What is Beeminder? Beeminder is a service that helps you keep track of what you want to be doing, but maybe are having trouble actually following-through. It takes data, either that you enter or that's automatically entered from dozens of different services (see Integrations), and it keeps track of data in a cool graph! The catch is that you set an amount you must do per day/week/month, and if that amount isn't met then you get charged money. That's the sting of Beeminder!
Beeminder works by breaking down your long-term goal and turning it into concrete day-to-day actions with associated deadlines. These deadlines, and the monetary sting they threaten, serve to take a small part of the price you'd pay by not achieving your goal and bring it into the present, allowing your long-term goal to influence your day-to-day behavior.
Further reading:
- Schelling Fences on Slippery Slopes
- Holiday reading: Beeminder's philosophy - Akrasia - Beeminder Forum
- Beeminder - "Your goals can be anything quantifiable — weight, pushups, minutes spent on Facebook, points on Duolingo. Answer with your number when Beeminder asks — or connect a device/app below to auto-report — and we'll show your progress and a Yellow Brick Road to follow to stay on track. If you go off track, we charge your credit card!"
- Beeminder Blog - "The Beeminder blog is a hodgepodge of productivity nerdery and behavioral economics written by the founders and various friends."
- Beeminder Forum - The official forum is a small but dedicated community of Beeminder users and fans that discuss a wide variety of topics related to Beeminder and beyond.
- Beeminder Merch - Unofficial merch shop run by @lejuletre
- @bmndr - Beeminder's primary official Twitter account. Other official accounts include @beeminfra, @beemstat, @beemuvi, and @bmndrdogfood. Beeminder's cofounders tweet at @thatgirl and @dreev.
- Official mobile apps: Android, iOS
- Unofficial Discord Server - forum announcement
If you'd like to view the official documentation and guides on getting started with Beeminder, here's some helpful links from the official website:
- A Newbie Guide guide to getting started with Beeminder. (Called newbee, get it?)
- An Overview of what Beeminder is.
- A Glossary of terms often used within discussion and documentation of Beeminder.
- An FAQ which gets into the technical details of specifical goals, derailments, etc.
- A Help Section which has even more information and how-to guides.
Okay, so how exactly can this service help you improve your life? If you'd like an unofficial guide on how to use Beeminder, here are a few easy examples to get you started:
- Want to be more productive?
- Track your screen-time with an app like RescueTime and add a Beeminder goal to limit the amount of distracting time you spend online per day.
- Track your to-dos with an app like Todoist and add a Beeminder goal to get one task done per day.
- Want to be more healthy?
- Want to learn a new language?
- Track your progress on an app like Duolingo and add a Beeminder goal to aim for a certain amount of XP points per day.
Also, be sure to check out the Featured page and integrations below for even more examples!
- Contributing - A guide to how to add information to this wiki yourself!
- Extending Beeminder - Information on how to use code to customize, extend, and interact with Beeminder.
- Integrations - A nearly comprehensive list of all official and unofficial products and services that can be used to track data via Beeminder.
- Tutorials - (Under construction!) A growing list of tutorials both here in the wiki and elsewhere.
- My Real-life Goal-Success with Beeminder by Michael Linenberger.
- How Beeminder Will Revolutionize The Way You Reach Your Goals by Natalee Desotell.
- Beeminder and Self-Tracking: Five Months In by Al Nelson.
- How to Automatically Track Anything With Beeminder by Louie Helm.
Originally created by Nathan Arthur, this fan wiki is an open project of the Beeminder community. It's distributed under the MIT License. See LICENSE for more information. Learn how to contribute.
For information on the people who created Beeminder, visit their About Us page.
Do you have a Beeminder goal for contributing to this wiki that you'd like featured in this list? Submit a pull request to this repository with your goal added to the list. All goals featured in this list must be public.