I heard that story as well, and really liked the little perspective flip it encourages.

Merlin, taking your gym membership idea one step further: let’s imagine a membership that actually goes up the less you use it - like, you are charged $10 bucks if you don’t get there 2 days a week or whatever.

While in practice this may be hard to implement, I kind of love the idea of telling customers, “Look, you want things to change - that’s why you’re signing up for the gym - well, if you don’t make things change by actually coming in here, then we’re going to make things change for you by taking something away.” Making goals and connecting them to present day action can be so abstract, especially since humans are so good at dealing with whatever the situation currently is; and so bad at dealing with a change to that current situation.

AND SO: I love the idea of creating situations where change is going to happen regardless and you’re just weighing the relative difficulties of either change.

MEANING: if you do not have $10 now, you can imagine living without it, and so rather than doing the work it takes to get the gym, or whatever, you’ll just live without it. It’s like: “I know what it’s like to live without that $10, I’m already doing it; so I’m not going to bust my butt to get the $10.”

But put yourself in a situation where someone’s going to take away $10, and suddenly you are kicked into action. Now, since you already have the $10, it is hard to imagine living without it, and so you do whatever it takes to keep the current situation as it is.

What else besides the gym, I wonder, would it be helpful to set up this way?

@mattlatmatt … i totally agree, it would be great if the gym would do this kind of thing, but gyms make money by having enormous membership bases without having to support anywhere near that number of actual users. I would guess that your typical Bally’s only has to worry about maybe 5% of their paid members actually using the facilities in a given month. That may get up to 10 or even 15% come Jan/Feb with the new years resolutioners (resolvers? ahh u know what i mean) but still far below total base paid memberships.

Gyms are not incented to have you use your membership, only for you to keep paying your dues!

So in this case, I guess what I’m saying is you’ve got to make up your own loss aversion program.

http://StickK.com is exactly that. You sign up, make commitments, have a friend verify, and then put your money where your mouth is.

If you have trouble meeting commitments, this website may be able to help. You choose what the commitment is (say, exercising five times a week for the next twelve weeks). You then add supporters/friends/referees to help verify that actually do these things. You then (optionally) send money to the website.

The idea is that you regularly check in and mark the commitments as completed when they are done. If you specified that a friend has to verify that you did actually do what you committed to do, then they need to go to the website and affirm as well. If the above doesn't take place (they do allow a small grace period), then whatever money you put into the system gets donated to the charity of your choice. The twist is that the charity can be one that you don't support (or that you hate). You can even have the money sent to a person that you hate (talk about motivation!).

And of course, if you (and your referee) mark everything completed on time, then your money is returned. If I get my money back, I plan to use it as "found" money, and spend it on something to reward myself with.

So, if you have trouble making commitments to your commitments, this sounds like a fun/tricky way to motivate yourself to get things done. And if you still fail, at least a charity (or enemy) benefits!

Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with StickK, nor do I gain any benefits if you use it. I just thought it might be a cool tip/trick to share.

I remember realizing that every class I skipped was equivalent to throwing away about a day and a half of the money I’d earned from waiting on tables

I had this exact same experience. When I figured out that school cost me something like $50/hr, I never missed a class again and I kicked ass every day I could, knowing I'd have to pay it all back on my own anyway.

Robert Boice’s Professors as Writers mentions the possibility of setting up a system whereby if you miss a writing goal, you must donate $15 to a charitable cause that you despise (NRA for gun-control advocates, for example). I can see that being a powerful motivator…

Yea, giving money to Green Peace? or ACLU? That is a motivator. ;)

There are reasons why God commanded us to keep the Sabbath.

About 2 years ago, I decided I needed life insurance. We priced out a number of plans, looking at a 30 year term. At the time I started this shopping process, I looked at the things that influenced life insurance rates… family medical history, being overweight, being a smoker. Although I don’t smoke, I was overweight and do have an undesirable family medical history. However, there was something I could do about it! 4 months of running, aerobics, and weight training later, I was down 20 lbs. The fear of having to pay more each month over 30 years was enough to motivate me.

It’s good to join a $$$ gym. For those of you in Silicon Valley, think Decathlon Club. (well it was 8 yrs ago when I lived there).

It definitely motivated me to go. I liked to keep the costs of each visit under $10. Plus, you’re more likely to go if it’s a good clean gym with great amenities - the fewer things you have to bring with you, the more likely you are to go.

I’m in Germany this year, working on an Army base with a great free gym. But I don’t use it as much as I should because there’s nothing to lose if I don’t go. If I got a non-refundable personal trainer I’d be a lot better about going. Hmm…..

I didn’t think it would but it does. I took out a contract on myself to get out of my apartment by 9 AM every day cause I haven’t been getting into the office by 10 AM for the last few months. Mainly the reason I didn’t get to work on time was because I have no real consequences one way or another. So no matter when I got up, I kept ending up with leaving the apartment after 10.

To be honest, I still don’t have that strong of a motivation or desire to get to work earlier.. but now that I have something I love on the line, I actually get off my butt and get to work at a reasonable time.(I added a twist and put down the cost of my new trench coat so that I would have to return the coat if I failed the contract and my money went to charity.) So I was applying the loss aversion theory unintentionally.

Anyhow, its been working for me so far. Maybe I will extend this to something harder like getting to the gym 4 times a week.