About
Spondeo is a service that lets you commit to tasks, and lose money if you don't complete them on time. You describe a task as you would anywhere (Linear, GitHub Issues, Jira, Trello, etc.), and prove you have completed it by sending photos. We review your photos and approve, reject, or ask for more info.
Spondeo was created by me, Will Howard. I am a born-again convert to commitment devices, having found an older app (Forfeit) life-changingly useful when I got into it several years ago. I describe this at length in this blog post.
TL;DR: For years I felt like I had a million things to keep on top of—work tasks, replying to people, paying bills—and tried every productivity system under the sun, but still felt guilty all the time about some ball I was dropping. Then I tried setting financial commitments for every task and... it just worked. Ever since I've been 75% less stressed and somewhat more productive. I have met a few other people who have had a similar experience (and many for whom it didn't work or who think the whole idea is stupid!), it seems that for a certain type of personality this can really be a cure-all.
I am now on a quest to make the simplest and most user friendly commitment device service, to bring this to people who would otherwise be put off by the complexity or bloatedness of other services. I'm building Spondeo to be perfect on these dimensions, at the expense of everything else:
- Making it very fast to do the core actions of creating bespoke commitments and submitting proof. I want to make turning small tasks into commitments as smooth as taking a quick note, or putting something in your calendar. The app works entirely offline and never waits on an internet connection, so everything happens instantly
- Being available everywhere you go: on your phone1, on the web, in your calendar, in your AI assistant2
- Being trusted to apply fair and consistent judgement to proof. Commitments work best when you know you can't weasel out of them
- Android beta is available, iOS coming soon
- Coming soon