Show HN: Discipline.io – Make binding commitments to your better self
discipline.ioHi HN,
It's super hard to quit addicting apps. Existing solutions are non-binding, and therefore, require constant self-discipline and vigilance to be effective. Which is ironic, considering the problem we are trying to solve, is a lack of self-discipline.
There exists a physical solution to this problem, in the form of a time-locked safe[1]. It’s effective for reducing app usage, but it's cumbersome and inconvenient.
Fundamentally, what these lock-boxes do is impose a real-world cost on breaking your commitment. It’s not impossible to break your commitment, but it would require destroying the lock-box, and that incurs a cost.
I created a digital version of this, as an app (Android-only). Commitment’s are backed with cash deposits, and the phone API’s are used to detect violations and enforce compliance. No self-reporting required. And it even works if the monitoring app is uninstalled, or its background service disabled.
An example commitment: Stop using Tinder, for the next week, or forfeit $20 to the Red Cross charity.
The solution also generalizes to other types of commitments:
- Commit to using an app more (e.g. meditation)
- Commit to visiting a location (e.g. gym)
- Commit to making a phone call (e.g. mom)
[1]: https://www.thekitchensafe.com As a peer[1] in the habit-building space, there are so many things I love about this: * No self-reporting. I can attest this a huge source of friction for users. * Aligned business model. I also donate 100% of penalties to charity. It's shocking how many accountability apps are incentivized for you to fail. * External accountability. It's an underrated tool and I'm glad it's gaining more recognition. However, I think there's also such a thing as too much accountability. Life comes in the way and people won't always hit their goals. When you penalize failure, you penalize trying. Instead, it's better to encourage learning from failure. That's why I impose compassionate accountability. You're only required to check in on your goals, not succeed at them. This way, you can fight through the problem instead of giving up the moment you fail. Here's a recent example from Habit Gym that illustrates this quite well. It's a user trying to quit smoking - they start off slow, but pick up momentum quickly because they learned from their mistakes. https://i.imgur.com/1eiZEMy.png Just my two cents! Good luck with your app! Hey, is there a problem with accepting new registrations (and joining the waitlist)? I get "The change you wanted was rejected." for anything I try to submit. I don't think so, there have been registrations since your comment. If you're still having trouble, feel free to email me@suketk.com. just today I had an idea - pick up the book I'm reading whenever I hit HN or other SM. A book is just a better distraction (: Anyway, good luck to all trying to fight distractions! The incumbent in this space is https://www.beeminder.com where the specific use case shown here about screen time can be configured with e.g. their RescueTime integration. Beeminder however just take your money for themselves as opposed to giving it to charity. They claim people would otherwise be more prone to giving up on their goals, thinking "oh well, the money is going to charity anyway so I'm doing a good thing by breaking my commitment". The opposite approach would be setting it up so the money goes to an organization whose goals you disagree with. I do hear that. But it seems to me, having the company take the deposit creates perverse incentives, e.g. the company is basically betting on the user breaking their commitment. A key difference also is, by requiring the deposit before resolving the commitment, it removes the escape hatch of just canceling your credit-card. It also generalizes to any app on the platform. I was considering supporting anti-charities (e.g. NRA, DNC etc..), but I thought that was unnecessarily distracting. Long-time Beeminder user here. You are theoretically right, but I don't think it works like this in practice. I've never had a problem with declaring that they should not charge me, and the charge was always canceled if that was TRT. As for the escape hatch: true, but the counterargument by Beeminder people is that you basically cheat yourself then, so what would the point be? In fact, I have many "goals" on Beeminder where I enter data manually, so it's based on a honor system – and I don't think I'm the only one. As for the anti-charities: this is a terrible, terrible idea from moral point of view. Much worse than just "distracting". If I agree (even conditionally) to donate money to an evil cause, I am just committing evil right now. Why would I want to do it? Another incumbent is https://gofuckingdoit.com by the bootstrapping cult icon Pieter Levels. I love the simplicity and interface, but it seems unclear where the money goes. I can't find a FAQ. > The opposite approach would be setting it up so the money goes to an organization whose goals you disagree with. That's hilarious, but could be really dark & depressing! Beeminder cofounder here! Thanks for the plug! So much to say here but maybe I'll start with a pointer to our philosophy on anti-charities: https://blog.beeminder.com/anticharity/ (short version: we hate them). While Beeminder does collect when you fail, they make their money from people maintaining premium subscriptions for custom goals and other features. Curiously, one of the premium features is the ability to skip over the small penalties and start at a financial commitment that's too painful for you to let happen. Another premium feature is that some of the money goes to charity. They're dancing with perversity but they make so much more money if their system works for you for a long time. For folks with any kind of OCD or negative self talk, this kind of app would be hell for them. The last thing they need is a real consequence for not doing something correctly. Learning to accept that using these apps will happen and understanding why you want to use these apps is may be more valuable. I mean… the consequence is you donate to a charity you chose. The stakes are pretty low, but just high enough to get you to think about it. I like the idea! This sounds like something Beeminder [1] is doing since 2011, have you heard of them? They have a huge community and tools ecosystem. You might also want to check the Awesome List "Quantified Self" [2] if you like these kind of tools. Yep. The key difference is, the deposit here is taken before the commitment is resolved. And there is no self-reporting needed. So its 100% fire and forget. I love that you explicitly call out how you make money and that it is not a percentage of deposits. Being up-front about that is refreshing. Suggestion: a large portion of folks looking to use this app would like to do so to achieve fitness goals. The simplest possible integration with HealthKit may be closing your exercise rings. It’s general enough to not require integrating with specific vendor APIs, but is still fairly difficult to fake it. It may be a good MVP goal. Agreed re fitness tracking. I have been thinking about that. I really like the idea. Sadly -- things like this don't seem to work for me. I either have the discipline to hold myself to something, or I just figure it wasn't that important to me after all. Congrats on the launch! I think this is powerful and handles the use cases you've listed better than Beeminder can currently. So that's exciting for us -- we love worthy competitors! Speaking of which, here's a list of all such competitors we know of:
https://blog.beeminder.com/competitors/ (Adding Discipline.io to the list now...) This seems like a great idea -- i've seen tons of these types of companies in the past, but this appears the be the first that solved the verification problem with phone APIs. Perhaps syncing up to fitbit/apple watch metrics and other health devices could introduce more functionality? Can't wait to see how it grows! Thats a nice way to make me donate more money to charities I guess On the other hand, I think it's a great way to start a positive habit. Sure, maybe, one can fail on the first try but these offset the long run mindful activities to achieve more discipline. I'm not an expert or anything at this but I have appreciated the Atomic Habits book where switching your brain's focus to trying something for 5 minutes eventually overcomes the barrier to not doing it. Its not a fool proof solution, but the hope is, it should significantly reduce the likelihood of breaking your commitments. I was considering supporting anti-charities (e.g. NRA, DNC etc..), but I thought that was unnecessarily distracting. well I am probably kinda the hardcore target group. I can clearly spot, articulate and act on problems (like being overweight and out of shape). I go deep into the scientific (and also pseudo for fun) discussions about anything in the process, can roughly understand it, relate that to my personal situation, and make absolutely great plans how to tackle it. iE1 (body recomp): calorie counting app, tracking everything that goes in, including hydration + sleep, go into an optimized sports programme and give it all I got, keep an eye on optimal macro/micro, applying social pressure on myself... and so on, everything that might have an impact + preplanned schedules and optimized convenience factors to do the right thing, right from the start. After a few weeks, I just stop it. Doing unhealthy stuff again, ignoring all tracking/notes/plans/appointments and even handwaive the social pressure. Also initial investment (sometimes quite significant) = money factor is just something I shrug off in that mood. iE2 (building software): I have a good enough idea, sometimes even things I really desperately want for myself. I have a vast toolset of mastered tech stacks at my hands I can use right away, can setup good implementation plans, start with shipping "hello world" to production first (me being a devops many years) and iterate quickly. Also include customer journeys and marketing key points right off the gate. Code written to my personal high standards including full testsuites/coverage, clean component libraries, whatever fits, and also keeping an eye on security and performance. I don't even have to worry much about any expensive hosting/operations costs at all at this point. Still after 2 weeks max, I abandon the project... quite often with a working state that actually is good and usable (most MVPs are in a worse state, as they should). Its like no matter what I do, there are zero issues for me to research a thing and jumpstart doing it the right (as in: best effort research that looks like actually working) way, and then just stopping it after some time for no particular reason. Somehow my brain just can't be forced for an extended amount of time. Being aware of that, I also tried several things that are recommended to build up discipline, from atomic habits of different flavors to gratefulnes diaries, so far nothing worked. To give you an idea: I am not able to brush my teeth every single morning/evening as a man in my 30s, its more like 5 out of 7 days roughly. Also I have no attention shortages and can comfortably read a full book cover-to-cover nonstop, meditate or keep the focus of a full-day meeting on track with multiple persons in the room trying to derail. If someone truly had a solution that works in my case, I'd pay a high premium for that with a smiling face. So far, only failures, and a hopeless me. You seem like a very interesting person! > Also I have no attention shortages and can comfortably read a full book cover-to-cover nonstop, meditate or keep the focus of a full-day meeting on track with multiple persons in the room trying to derail. In mentioning this, it sounds like you're addressing that it's probably not adhd, but I'd gently mention that these don't disqualify adhd quite as much as you might think. I'm not 100% sure what you mean by no attention shortages, but the desire for novelty within systems and not just any given moment (eg. I can start a system but always lose it) is common for many of us Now kids. :) Reading a book cover to cover is an example of hyperfocus, and adhd trait. Crushing a full day of meetings with many people trying to derail is actually an adhd superpower imho. It's that when we're BORED we're super distractable, but when we're putting out fires, and it's go go go we can do very well. I don't know you well, and I'm also working on making tools for this space (super early tho) but I'd recommend perhaps getting tested, because the right medication changes peoples LIVES. Search reddit for stories. Days when I'm on adderall vs not are hugely different. Good luck to you and thanks for sharing. Absolutely right what you pointed out! Having said that, I also can keep focus on really boring days, like I never head an issue in school/university with being easily going into squirrel mode or detractability. But will definitely check out these stories, thanks! You sound a lot like me, which drove me to log in and reply. Here's what works for me these days and tbh I'm quite pleased with the results. I will admit that the circumstances under which I started this I felt very motivated to complete this. Here's my advice, it's simple. Keep a streak in Duolingo, it'll remind you. I like the Android widget too. I do maybe one minute of work daily to keep my streak and at least for me it's the cornerstone habit I've then added other stuff over time. Once I had a small streak built up I went to the gym every day to either walk or run and when I ran I just did exactly what the couch to 5k app told me to do. When I was walking, I did duolingo. Self reinforcing. Being able to run 3 5k's a week by the last week I no longer have problems basically exactly like you described. Or if I do, it's not nearly as egregious as it once was. The only trick for me at least was to just do exactly what I was told. It ramps up and I just never stopped before I was told to. Key takeaway is that your body and brain are malleable and will adapt. Hope this or something like it helps! I really know what u mean (and had like 2 weeks of Duolingo streaks several times) - but the sheer concept of streaks has no power over my brain somehow, like I couldn’t care less about breaking it. What you did sounds like „keystone habits“, where you get something simple running consistently and try to expand from there - but I really struggle with that initial step every single time, no keystone found so far :-( Agreed and understood. I'll argue that the more key change came from the running app than the keystone habit. Be kind to yourself and try again each day :) I'm curious about example 1. It sounds like you had all the right things in place so I have a few questions for you: 1. Were you just so hungry that you didn't want to stick with it anymore? What was your daily calorie deficit? 2. Did you enjoy your sports program or was it a chore to do? 1) I am pre-trained in fasting extended amounts of time and actually enjoy it, being hungry wasn't the problem. but sometimes (quite often for me unfortunately) adult life happens, and I just have to do something like eating business lunch with a client or some holiday feast with the family. A few times of these things happening (sometimes even within 1 week) and after a while I just think "fuck it". The only thing I actually can keep for many months now is going meatless, but this was a great body response feeling within few days and just staying noticeably good, including appetite changes over time I spotted (like preference for fresh vegetables and fruits I never had before) as well as a disgust now to kill/eat animals, so this is now a natural body reaction on a lower level. 2) the usual dopamine loop seemed to work for me here, like the workout itself was intense (nearly fainting after lifting sometimes), feeling a small high afterwards, and even enjoyed the DOMS 2 days after proudly, also helped noticeably in stress reduction to move (accumulated over sets) a few tons of iron. had a kind of personal coach (even though shared with others when I didn't need him) and felt well in my gym environment - everything on point. After a while, I stopped going for no particular reason. You may want to look into being diagnosed with adult ADHD Does it allow bitcoin lightning channels for commitments? I was initially thinking about doing it crypto-based, but that makes onboarding and the UX more challenging. A fee-less solution like LN could make sense. You need to make a Windows version of the app. More Windows devices than all iOS and MacOS devices put together. I commit to not using yet another app. So we need another app to quit an app? :P weird. did this idea come out of a joke among friends? >is a lack of self-discipline Hmm, maybe there is something to say about the addiction capitalism?? You cannot place the blame on individual here. This is a societal level problem. This is a failure of democracy to recognize and address the problem. Greed and bad incentives are the problems, again. They are causing massive destruction, again. I think its more about a mismatch between our evolutionary past, and the modern environment. No different from junk food. Stimuli that would be adaptive in our prehistoric environment, is no longer so, but still triggers the same reward mechanisms. e.g. Seeing pictures of people on a social media app. Yeah, we need a bigger fix. Your work definitely has a part to play, to help people get rid of the addiction. So I'm definitely supportive - let's just keep the blame where it belongs, so it can be fixed at the core. :) Agreed, it would make me so miserable to stack another failure on top of previous failures and the self-esteem loss that creates. Zuckerberg et al downvoting an inconvenient truth? ;) Mark: fuck you.
