby 13y ago

thanks for pointing out to 750words, I just wrote my first 750 words and I'll see how long this will go on for :)

dreeves 13y ago

Thank you so much for the kind words about Beeminder! (I'm a cofounder.) We do indeed view it as a more flexible version of the Seinfeld hack. I agree that the Seinfeld hack (aka, "don't break the chain") can be incredibly powerful -- but only once you have a long chain to not break. So there's a catch-22 until then -- you can sometimes keep failing again and again indefinitely, never building up the motivating chain. And that problem repeats every time the chain breaks. So you're always in a precarious situation where one bad day can precipitate many more bad days, where you go down a slippery slope of "one more day won't hurt; I'll get a new chain started tomorrow". (Extreme bias warning) With Beeminder you can commit to maintaining a certain average, like 3 posts/commits/pages/whatever per week. So it's not all-or-nothing like the Seinfeld hack. You can build up a safety buffer and then take some time off, without the danger that that will lead you down a slippery slope of sloth. With Beeminder's yellow brick road you've precommitted to not let your overall average dip too far. If the rate you want to maintain is exactly 7 per week -- 6.9 is unacceptable -- and if you can sustain that long term, then "don't break the chain" is probably perfect. For everything else, there's Beeminder!

Cor 13y ago
Oh, thank you, sir! Didn't expect to get a reply from the cofounder of Beeminder. I don't think it's possible for to fully explain how big of a difference Beeminder has made in my life. I was much like some of the folks in this thread (as in, starting projects but not finishing them; struggling to get stuff done), but since implementing Beeminder in my life, my productivity has gone through the roof. It's also given me a lot of self confidence in my abilities, which is pushing me to take on more ambitious projects and ambitious tasks. The focus on averages is definitely what I like most about Beeminder. On more than one occasion, I've fallen asleep without writing my daily 750 words, only to wake up 20 minutes later in a cold sweat, rushing to my laptop so that I can quickly write my words so I can get back to bed. With Beeminder, that's not a problem. I usually have reserves built up, or, alternatively, I can simply put in some extra time the next day. Case in point, last Friday, I went to the doctors for a routine asthma checkup and they gave me a flu shot that completely knocked me out. It effectively ruined my plans for the day. Instead of worrying, I went home, rested, and put in some extra time on Saturday instead. It's simply not possible to do this with the Seinfeld method. One thing I forgot to mention in my earlier post is that I heard about Beeminder through Nick Winter's book 'The Motivation Hacker'. http://www.amazon.com/The-Motivation-Hacker-Nick-Winter-ebook/dp/B00C8N4FNK http://www.amazon.com/The-Motivation-Hacker-Nick-Winter-eboo... It's cheap, it's a quick read, and it's got some great information inside. I made some notes while I was reading the book - I've uploaded them here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/9f6xofet38ka1x2/Nick%20Winter%20-%20The%20Motivation%20Hacker%20Mindmap.png https://www.dropbox.com/s/9f6xofet38ka1x2/Nick%20Winter%20-%... If anyone's on the fence about buying it, it's definitely worth picking up, in my opinion. There's a lot of great stuff in there that I didn't cover in the notes. Cheers again, man.