Show HN: Kommit – Web app to help you follow through with NY's resolutions
1–10 of 44 posts
Re: Show HN: Kommit – Web app to help you follow through with NY's resolutions
#2I am often trying to build new habits, however, I normally lose momentum after a few weeks.
This summer, Instead of working on my will power or my habits, I decided to build something to punish me when I fail to follow through with my commitments.
Kommit is a free to use web app where you can create commitments and when you fail to stick to them, you are forced to donate to charity.
Like a true programmer, I started building Kommit without doing any research and I’ve since found out that similar apps already exist. However, in several ways I think Kommit is already nicer to use and more flexible.
Kommit has helped me reach a 112 day streak studying Korean on Duolingo, and it’s helped my partner keep a daily diary for the last 6 weeks. Hopefully it can help some HNers with their 2022 New Year’s resolutions!
PS If you don’t have anyone who can review your commitment, feel free to email me at callum@kommit.to and I’ll be happy to help :)
Re: Show HN: Kommit – Web app to help you follow through with NY's resolutions
#3Have you considered reframing this as positive reinforcement instead of negative? It may require more trust in the system, but one example would be to have the user set aside a larger amount of money (in "escrow") that is paid out over time after successful completions of the kommitment.
Re: Show HN: Kommit – Web app to help you follow through with NY's resolutions
#4Have you considered reframing this as positive reinforcement instead of negative? It may require more trust in the system, but one example would be to have the user set aside a larger amount of money (in "escrow") that is paid out over time after successful completions of the kommitment.
Thanks for the suggestion! I have thought about using positive reinforcement, and I am still considering it as possible future feature. One of the reasons I chose to start with negative reinforcement is that I had read in "Thinking, Fast and Slow" that losses tended to be more motivating. I think there are arguments about whether that holds up or not, but I think it's true of my own experiences.
Setting money aside in escrow is definitely an interesting idea, but as you say, requires quite a lot of trust. I did toy with idea of rewarding people with the punishment money from other failed commitments but it'd be quite tricky to make the rewards worthwhile, while making sure the system doesn't get gamed.
Re: Show HN: Kommit – Web app to help you follow through with NY's resolutions
#5Have you considered reframing this as positive reinforcement instead of negative? It may require more trust in the system, but one example would be to have the user set aside a larger amount of money (in "escrow") that is paid out over time after successful completions of the kommitment.
Thanks for the suggestion! I have thought about using positive reinforcement, and I am still considering it as possible future feature. One of the reasons I chose to start with negative reinforcement is that I had read in "Thinking, Fast and Slow" that losses tended to be more motivating. I think there are arguments about whether that holds up or not, but I think it's true of my own experiences. Setting money aside i…
I suppose using something like a smart contract could maybe help with the trust issue, although perhaps only with relatively tech savvy users for now.
Re: Show HN: Kommit – Web app to help you follow through with NY's resolutions
#6https://www.stickk.com/
The very same idea with more developed solution, already community and more features
(Just for people who looked for such things like me ago)
Re: Show HN: Kommit – Web app to help you follow through with NY's resolutions
#7https://www.stickk.com/ The very same idea with more developed solution, already community and more features (Just for people who looked for such things like me ago)
Yeah I was a bit gutted when I found Stickk after spending a bunch of time building Kommit. It's super similar and I felt a bit silly for not doing the research beforehand.
However, considering Stickk has existed for something like 14 years, it doesn't feel particularly mature. I don’t want to be too disparaging (and I’m obviously biased) but I found their website quite clunky and the apps don’t receive great reviews (1.8 on IOS and 3.0 on Android).
A few aspects that I believe are better in Kommit:
- More control over deadline schedules (you can set it to repeat on multiple specified days of the week).
- More control over punishment rules (you can choose how many consecutive failures are allowed before you're punished).
- You can give yourself skip days (useful if you know you’re likely to need a vacation).
- You can update commitments (there is a mechanism to allow updates while preventing you from dodging punishments).
Re: Show HN: Kommit – Web app to help you follow through with NY's resolutions
#8Have you considered reframing this as positive reinforcement instead of negative? It may require more trust in the system, but one example would be to have the user set aside a larger amount of money (in "escrow") that is paid out over time after successful completions of the kommitment.
Thanks for the suggestion! I have thought about using positive reinforcement, and I am still considering it as possible future feature. One of the reasons I chose to start with negative reinforcement is that I had read in "Thinking, Fast and Slow" that losses tended to be more motivating. I think there are arguments about whether that holds up or not, but I think it's true of my own experiences. Setting money aside i…
> losses tended to be more motivating
For some definition of "motivating", probably so, but I wouldn't want to take that extra stress to keep a self-motivated minor commitment.
Re: Show HN: Kommit – Web app to help you follow through with NY's resolutions
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for the suggestion! I have thought about using positive reinforcement, and I am still considering it as possible future feature. One of the reasons I chose to start with negative reinforcement is that I had read in "Thinking, Fast and Slow" that losses tended to be more motivating. I think there are arguments about whether that holds up or not, but I think it's true of my own experiences. Setting money aside i…
> losses tended to be more motivating For some definition of "motivating", probably so, but I wouldn't want to take that extra stress to keep a self-motivated minor commitment.
Would you be more likely to use something like the escrow system described above? Or is there an alternative mechanism that you'd be more interested in?
Re: Show HN: Kommit – Web app to help you follow through with NY's resolutions
#10I keep seeing hints of this strange model of the soul, I don't quite understand it, but it's like people are describing themselves as being multiple people.
There's the them that wants things, and the them that does things, as separate entities. The "wanter" is only briefly able to wrest control over what the "doer" does, mostly the "doer" has its own will which is not what the "wanter" wants, but something else.
Surely we're just one person. If someone wants something, it's they that want it, if someone does something, it's they that do it; but having this model of being multiple people allows them to completely disown their actions as the actions of someone else, as stuff that just happens to them, which in turn reinforces the narrative of not being in control.