I Bet You Can
A friend of mine on Facebook posted something rather interesting recently:
"Guy at work just bet me $1,500 that I couldn't go a year with no diet coke, no coffee, and no red meat."
I've heard bets like this before. and I dimly recall being offered a couple of these during my college years. I never took anyone up on them, but if the opportunity came up again, no matter what the stakes were, I would probably do it.
We're rarely incentivized to make any kind of change in our lives. If anyone offered me money to change some non-trivial aspect of my lifestyle (and even trivial aspects of our lives have non-trivial implications), I'd probably go with it just out of curiosity, to see what other stuff would change.
Instead of waiting for someone to offer you the action, however, there is a site out there that lets you bet on yourself: Stickk.com. The premise is very simple: imagine, for example, that you want to quit smoking...you wager a substantial amount of money, say around $1000, that says you won't smoke for six months. If, at the end of six months, you haven't fallen off the wagon and lit up, you get your money back. Otherwise, the money gets donated to a charity of your choosing. You can set it up so that your friends know about it and have control over whether you get the money back or not, so it's slightly better than the honor system.
It's a funny little project that cropped up due to the rising popularity of behavioral economics in academia. Imagine someone paying you to follow through on your New Year's resolution. Now, imagine that they tax you if you give up and fail to achieve your goal. One of the reasons that the latter is more effective is because of an old, simple principle: the fear of loss is greater than the desire for gain.
"Guy at work just bet me $1,500 that I couldn't go a year with no diet coke, no coffee, and no red meat."
I've heard bets like this before. and I dimly recall being offered a couple of these during my college years. I never took anyone up on them, but if the opportunity came up again, no matter what the stakes were, I would probably do it.
We're rarely incentivized to make any kind of change in our lives. If anyone offered me money to change some non-trivial aspect of my lifestyle (and even trivial aspects of our lives have non-trivial implications), I'd probably go with it just out of curiosity, to see what other stuff would change.
Instead of waiting for someone to offer you the action, however, there is a site out there that lets you bet on yourself: Stickk.com. The premise is very simple: imagine, for example, that you want to quit smoking...you wager a substantial amount of money, say around $1000, that says you won't smoke for six months. If, at the end of six months, you haven't fallen off the wagon and lit up, you get your money back. Otherwise, the money gets donated to a charity of your choosing. You can set it up so that your friends know about it and have control over whether you get the money back or not, so it's slightly better than the honor system.
It's a funny little project that cropped up due to the rising popularity of behavioral economics in academia. Imagine someone paying you to follow through on your New Year's resolution. Now, imagine that they tax you if you give up and fail to achieve your goal. One of the reasons that the latter is more effective is because of an old, simple principle: the fear of loss is greater than the desire for gain.