stickk to your goals

We’ve all made goals that we’ve failed to keep. Maybe it’s saving more money, losing five pounds or learning to play the guitar.

If you have a list of things you’d love to do but never seem to accomplish, you might want to turn to stickK.com. Created by a group of Yale professors, stickK uses principles of social psychology to help you achieve your goals. Here’s how it works:

• After signing up, you create a Commitment Contract with a specific goal and timeframe. ("Lose weight" isn’t a good goal. "Lose five pounds by December 31st" is.)
• You bet money that you’ll fulfill your contract. If you do, you keep your money. If you don’t, the money goes to any person you choose, to a charity or even an "anti-charity" (to the NRA, for example, if you’re opposed to gun ownership, or Planned Parenthood if you’re pro-life).
• You enlist a "referee" who monitors your progress and decides whether you’ve fulfilled your contract.

See the idea here? Crafting a specific goal means there’s no wiggle room as to whether you’ve met it. Putting money on the line and reporting back to someone else puts much more personal and social pressure on you to get it done. (One of sticK’s founders used just this method to lose weight.)

Oh, and what’s with the name? An uppercase "K" is legal shorthand for "contract".

Photo credit: infomatique