Beeminder

The Beehive Collective of Obtuse Nerdtastic Tools

About this app

WHAT IS BEEMINDER?
Beeminder cleverly combines self-tracking and monetary incentives to help you stick to your goals. You pledge (actual money) to keep all your data points on a Yellow Brick Road to your goal and if you go off track, you pay your pledge.

WHO IS BEEMINDER FOR?
Here's the way to find out if Beeminder could be useful for you: Is there anything you know you should do, you really do want to do, you know for certain you can do, yet that historically you don't do? (Also, are you a nerdy, lifehacking data freak?) If yes, you should try it!

WHAT CAN BEEMINDER TRACK?
Anything you can quantify and graph! Here are some goals that our users have been minding:

o Hitting 145 pounds by December 31
o Reducing credit card balance to zero by January
o Blogging twice a month
o Getting rid of 100 possessions in the next year
o Being able to do 50 pushups by September 22
o Eating, on average, 5 servings of fruit/vegetables per day
o Practicing guitar 7 hours per week
o Staying at or below 148 pounds
o Doing 45 minutes of resistance training per week
o Biking 1956 miles in 2011 (until odometer hits 5000)
o Spending 40 hours a week building Beeminder (we eat our own dog food!)
o Biking 50 miles per week leading up to the NYC Century
o Reading Ulysses by December 15
o Clearing out 1 email per day till inbox is at 25 messages
o Getting in bed by 10pm at least 5 nights a week
o Calling or writing to at least one person per day
o Reviewing 10 Anki cards per day
o Flossing at least every other day

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For more on the philosophy behind Beeminder, google Akrasia and Self-Binding.

The Beeminder Android app was designed and built by Uluç Saranlı.

Ratings and reviews

Beeminder has been invaluable for me. It provides a level of accountability that has given me the impetus to achieve some things I've been wanting to do for years, including making dietary changes, establishing a regular exercise routine, and perhaps the best one - getting a full night's sleep on a regular basis (which is hard for me because I need 10 hours of sleep a night)! Beeminder literally changed my habits in ways I could never have done on my own. It has helped me attain slow and steady progress on my goals and I love being able to see a graphic representation of my progress. I've learned that I tend to derail in fairly regular patterns - every 30 days or 45 days, but because of the accountability of Beeminder, instead of being derailed for weeks or months, or quitting my goals altogether, I naturally and easily get back on track. I highly recommend it.

I love beeminder and it is really helping me reach my goals, but the app could use some improvements. The design could be better and it is hard to scroll to find the goal I am looking for (I do have around 25 goals right now.) In the end I mostly use the website on my desktop to check on my goals. The reminders work great though and I mostly use the app for that.

Update: Working widget is weirdly wonderful! The "start at boot issue" still exists, but is slightly masked by not actually taking modal focus. The app still starts an interactive session on boot, but backgrounds itself - so it still shows up on the active apps pane, even though it was not started by the user. Surely the intent was simply to start a service for notifications?

What's new

Version 5.2.0 fixes some bugs and makes notifications more reliable.

As part of Version 5.2.0, we removed Facebook and Twitter logins. If you don't have a password, you can set one after logging into the Beeminder website.