Why should I use Beeminder over StickK?

Beeminder is, in our humble opinions, far superior to StickK for graphable goals. And it’s not just our pretty graphs or our data import/export or bot reminders. More fundamentally it’s that Beeminder understands that commitment contracts suck. You’ve probably noticed that you often (ironically) procrastinate on using them, even when you see the clear need. What sucks is the loss of flexibility — maybe losing weight will be more painful than you think, maybe something will come up at work. So many unknowns. Committing is scary (and rationally so!).

Beeminder offers the best of both worlds: meaningful commitment with maximal flexibility, with some limits to help you stay focused on the long-term consequences. Beeminding means committing to keep your datapoints on the right side of the bright red line, but the steepness of the line is under your control, with a one-week delay. So if something turns out to be more difficult than you thought, then you don't have to break your commitment contract to get out of it: you can make the adjustment, hang in there (or accept the cost of the derailment!), and then the rate will change after seven days.

Plus if things are going really well, it's also easy to turn up the pressure: you can change the rate, or just ratchet away extra safety buffer. And all that time, your graph shows you how much you're achieving. As well as the sting, you can visualise your progress despite any setbacks.

In short: Don’t dogmatically stickK to your goals, beemind them!

PS: See also our list of Beeminder competitors. And let us know if something's missing!

Keywords: competitors