The Creativity of Commitment stickK.com
It all began with two slightly overweight graduate economics students at MIT. Using the profit motive as the basis of a contract -- Dean Karlin promised to pay John Romalis $10,000 if he didn't lose 38 lbs by a certain date. The both succeed in shedding the agreed lbs. That was six years ago.
According to the Economist, "a slim Mr. Karlin now a professor at Yale, launched StickK.com, a company based on this contractual arpprach to achieving tough personal goals."
The site is based on Karlin's ideas in behavioral economics which combines insights from psychology and economics to explain how people make decisions. Again, the Economist "The traditional rational economic model of decision making can't explain why people are tempted to do bad things in the short term (smoke, eat too much, write blogs) that they know have long term consequences -- cancer, obesity, and carpel tunnel syndrome. " The theory here. (Please don't let your eyes glaze over). Is that the "bad" short-term self doesn't give sufficient weight to the outcomes that the (good) long-term self values most. (Our own worst enemy is us).
So StickK tries to change this by helping you design a COMMITMENT CONTRACT -- that will impose an immediate cost if you fail. Amazing. Well, I visited the web site. www.stickK.com and made an immediate contract. I will exercise four times a week for the next 12 weeks. I ponied up a sum of $24 (writers are notoriously cheap) to give to charity if I don't reach my goals. I have to report in once a week. You can customize your commitment and there are various levels of incentives including have your failure published on their website.
This is yet another great example of incremental innovation. The Weight Watchers model to other economic based incentives (like NFL and NBA players who get more money based on reaching milestones).
The kicker? An angel investor has helped Karlan (and two other co-founders Ian Ayres and Jordon Goldberg) raise 1.2 million dollars.
I hope my long term self wins. And I'm betting on it.
Creativity Central
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