Carrot or stickK?

Last month I wrote about how only 12% of us are able to maintain our new years resolutions and how Professor Richard Wiseman suggests defining exactly what you will do, where you will do it and when you’ll do it as key to whether you are successful or not.

Now economists Ian Ayres and Dean Karlan have taken it a step further by launching a new website StickK.com. The theory is that good old-fashioned financial incentives are the most effective tool for motivating people to meet their goals, in this case it’s the risk of losing substantial amounts of money if you fail. StickK.com is a free to join website where you choose your goal, choose your stake and even select who you want as a third-party referee to rule on whether you have succeeded or failed.

Now if you fail to meet your goal StickK.com will donate the money you paid to charity. Effectively you have entered into a legally binding contract, what they call a commitment contract, that hopefully motivates you to succeed and thus win back your money (shame you can’t make more money than you originally staked!).

It will be interesting to see how this site does over the next couple of months as money can definitely motivate people, hence why the majority of us go to work. But to go back to my original gym example all those people that go every week in January are still paying £30-£50 per month when they stop going for the rest of the year, so money is obviously not enough of an incentive for some!