Yesterday, Ian Ayres blogged about his recent weight loss, and frankly, it’s a pretty impressive achievement. The secret, Ian tells us, is finding a clever way to solve the problem in which today’s best intentions are betrayed by our rather less determined selves tomorrow.
Ian’s solution — committing to fine yourself if you fail — is pretty ingenious. So ingenious, in fact, that he has set up a company to allow you to fine yourself for future transgressions. Ian is a smart guy, so I think there’s a good chance that his company will succeed. But equally, I fear he faces some pretty formidable competition. There is a much cheaper way to commit your future self to some targets, since the fear of failure, public ridicule, and embarrassment can be harnessed (for free!) to help solve our own commitment problems. Let me explain with an example.
I’m going to publicly declare my major fitness goal on this blog, and rely on this blog’s readers to ridicule me if I fail. So, here goes: this summer, I’m going to be visiting the IIES at Stockholm University, and on the last day of my visit, I’m planning on running the Stockholm Marathon. And I hope that you, dear reader, will keep me honest. It would be embarrassing to fail publicly, and I suspect it would be embarrassing enough that today’s public statement of my running goals will keep my future self pretty darn motivated.
Indeed, having now made this commitment, in 94 days time, I’ll look forward to sharing with you some thoughts on whether it helped.
When I think hard about the general issue here, I see many ways in which all of us use similar approaches to solve our commitment problems. Lots of economists sign up to present soon-to-be-written papers at conferences, in the hope that the fear of embarrassment will force them to write the paper sooner. One reason that young assistant profs work hard to gain placement at the best universities is to commit their future selves to keep up with the latest advances in economics (or else risk being shamed by their bright colleagues). Past students of mine have repeatedly told me to be a bit of a bastard in the classroom, as they find the persistent threat of embarrassment (if they are unprepared) to be a useful motivator. I know that when I teach, I begin class by over-promising on what I can deliver in the classroom, in the hope of forcing myself to keep focused.
And so we see that friends teasing each other about potential failures can actually turn out to play a productive role, if harnessed appropriately. In this story, those of us who tease our friends are the heroes, while StickK.com provides a solution for those people whose friends are too darn polite to give them a hard time.
I asked Ayres about why he thought that his fine-based commitments could compete with my much cheaper embarrassment-based commitments, and he gave an interesting answer:
StickK also makes it easy to implement your embarrassment commitment … instead of (or in addition to) a financial commitment bond, our contracts allow you to designate e-mails of friends and family supporters who receive e-mails about whether you succeed or not. So in just a few minutes, you could create a custom contract to run a marathon and send in the e-mails of people who provide the best commitment mechanism.
The commitment problem is so pervasive, and so important for so many of us, that it is always interesting to hear about the creative solutions that folks develop. So, what approaches do you use to discipline your future self?
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I hire a company to cut off my wife’s pinky finger if I fail.
(Stephen King already wrote about the ultimate commitment device in “Quitters, Inc.” It’s in _Night Shift_.)
I did something similar, but I included a spreadsheet showing my plan for the miles and how I’m doing against the plan. I’ve already had friends bug me about being behind.
http://stepsonourjourney.blogspot.com/2008/02/ezras-run.html
This is obviously the solution for everyone. Get a really popular blog then allow people to call you on the things you don’t do that you say you will.
But seriously, as someone who is generally apathetic and not all that concerned as what most people think of me, the financial punishment has the most appeal to me.
How many times have we heard so-and-so is quitting smoking and/or going on a diet, only to find that the escapade was dropped shortly thereafter. It really depends on your level of fear of social ridicule. Internal motivation is king, and I like to use personal mantras for that.
This reminds me off the famous quote on how to learn to moderate your drinking: “Always do sober, that which you said you’d do while drunk”. (Twain, Hemingway…little help?)
I think what is missing in these recent blog posts about commitment devices is whether the thing being committed is obtainable (the posts seem to focus on the method of the device).
For example, I think 94 days to prepare for a marathon is simply inadequate if you just began running. However I assume you’ve already been training. I guess the point is that ridicule is a bad device if the goal is unattainable to begin with. I’d guess that the financial device forces a more realistic goal. Then again, to the degree that people are risk averse, people might set less ambitious goals.
I quit smoking this way. Made a $100 bet with my best friend that I could go a year without a cigarette. Couldn’t lie to him, so the first cigarette I smoked that year was going to cost me $200 (net).
Never did see a cigarette worth $200 to smoke it. By the time a year was gone, I had lost the desire to smoke. He happily paid the C-note at the following New Year’s Eve party.
I think fear of embarrassment could serve as motivation for some things, but not for things like losing weight, or going to the gym. Those are things that it is well known that people often commit to them and then fail to achieve, so I don’t think there would be too much embarrassment. I think at most there would be some small shame, but it could even backfire if someone enjoys a little harmless teasing from friends. I think losing money is a much more universally effective threat.