Kept in public.
Field notes on accountability, streaks, and challenging yourself where people can actually see.
Commitment Devices: How to Bind Your Future Self to Your Goals
How commitment devices—deposit contracts, Ulysses contracts, and stickK—use pre-commitment to beat present bias, and what the evidence actually shows.
Read →Do Accountability Partners Actually Work? What the Evidence Says
A sober look at whether accountability partners help you reach goals, and why the viral "95% success" statistic is a myth with no traceable source.
Read →Does Public Accountability Kill Intrinsic Motivation?
Does public accountability undermine intrinsic motivation? What Self-Determination Theory and the overjustification effect actually say.
Read →Goal-Setting Theory: Why Specific, Hard Goals Beat "Do Your Best"
Locke and Latham's goal-setting theory shows specific, difficult goals outperform "do your best" - when commitment and feedback are in place. What the research says.
Read →Habit Stacking and Temptation Bundling: Engineering Your Triggers
How to anchor new habits to existing cues and pair "want" with "should" — the evidence behind habit stacking and temptation bundling, plus their real limits.
Read →How Long Does It Actually Take to Form a Habit? What the Research Says
The "21 days" rule is a myth. Real research puts habit formation at a median of about 66 days, with a range from roughly 18 to 254.
Read →Identity-Based Habits: Becoming the Kind of Person Who Shows Up
Why shifting from outcome goals to identity ("I am a runner") changes behavior, what the research actually says, and how each action casts a vote.
Read →Implementation Intentions: The If-Then Plan That Doubles Follow-Through
Deciding when, where, and how to act, an "if-then" plan, reliably beats good intentions. The evidence, effect sizes, and mechanisms behind implementation intentions.
Read →Loss Aversion and Streaks: Why We Fight to Protect an Unbroken Chain
Why breaking a streak feels worse than starting one felt good, explained through prospect theory, loss aversion, and the endowment effect.
Read →Streaks and Gamification: Why They Drive Behavior, and When They Backfire
Why streaks and gamification boost retention through variable rewards and loss aversion, and where they backfire into anxiety and gaming the metric.
Read →The Habit Loop: The Neuroscience of Cue, Routine, and Reward
How cue-routine-reward maps onto the basal ganglia, action chunking, and dopamine prediction error — and which popular habit claims the evidence actually supports.
Read →The Measurement Effect: How Tracking a Behavior Changes It
Self-monitoring isn't a neutral readout. Evidence on reactivity, the measurement effect, and the question-behavior effect shows tracking itself nudges behavior.
Read →The Science of Accountability: How Being Observed Changes Behavior
What psychology actually says about being watched: social facilitation, evaluation apprehension, the Hawthorne myth, and how an audience shifts effort.
Read →The What-the-Hell Effect: Why One Slip Snowballs, and How to Stop It
One missed day rarely ruins a goal, but the reaction to it can. What the research on disinhibition and relapse says about recovering from a slip.
Read →Why Saying It Out Loud Works: Public Commitment and the Consistency Principle
What the research actually says about public commitment: Lewin, Cialdini's consistency principle, self-presentation, and when going public backfires.
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