Ulysses Pact
QUOTE
Abraham Lincoln once said…
“Discipline is choosing between what you want now and what you want most.”
(GOAT President)
CONCEPT
Ulysses Pact
A Ulysses Pact is a decision made in a clear-headed state that deliberately binds your future self against a predictable moment of weakness.
The name comes from the Greek myth in which Odysseus (Ulysses in Latin) ordered his crew to tie him to the mast before sailing past the Sirens, whose song was known to lure sailors to their deaths. He wanted to hear the music without being able to act on it because didn't trust his future self. So his present self made the choice for him.
STORY
Try, Try … Then Pay a Hefty Sum?
In 1998, an economist named Dean Karlan was a graduate student at MIT with a problem: he wanted to lose weight and could not make himself do it.
Karlan understood incentive structures better than almost anyone—he was studying them professionally—and yet his future self kept overruling his present intentions at the refrigerator.
So he made a pact with a friend. If he did not reach his target weight by a specified date, he would pay his friend $10,000.
No surprise: he reached his target weight.
The experience sparked a research journey. He began studying commitment devices systematically, eventually co-founding Stikk in 2008, a platform that allows users to formalize their own Ulysses Pacts by putting real money behind their stated goals. Users define a goal, set a deadline, choose a referee, and designate where their money goes if they fail—including, deliberately, to a charity or cause they find objectionable. (The prospect of funding something you oppose, it turns out, is a remarkably effective motivator.)
The results across Stikk’s user base have been extensively studied.
Commitment contracts with financial stakes increase goal success rates by as much as three times(!) compared to stated intentions alone. When users added a referee to monitor their progress, success rates climbed further. The platform has facilitated over $40 million in commitment contracts across hundreds of thousands of users.
Karlan went on to become a professor at Yale, and his work on commitment devices has influenced policy interventions in savings behavior, health compliance, and education.