Contriving

I've been meaning to sharpen my math skills via +Khan Academy  for several years now.

The problem is that I usually don't have any use for it right now, and so I don't stick with it.  I've tried various methods over the years to make myself keep grinding away at it, but nothing has worked.

That is, nothing has worked until I tried out www.beeminder.com.  It's a site that gives you an effective pre-commitment device:  you commit to giving them X dollars if you don't stick to your plan.

As you can see in the below graph, it has worked quite well for me for 3+ weeks now.  I set a goal of 45,000 energy points (energy points are Khan Academy's method of tracking learning progress) a week.  

That big spike today is from earning a badge for mastery in 100 unique math skills.

In school I had all the way through what they called "College Algebra", but it's been years and I've forgotten most of it, so I've been doing Khan's Algebra Mission.

Here's hoping +Beeminder gets an automated method of importing Khan Academy energy points soon.  Currently, every time I get points I have to manually input them into beeminder.  It's not a horrible chore, as I keep a second window open to beeminder, but it would be super nice if I didn't have to do that.

I’ve been meaning to sharpen my math skills via +Khan Academy  for several years now.

The problem is that I usually don’t have any use for it right now, and so I don’t stick with it.  I’ve tried various methods over the years to make myself keep grinding away at it, but nothing has worked.

That is, nothing has worked until I tried out www.beeminder.com.  It’s a site that gives you an effective pre-commitment device:  you commit to giving them X dollars if you don’t stick to your plan.

As you can see in the below graph, it has worked quite well for me for 3+ weeks now.  I set a goal of 45,000 energy points (energy points are Khan Academy’s method of tracking learning progress) a week.

That big spike today is from earning a badge for mastery in 100 unique math skills.

In school I had all the way through what they called “College Algebra”, but it’s been years and I’ve forgotten most of it, so I’ve been doing Khan’s Algebra Mission.

Here’s hoping +Beeminder gets an automated method of importing Khan Academy energy points soon.  Currently, every time I get points I have to manually input them into beeminder.  It’s not a horrible chore, as I keep a second window open to beeminder, but it would be super nice if I didn’t have to do that.

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