Show HN: I made a site that lets you punish yourself | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: I made a site that lets you punish yourself

punishme.app

26 pointsMarkVenison51 comments

For 100$, I'd expect some kind of validation of the accomplishment of my goal while the amount is reserved on my credit card.

But this app seems very low effort get rich quick to me, powered by typeform.

The $100 goes right to the web dev? What a joke.

I remember a site that would donate your money to a political charity you hated if you didn't complete your goal. That approach may have more sting, but this site is clearly better at funding itself.

That's our (Beeminder's) esteemed, if now somewhat moribund, competitor, StickK. See https://blog.beeminder.com/anticharity for our argument against anti-charities like that.

A much better alternative for this is: https://www.beeminder.com/

Everyone has to start somewhere, right?

I like this, but I feel like the money should go to charity with a transaction fee going to Beeminder.

Hi! Beeminder cofounder here. We do have a charity option but only in our most expensive premium plan. My own feeling is that a commitment contract with a charity as a beneficiary is less effective because what kind of jerk is motivated to avoid donating to charity? Unless you set the stakes so high that you can't really afford it, I guess?

Impressive feat to remove the gym part out of a gym membership.

It would be more interesting if you pre-approved the transaction for some set date in the future (the task due date), which you cancel on completion of the task.

This also guarantees "punishment" in the event that you forget about it.

I would genuinely consider using something like this iff ~90% of the money went to a charity of my choice (with the rest as a platform/transaction fee)

So just schedule a bank transfer to your charity? 100% will go to them if you don't cancel.

Setting up a scheduled bank transfer is exactly the sort of task that would spend too long on my todo list in the first place.

I think there's an interesting bit of human psychology on display here, where signing up for this service wouldn't be lost in the depths of a to-do list, but scheduling an equivalent bank transfer would.

I wonder if it's mostly the ease of use of credit card payment versus the scheduled payment system of a bank website. The latter being more complex as you need to specify the destination vs a payment where you just enter your details.

There is a time window for how long you can hold an authorization on cards otherwise it’ll expire. IIRC, 30 days is standard for most payment processors. Longer term goals would require a charge and a refund, and most processors still charge fees even if the amount is refunded.

This is exactly what I wanted to do. But I didn't know how. I looked into it with Stripe and they said they would have to authorize a payment every day and if this happens on a big scale it could trigger some bad stuff and lock it from working. Then I thought maybe I can create a community where if you don't post a message proving you did it this will trigger the transaction, but again it was very complicated. This is my first app and I am using off the shelf tools.

But hey, if you know how I could do this, please tell me and I am gonna do it.

About the charity I disagree, if the money goes to charity you will feel good about failing.

also I don't want to have to deal with saving people's cards on my server for security headache reasons. So if you have a suggestion that takes this into account also, thanks!

I don't know for sure if this would work, but it's pretty common for services to have a monthly subscription where the first month is free. You could maybe set up something like that, which either gets cancelled by you just after the end of the first month, or cancelled by the user at some point before then. (where "month" is some arbitrary duration)

I have been thinking about this as a "daily" habit kinda of thing, instead I think you're seeing it as a "monthly" goal kinda of thing. Maybe your view is easier so people don't have to subscribe and unsubscribe every day, but they can do so once per month.

So for example let's say I create a subscription, first month free.

My goal is to not drink alcohol for the whole month.

So let's say I do drink alcohol > I don't cancel the subscription and get automatically charged. If I don't drink it > I cancel it.

But then next month I would have to sign up again if I want to keep using this method let's say.

Will this mass subscribing and canceling on a daily/weekly/monthly basis annoy Stripe? I was reading from someone who did a similar app that 95% of people will say they achieved their goal. So that would be a 95% subscription cancellation rate.

Classic Pieter Levels project: https://www.gofuckingdoit.com

Button seems broken on firefox/android. What does this one do?

I'm literally doing this same idea currently but I pay a friend instead. They are under no obligation to give me my money back at a later date and I'm not expecting them to. The key is that I have to give them cash, so every time I check in with them and have not completed my goal, I have to take out my wallet, grab the money, and hand it to them.

My first check in for the year is coming up this weekend and I'm not looking forward to even going to the ATM, much less paying them if I didn't meet my goal!

Does it impact your friendship? I'd guess you may resent them if they kept a lot of money, especially when you need the money. Or you may start avoiding them completely when you're aware that you didn't achieve a given goal, no? I guess for small amounts it may work but on the long run it seems like a trap.

in my experience (I did pay a few hundred bucks to a friend back in the day) it worked because I felt very bad about giving money like this to someone.

I just started, so can't really comment on that. So far, it seems fine? We're not talking about life changing amounts of money here; 50 bucks a month at most.

The point for me is to accomplish my goal so I don't have to pay them because I'm a cheapskate.

This is exactly where I got the idea from. I was doing the same thing with a friend many years ago.

The idea is humorous.

However,

   - The incentives are misaligned.
   - Meta studies in behavioural psychology show you learn from success not mistakes.

Good luck

I feel like my entire life experience invalidates that second point.

That's probably just a coping mechanism

We need to commission more scientific studies so that I can know what I think.

I wonder if this is a very narrow definition of failure. Perhaps few things are ever truly a failure, but more a partial success?

Yeah perhaps. To the point it’s just an unhelpful study on semantics?

On the weekend our high school robotics team learned three ways not to bend 1/4” lexan and then one way how to, that combined learnings from the failures.

I’m not sure what meaning or value that bullet point can have if we just redefine “oh well all those snapped and bubbled pieces were just partial successes.”

Interesting. I think some people are more motivated by the fear of losing something than by the reward.

https://www.forfeit.app/ is a similar one (YC W23)

Related thread: Boss as a Service – Hire a boss, get stuff done (bossasaservice.life) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18512197

The money should be destroyed. Then, it will benefit everyone a little bit.

Central Banks print money faster than we could destroy :(

Destroying money is illegal though.

Someone has to take one for the team

I didn't know this.

I didn't know Typeform offered payment processing, huh.

It's in the paid plan

This type of app has been built so many times now.

I noticed as well actually :)

Congrats on launching; it's a big step that a lot of people shy away from. And congrats on the traction and comments you're getting!

I think there's nothing wrong with entering a crowded market or building an alternative to similar existing products - but I also think you need something to differentiate your offering! I'm not sure what that is for this product, but I think it's great that you launched and hopefully v the experience will help you design your next offering.

Is this a Nathan for You episode?

This is an interesting concept. Congrats on launching - that's an achievement!

Are you familiar with beeminder? It uses the same concept, but is perhaps more complicated than your straightforward pitch.

Any thoughts on how they compare?

More?

Umm. lol.

Haha

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