Show HN: WorkOrPay – Set goals, form contracts, pay a penalty if you fail

For my whole life, I have been dealing with bursts of motivation where I am extremely productive for several days, followed by weeks-long slumps. This yo-yo behavior does not let a person develop their skills or build anything substantial.

According to my observations, people usually start working towards a goal following a temporary spike in motivation. It lasts a few days at most. Usually, it is not enough for people to move past the hurdle that is the first 2 weeks. In the first 2 weeks of starting anything new, you are garbage at everything. It’s hard work, and not very rewarding because you are constantly getting things wrong and not being able to get in flow.

However, after 2 weeks so, People start appreciating the task. They finally see hints of progression in their abilities. Are able to work for longer stretches at a time before running into something frustrating. This allows them to get into flow. Together this starts to produce consistent internal motivation that allows the person to actually stick with the new habit long term. But 99% of the time people give up before getting here.

To address this issue, I created WorkOrPay

WorkOrPay: Set goals. Form contracts. Pay the penalty if you fail.

We let you form contracts in which you agree to reach a goal before a deadline. You then deposit some money. If you fail to accomplish your goal before the deadline, your deposit is lost and donated to a charity of your choice.

Basically, we provide you with external motivation (by holding your deposit hostage), so you get stuff done even when you don't feel like it. In addition, we text you daily to keep tabs and make sure you stay on track.

WorkOrPay's mission is to bridge the gap in motivation from the initial spike and the more consistent motivation that appears a while later. The idea is that if you make a contract for the frustrating 2 weeks where you want to quit. The pressure of potentially losing your deposit will provide enough external motivation for you to continue until you reach the promised land of consistent internal motivation.

I hope others who have the same problem I had, can use this service to break out of the loop. Without wasting years of their life.

Promo Code for HN members: hackernews

This desperately needs a free tier, or at the very least a several month trial

haha I tried this on my own before, donating to a food shelter every time I binged, it got expensive.

How is this different from Beeminder — afaik popularised "commitment contract". I'm an active user of Beeminder; have 4 active commitments. More than feature to feature comparison, Beeminder has an amazing blog, and an ever supportive community to lean on to.

[links] https://www.beeminder.com/home https://blog.beeminder.com/ https://forum.beeminder.com/

There's also https://www.beeminder.com and their competitors (https://blog.beeminder.com/competitors/).