Need help with your promise keeping?
Based on personal experience and scholarly research, Dean Karlan, Economics Professor at Yale and Co-Founder of StickK, envisioned an online ‘Commitment Store’ where people would come to sign contracts obliging them to achieve their personal goals.
StickK is a concept based on two well-known principles of behavioral economics:
- People don’t always do what they claim they want to do, and
- Incentives get people to do things.
The incentive used at StickK is money – yours. So far, 36,927 people have made commitment contracts with $3,861,000.46 stakes on the line. (I noted individuals with stakes from $125 to $2600.)
At StickK.com, this is the process:
- First, you state your goal and time frame.
- Set the stakes. (The money you put down as your incentive and yes, they take down your credit card information; you can also choose no stakes).
- Pick a referee. (a person you select to monitor your process – optional)
- Add friends for support (or, a group that you will lose face with if you don’t achieve your goal. StickK emails them.)
With that done, you can sit back and pretty much watch your money go away in increments if you don’t follow-through.
Where does the money go? StickK has a list of very nice deserving charities where your money will go or it could go to an anti-charity. An anti-charity is an organization whose views you strongly oppose, or one which promotes values that are most contrary to your own. By designating an anti-charity as your recipient of stakes, you’ll certainly work that much harder to ensure that your money never falls into the wrong hands – the added incentive for you to achieve your goal. (For instance, my father would do most anything including set fire to his money, before letting any of it go to the Democratic Party.)
Currently on the list of anti-charities are: the NRA, George W. Bush Presidential Library (see my father above) and the William Jefferson Clinton Presidential Library.
I found commitment contracts on limiting time spent on the internet, getting healthy, limiting beer intake and this one below from vagabond99 which is close to what a sabbatical commitment might look like.
I commit to prioritizing the planning of my South Africa study abroad including filling out the application, paperwork, and finding the funds. Her commitment was made last week; her deadline is November 2010, and she has no stakes.
That pretty much says it all for this novel idea. If works for you, go to it. Just know that I’ll be happy to hold you accountable for the right stakes.
About that second K in “stick”? The letter “K” is the shorthand symbol for “contract” used in legal writing. Since they offer Commitment Contracts, they felt it was appropriate. Cute.
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