Bet on Yourself - Let Charities Win if You Don’t

The case for staking money for charity on your goals.

A lot of EA discussion seems to centre around productivity and agency. For me, goal-setting is a way to improve both. Financially staking these goals has dramatically increased my ability to achieve them alongside raising my overall donations. The idea is simple: write out what you want to achieve and commit to paying $X to effective charities should you fail.

This has several benefits:

1. Productivity: It is easier to motivate yourself to do something if the alternative is losing money.
2. Agency: I find agency is often sapped when non-urgent but worthwhile tasks and projects get squeezed out. This system makes those tasks and projects more pressing by forcibly committing yourself to them.
3. Donations: If you think you should donate more, putting money on the line is a good way to push yourself to.

Motivation

I think of my motivation and discipline as if it’s a principal-agent problem. Normally this refers to incentivisation issues between the owner (principal) of a business and its manager (the agent). The principal wants the agent to act in a certain way but can’t monitor the agent to ensure this. The agent’s incentives differ from the principal’s in a way that leads to suboptimal outcomes; perhaps the agent slacks off on the job, or takes risks inappropriately. 

Here, Disciplined David is the principal and Day-to-day David is the agent. Disciplined David wants Day-to-day David to act in a certain way and be productive, but Day-to-day David often doesn’t think that far into the future and just wants to relax or watch TV. So how can we let Disciplined David take control, or motivate Day-to-day David to act better? ^[1]

The solution I’ve found is to let Disciplined David write out a plan, and commit Day-to-day David to it with a financial stake. For example, I set a goal last night to spend 2 hours writing out this post, and get it to a state where it’s postable. I knew that today I’d be likely to procrastinate, get side-tracked, or over-edit and not finish. Putting a stake on finishing means that despite being dissatisfied with my draft and over-thinking it, I will actually finish it. Done is better than perfect.

In summary, the system lets you keep your motivated self in the room with your day-to-day self. It effectively gives your day-to-day self more reason to care about your goals.

What are good goals, and how much should your stake be?

I like and would advocate for specific and measurable goals. I believe they gain in objectivity what they lose in flexibility. If your goal isn’t tangible or measurable, maybe there are subparts that are. If it’s truly subjective, that’s ok too – just remember to self-evaluate in good faith.

I also like written goals as a personal preference, and physically sign them at the bottom as a gesture of commitment. This makes it more tangible for me, though I know others like third party accountability sites like Stickk or Beeminder.^[2]

I also like short-duration goals, where setting new goals is a goal in itself. I personally set daily goals, where one of them (with separate stakes) is always to write goals for the next day. This keeps momentum, and ensures any failure or setback is quickly moved on from. ^[3]

Stake size is a personal question, but some broad guidelines would be:

• Not too small that it isn’t motivating.
• Not too large that you risk not paying up.

You can then either choose to donate proceeds immediately, or put the money in a virtual pot to collect and donate later.^[4] Ideally, you want to set ambitious-enough goals that you’ll sometimes fail them. I’ve personally settled on an ~80% success rate. There should be a real risk that you don’t achieve them – the point is to push!

Moral objection: why would avoiding charitable donations be motivating?

I understand why people would have reservations about using (or withholding) donations for the sake of personal productivity. It can feel problematic at first, but I think it just requires a bit of thought in set-up.

You can use this system in a way that causes you to donate more than you otherwise would, just by modifying the stakes. 

I’d encourage you to try this system can be on top of existing donation plans, at least at first. If replacing existing donations, it should be with high enough stakes and ambitious enough goals such that you donate at least as much (but are more productive in the process).

How do I ensure I won’t cheat and just not pay up?

Each time you fail, you have an incentive to cheat and not pay. If this happens, it undermines the whole system – avoiding this may well be a sufficient motivator, but you can make cheating less likely by:

1. Reducing the incentive to cheat. You can do this by making the individual penalties smaller, increasing the goal frequency (e.g. doing daily goals instead of weekly or monthly goals), or breaking goals up into subgoals with sub-penalties instead of all-or-nothing ones. All this means the rewards from cheating are much smaller relative to your aversion to breaking your promise.
2. Increasing the aversion to cheating. I found less scope for improvement here, but it can help to share your commitment with friends (or the public). This means you don’t just have your own internal honour-system to rely on, but reputation too.
3. Escrow via friends, family, or third-party websites. If you want to seriously reduce the risk of not paying up, consider placing the money out of your control. This could mean giving it to a friend with strict instructions over when (not) to give it back. It could also mean using a third party site (like Stickk or Beeminder as mentioned before).^[2]

Reflection

I’ve set daily goals most days for the past two years and have significantly improved my personal productivity as a result.^[5] Publishing this article was one of them! I’ve also donated much more to charity than I otherwise would have. It’s sort of been like having an accountability coach that donates all their income to charity.

My call to action is to try this today. Set some goals for tomorrow that you want to achieve, put a stake on them, and see how this impacts your productivity.

Either way, someone wins.

1. ^{^}

   Bryan Johnson talks about a similar idea; Morning Bryan and Evening Bryan. His solution was to take away control from Evening Bryan, and let Morning Bryan dictate what has to happen with strict protocols.

2. ^{^}

   I personally found StickK to be a little clunky, though know many swear by it. It can help if you want something to feel more formal and binding, though I found their donation options too restrictive for my liking. I haven't yet tried Beeminder.

3. ^{^}

   I also set longer duration goals in parallel, but would caution against over-complicating the system when you start.

^{^}

I do this to reduce transaction costs (on the charity end) and time costs (on my end). I typically donate the proceeds twice a year.

^{^}

For some, it's possible that adding financial incentives to their goals will have the opposite effect. A Fine is a Price is a great paper on a mechanism behind this, showcasing how monetary incentives can displace motivating emotions like shame or duty. I haven't personally found this to be an issue, but thought it's worth highlighting.

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