Fellow self-quantifiers,
My co-hacker Bethany Soule and I have a new startup, Beeminder (the me-binder!), that grew out of various self-quantifying we’ve done. Here’s us presenting at QS NYC last year: http://quantifiedself.com/2010/10/bethany-soule-and-daniel-reeve/
We wanted to recruit like-minded folks for our beta before we go public. You can create a beta account at http://beeminder.com/secretsignup
It’s definitely not for everyone, and not even for all QS folks since a big part of it is the commitment contracts. But if you like the concept of stickK.com (forcing yourself to reach a goal via a monetary commitment contract) then we think you’ll adore Beeminder.
StickK is just about the contracts – Beeminder links it to your data. That has some big advantages:
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You don’t have to know what you’re committing to when you commit, which sounds completely (oxy)moronic but what we mean is that you’re committing to keeping your datapoints on a “yellow brick road” which you have control over as you go. You commit to something general like “work out more” or “lose weight” and then decide as you go what that means based on your data.
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You have more flexibility to change your contract. That also sounds like it defeats the point of a commitment contract, but the key is that you can only make changes starting a week in the future. (Details at http://blog.beeminder.com/dial )
We’d love to hear people’s thoughts on this!