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Beeminder: Getting Back on the Horse

| 1,247 words
TAGS: personal essay, productivity, habit tracking, Beeminder, self-improvement, commitment devices
ORIGINAL: https://brennan.day/beeminder-getting-back-on-the-horse/

It's been just over a week since I deleted all my corporate social media accounts and, honestly? I've been loving the quiet and lack of notifications and decreased screen time. I'm sure I'm missing out on things, but those are not things I care about. What I care about is writing here, for you! This is exactly what I was talking about when I was writing about figuring out what juice is worth the squeeze in life.

But then the question arises: what do I do with all this newfound free time in the heat of these dog days of summer? There are many options, the most sensible being to just do more of the work I've been slacking on, such as craft.wang or folk.zone.

But why be sensible when I can procrastinate in other, more interesting ways instead? (I jest, as what I'm going to explain will actually make me far more productive in the long-run, don't worry.)

Productivity that Stings!

Most of you probably aren't aware, but I'm a Beeminder superuser. I've been using the site for many years, and wrote two guest blog posts for the company all the way back in... 2017. Nine years ago? Oh goodness. I also have a Beeminder tattoo, if you needed more proof I'm unhinged.

Actually, I'm probably getting ahead of myself here. What even is Beeminder? Well, it's a commitment tool--a platform that allows you to externalize your willpower so you do the tasks you know you ought to do. They use the term Akrasia, which can be understood as the want to want. You want to be the kind of person that effortlessly wants to do the hard but necessary work, but you know reality differs.

The way Beeminder pushes you to do the hard but necessary work is simple: you're charged money if you fail to complete the tasks you set.

Now, this is where I instantly lose nearly everyone I talk to about Beeminder. I'm often asked the same questions: The company is paid by your failures, isn't that kind of evil? Why wouldn't you just do a chargeback anytime you failed?

And I can understand the initial visceral reaction and counterargument here. Beeminder is for a particular kind of person: Somebody who is not motivated enough by small rewards or self-discipline alone, yet also somebody who is still not satisfied with living a life lacking hard work.

For me, personally, Beeminder has been the only thing that's worked. Here's my testimonial. It has been a Godsend for me to get my shit together and ingrain good habits. The only reason I'm here able to write thousands of words each day is because I originally began with Beeminder.

The height of my use was when I started a coding bootcamp at the start of 2020, which coincidentally meant the lockdowns and start of the COVID-19 pandemic as well. I kept a weekly Beejournal during this time, writing updates about the state of my tasks and goals and life in general.

When I enrolled in university in English Honours in autumn of 2021, my Beeminder usage went down by a lot. I found myself disciplined enough to simply do the damn work after a year and a half of extensive use. I maintained a 3.8 GPA for my undergrad, independently published multiple books, all while also running a creative writing collective during these four years. I am more than happy with my academic career.

While I still use Beeminder, it's become something humming along in the background rather than a tool I check-in with on a daily basis. But I want to return to that. I think it would do me a world of good, especially now that I have more free time. It is the Year of the Horse, after all. Time to climb back on it!

How Does Beeminder Work?

(Apologies if I'm burying the lede here.) The real magic of Beeminder for me is its incredible, robust amount of integration options which pull datapoints automatically. This means I'm not manually adding, for example, how many pages of a book I've read each day--which would be tedious and also tempt me to simply add false data to avoid being charged.

Here is the current running list of all the Beeminder goals/systems I have in place:

Personal Development

Learning & Growth

Creative Work

Productivity & Focus

Social & Communication

Further Reading

I've written quite a few blog posts about Beeminder, all from many years ago! Have a look: