Stake real money on a habit. Miss a check-in, the money is gone.
Nothing to install. It runs in Telegram.
Intention isn’t a plan.
Most goals don’t fail because the goal was wrong. They fail because intention runs out. Around 80%of new-year resolutions are abandoned by mid-February, and Prof. John Norcross’ long-term work finds only 19% still standing after two years. That is not a character flaw. It is predictable enough to plan around.
Two well-documented forces work against you. Your brain overvalues the reward that’s available right now over the bigger one later, so you postpone. And a loss hurts about twice as muchas the same gain feels good, so a stake bites where a resolution slips. You don’t need more willpower. You need the incentives pointing the other way.
The usual way: set a goal and hope willpower holds. The Lark Goals way:
Set a goal
Pick one habit and the window you want to hold it for. Daily, weekly, your call.
Stake real money
You set the amount per check-in, anything from €0.50 up. The right number is the one that would actually sting.
A friend verifies
An independent approver confirms every check-in without seeing your own claim first. Blind verification, because money on the line is exactly what tempts people to round up.
Keep it or lose it
Hit the check-in and the money stays yours. Miss it and it doesn’t. No hold, no refund, no drama.
Four weeks from now, you either quit again or you saw it through.
The difference isn’t character. It’s having something to lose.
hit their goal when they wrote it down and reported weekly to another person. Nearly double the rate of those who kept it in their head.
Matthews, Dominican University of California (2007)succeeded with monthly check-ins and a named accountability person, against 56% who had no support at all.
Oscarsson et al., PLOS ONE (2020), n=1,066quit smoking with a money-on-the-line commitment contract, against counselling alone, six months in.
Commitment-contract RCT, Am. J. Preventive Medicine (2013)Every figure links to its original publication. The often-quoted “65% / 95% accountability” stat is missing on purpose. Nobody can produce a source for it.
Hit your goal and it costs you nothing.
There is no plan and no monthly fee. The only way to pay us is to skip the thing you said you’d do anyway.
Nothing to install. It runs in Telegram.
Isn’t this just a bet against myself?
No. A bet has someone on the other side who wins what you lose. Here nobody is on the other side. There is only the question of whether you did the thing.
What if my approver just waves me through?
They can’t see your report before they judge. That is the blind verification above. The whole thing is built to be independent, because two people who both want the same answer are not a check.
Schindler & Pfattheicher, J. Exp. Soc. Psychol. (2017)Does it cost me anything if I succeed?
No. Nothing on success, ever. You only pay for a check-in your approver rejected.
Is my card safe?
Payments run through Stripe. Your card details are entered on their page and never touch our servers.
How big should my stake be?
You decide, from €0.50 up. That floor is Stripe’s, not ours. Big enough that losing it would annoy you, small enough that you actually start.
Lark Goals is built and run by SW labs, a digital studio from Bavaria. More about us
“Give yourself more time and the work just expands to fill it. I kept setting goals and quietly moving my own deadline; nobody else knew, so nobody else minded. What changed it was one person checking, and enough money on the line that skipping felt worse than showing up. Lark Goals is that setup, as a product.”
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