I personally know I need to exercise more, but working on lots of personal projects can leave me with little time for much else. So exercise has always been something I’ll forget about.
When looking through ProductHunt a couple of months back, I came across the Pact app. Pact is an iOS/Android app that motivates you to exercise and stay healthy, tracking and encouraging your progress with financial reward/sacrifice.
If you meet your weekly goals, you’ll gradually build up a small pot of money. However, if you fail, you’ll sacrifice an amount of your choosing which goes to those who were successful that week.
Want to try it out for yourself?
- Download the free Pact app.
- Set targets for yourself (physical exercise or healthy eating).
- Set the amount you’ll pay if you don’t meet your targets.
- Get started!
Once you’ve started, the app will track daily steps (10,000 is the threshold of ‘success’ for that day). Alternatively, you can also connect the app to a selection of other apps, such as RunKeeper and MapMyFitness – which count 30 minutes of movement as meeting the target for the day.
The aim behind this isn’t to earn you money you can shout about, but instead by assigning. You can easily pause/cancel the next week and beyond – though you can’t pause the current week unless you have a doctor’s note (which you can submit to the Pact team for review).