calmdown13

When applying for jobs via LinkedIn it’s very important to use a PDF. A huge number of people submit Word documents, however, LinkedIn doesn’t render them in the browser. Given that most roles get hundreds of applications, unless someone’s previous roles really catch my eye, I am probably not going to download anything.

This rang so true for me. I’m constantly rediscovering things that I already understood well at my previous job. Once you get acclimatised to the current system, so many previously obvious learnings fall by the wayside.

For those interested in an alternative with no monthly fees check out Kommit (https://kommit.to). Disclaimer, I am creator of Kommit.

Here is Kommit's Show HN thread for anyone interested: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29726228

This episode of the lex fridman podcast gives a good overview of how python's scientific computing community developed. https://youtu.be/gFEE3w7F0ww

I recently built a habit contract (a concept mentioned in Atomic Habits) website (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29726228). It's helped me achieve a 116 day streak on Duolingo.

Sorry, about that! It's still working for me but it must be having some teething issues. I'll take a look into it now. In the mean time you can use [email protected] for support.

Thanks for the kind words! It means a lot coming from yourself. As I've said elsewhere, I think Beeminder is the best competing solution I've come across :)

Love your attitude towards competition and I'm excited to be considered a competitor!

Thanks! It's a good question and I haven't given it too much thought yet. For now I am just handling all disputes myself, if they get overwhelming I'll have to automate some aspects of it. It'll be interesting finding the balance between making it easy to get a refund when it's necessary but not so easy that the users would want to dispute it on regular basis.

My bad, I thought the primary selling point was that it would would hook into the services you already use for tracking your commitment (Strava, GitHub, etc.). I am aware that you can manually enter some data but I didn't think there was any way to validate the data that you enter and I didn't think it was their focus.

Anyway, sorry for the misrepresentation. I will update my comment above to be more accurate.

Yeah Beeminder is cool, probably the best of the competing solutions that I found.

One way I hope Kommit can add value, is that it doesn't require your commitment to be digital and there doesn't need to be an API integration (Beeminder is primarily based on API integrations). If you can prove your commitment with an image, video or text, your good to go. The downside is that nothing is automatic.

Update: You can manually enter data into Beeminder, therefore it can also handle non-digital commitments. However, as far as I am aware, the manually entered data is not verified (e.g. by having it checked by a reviewer) hence I didn't feel like it was their focus.

Hmm I'm not sure that that model is completely without merit. Of course we are responsible for all of our actions, however, we often act against our better judgement.

In Jeff Hawkins' Thousand Brains Theory he describes that the neocortex is responsible for most of our cognition, but that it has to kind of bargain with the more instinctual "old brain" to get us to perform actions.

It's quite possible he's wrong, it's still just a theory, but it kind of lines up with that model you describe.

Would you be more likely to use something like the escrow system described above? Or is there an alternative mechanism that you'd be more interested in?

Yeah I was a bit gutted when I found Stickk after spending a bunch of time building Kommit. It's super similar and I felt a bit silly for not doing the research beforehand.

However, considering Stickk has existed for something like 14 years, it doesn't feel particularly mature. I don’t want to be too disparaging (and I’m obviously biased) but I found their website quite clunky and the apps don’t receive great reviews (1.8 on IOS and 3.0 on Android).

A few aspects that I believe are better in Kommit:

  - More control over deadline schedules (you can set it to repeat on multiple specified days of the week).
  - More control over punishment rules (you can choose how many consecutive failures are allowed before you're punished).
  - You can give yourself skip days (useful if you know you’re likely to need a vacation).
  - You can update commitments (there is a mechanism to allow updates while preventing you from dodging punishments).

That being said, they do have some cool features such as donating to an "Anti-Charity" (a controversial charity that you don’t support) upon failure.

I suppose using something like a smart contract could maybe help with the trust issue, although perhaps only with relatively tech savvy users for now.

Thanks for the suggestion! I have thought about using positive reinforcement, and I am still considering it as possible future feature. One of the reasons I chose to start with negative reinforcement is that I had read in "Thinking, Fast and Slow" that losses tended to be more motivating. I think there are arguments about whether that holds up or not, but I think it's true of my own experiences.

Setting money aside in escrow is definitely an interesting idea, but as you say, requires quite a lot of trust. I did toy with idea of rewarding people with the punishment money from other failed commitments but it'd be quite tricky to make the rewards worthwhile, while making sure the system doesn't get gamed.

I am often trying to build new habits, however, I normally lose momentum after a few weeks.

This summer, Instead of working on my will power or my habits, I decided to build something to punish me when I fail to follow through with my commitments.

Kommit is a free to use web app where you can create commitments and when you fail to stick to them, you are forced to donate to charity.

Like a true programmer, I started building Kommit without doing any research and I’ve since found out that similar apps already exist. However, in several ways I think Kommit is already nicer to use and more flexible.

Kommit has helped me reach a 112 day streak studying Korean on Duolingo, and it’s helped my partner keep a daily diary for the last 6 weeks. Hopefully it can help some HNers with their 2022 New Year’s resolutions!

PS If you don’t have anyone who can review your commitment, feel free to email me at [email protected] and I’ll be happy to help :)