Themeattics

All theories of akrasia converge where the rubber meets the road.

Daniel Reeves, Beeminder

I promise I didn’t start all this intending to go on a multi-week productivity rant. And yet here I am with the follow-up to last week’s follow-up. This will be the last in this chain for a while, I promise! Once I get around to actually working on making this site presentable, I’ll probably end up shunting these off to their own location to keep things a bit more cohesive. In the meantime, however, you get what you paid for – unfettered, train of thought nothingburgers.

Anyway, last week I took a bit of time to talk up Beeminder. I’ll do that again, don’t worry – did I mention it’s my favorite? – but I want to take a bit to discuss the ideas of positive and negative reinforcement for a bit.

Positive reinforcement is all the rage lately, be it in the gambling dopamine rush of most mobile games or educational courses designed specifically to avoid telling people when they’ve done something wrong. Hell, we barely train dogs with anything but treats these days.

None of this is necessarily bad. Rewards gained from positive behavior are obviously encouraging. That is, to use a phrase I generally hate, common sense. We do this stuff every day, whether we see it or not. Killed it at work? Kick back, grab a bowl of ice cream and watch a show. Our lives are filled with reward systems, which is enough evidence to show how powerful they can be.

And yet.

Real talk, ok? You and me? We’re weasels. Did you kind of coast at work today? Yeah, maybe. But you still felt like you deserved that desert and show, huh? After all, what’s the harm? Life’s hard, sometimes we need a break. And when the next time rolls around, we’ll do the same thing. And again. And again. Eventually our reward becomes the default state, disassociated from whatever it was we were accomplishing because, well, we know we could have done it and that’s enough.

I use this example because that’s been me for years. Not specifically – mine was always hopping on the Playstation or PC to game for an hour or two or four – but the principle was the same. I did great, I deserve this. I did fine, I deserve this. Today was hard, I deserve this. This is my default action. It’s a brutal cycle and one I have fallen into on the regular. So, I did what I had to do to fix it. Put myself in the position where if I didn’t it would hurt.

I’m cheap. If I were kinder to myself I’d say frugal, but nah. Cheap fits. I don’t go to casinos because I can’t bring myself to lose that money. I rarely buy things in general. I made, manage, and regularly watch the household budget, Scroogeing my way through life wherever possible. The idea of lighting my money on fire for not accomplishing goals I specifically set for myself to handle? Absolutely out of the question.

Beeminder to the rescue. Put air quotes around that last word if you’d like. After I set my hour-a-day average goal, I haven’t failed to do it. I screwed up making the goal and forgot to put a two-day buffer to start it on Monday instead of Saturday, but I resisted the urge to “cheat” and go fill in successful times, so every day I’m scraping that line of failure, but I haven’t gone past. If I do end up failing, sure, it’s only $5, but that $5 is mine, dammit.

Plus, every time you fail the subsequent penalty is tripled. I’d really rather not.

Anyway, this one is short and sweet. I hope the data points and trendlines on that graph give you as many warm fuzzies as they do me, and I hope you get the desire to light a fire under your butt and make a Beeminder account.

Get out there and make something. Be someone. Put your time to use. Let’s be awesome together.