Allow me to bind myself stronger by increasing the time until a goal is archived and by restricting the amount of possible breaks
My "problem" is that I can power through activities I don't like when it is only for a short period of time. So even when I set my beeminder contract to a few thousand dollars for the goal of working out regularly, I could still easily back out of this obligation at any point by archiving my goal. From that point forward, I would only need to perform my workouts one additional week. Because of the end in sight, that wouldn't be a problem at all.
To be able to actually make working out with beeminder work for me, I would need the ability to specify that it takes X months between clicking the Archive button and actually archiving the goal.
Furthermore, I would need to be allowed a maximum of Y "Take a break"s in Z months.
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Admindreeves (Cofounder, Beeminder) commented
Ooh, interesting, so you want to customize your akrasia horizon. I'm skeptical though! The theory here is that, yes, you can be lazy and end your goal but only if you're sufficiently forward-thinking about your laziness. Are you really that forward-thinking about your laziness? Why would you decide not to work out next week unless you had a good reason? Especially given that you're already on the hook for this week. Why not keep working out next week too?
I feel like this works especially well for workouts. I often would rather sit on the couch *right now* but as for next week, I totally want that version of me to be on the hook to get some exercise. So I'm never inclined to flatten my workout goals.
Eager to hear if you feel like that reasoning doesn't hold up in your case.