How I use accountability bets

I frequently use accountability bets to ensure I get things done. Accountability bets are where you commit to giving someone a certain amount of money if you fail to achieve a certain goal by a certain time. For example, “if I don’t submit my taxes by the end of the day today, I will give you $20”.

Here are some bets I currently have on the go:

• If I don’t go to the gym 3 times a week, I give one friend £20. This bet is on every week.
• I didn’t want to read any comments on my recent EA forum post while I was on holiday this week. Every time I open the link to my forum post before Monday 17 October, I have to give my colleague £5 [1].
• If I don’t publish one more blog post by the end of the day today, I have to give my productivity/life coach £50 [2].

So far, I’ve failed the gym bet once since August and will fail again this week. I’ve managed to avoid reading any comments on my forum post. If you’re reading this blog post, I’ve probably met my third goal too.

I’m on a tight deadline here, no time to pick a good picture.

Why do they work?

I consider myself a fundamentally lazy person — I don’t feel intrinsically motivated to meet my goals each day. However, I value achieving my goals very much. Accountability bets are a way for me to make sure that I actually achieve the things I want to achieve, even if I’m not motivated to work towards them each day.

Essentially, accountability bets price in the cost of failing to meet your goal. When you don’t feel motivated to meet a goal, failing often doesn’t feel costly in the moment (“oh, I don’t really care about going to the gym”). But later, in moments of self-reflection, you might sincerely regret not meeting your goal or gradually falling behind on important projects. Accountability bets carry that regret from the future to the present, and give it a price.

The two tips I could think of for setting good bets.

1. Set a price that matches the cost — working out exactly how much regret will cost in the future is hard. Try to imagine what it will be like if you fail to achieve your goal. What will that feel like? Now try to imagine losing some amount of money. What amount would make you feel slightly worse than that failure would? If this kind of thinking doesn’t work, make a few smaller bets to calibrate what feels right. You should aim to succeed a majority of the time — if you regularly prefer to pay up, the price is probably too low!
2. Be unusually specific — you never know precisely what it will look like when you fail to meet your goal (“did that short jog count as exercise?”). If your goal is ambiguous, it can be easy to expand the boundaries of success in a way that you later don’t feel is justified (or might just mean you don’t achieve a longer-term goal). Specify each goal a bit like laws are specified. For example, my gym goal in full is actually:

If I don’t do three of the following things (repeats allowed) every week starting Monday, I will give [one member of this group chat] at random £20

1. Work out for 10 mins at the gym

2. Do a remote workout [from a specific app]

3. Go on a run for at least 20 mins

I withhold the right to adjust this amount if I think the incentives are wrong. If I need to change the amount of times I do exercise, I’ll need at least two people to agree that’s sensible (e.g. I sustain a long-term injury).

This applies to the deadline too —think about when you really want to achieve the goal by, specify a time by the hour (e.g. 9 pm BST, 15 October), and stick to it.

Footnotes

[1] Sorry, I can’t link to the post. That would be too costly…

[2] My coach is Mary Bajorek. She’s a wonderful coach and a wonderful human.