X is their base fee. The difference is your precommitted punishment. Want to keep the money? Finish your project.

For me personally, I believe it would be most effective if I payed more (or only) when I completed tasks.

At the end of the day, that's what's happening anyway. As in, why continue the service if it's not working.

The incentives are already set so I am willing to pay (more) for successful management, and they will get paid (more) for successful management.

You get what you pay for. Why pay for failure?

Read the Beeminder blog if you want to understand why pay more for failure... let me find one[1][2] (link below)

You should want to avoid the payment! Is the short version. If you _only_ paid when you failed, you might go out of your way to not fail, if it meant you could avoid the payment.

Especially as a conditioned response -- eg. planning to fail sometimes. You won't mind losing $5 once in a while, if most of the time you aren't failing as a result. It's no fun if you're paying the $5 every time. But it's no fun if you're failing at your goals every time, either.

Failed once, failed twice, still paying $5? Why not up the commitment? How much will it take to get you to not fail next time, $20? $400? Or give up on that goal, once and for all. It's quite a weird system, but there is a lot of behavioral science behind it, and you will benefit by becoming better at predicting your capacity for important things, and planning. (Sure, you don't need Beeminder to do that, but it's a system for it...)

There are a lot of ideas around the psychology of getting things done from Beeminder and friends. Like the legend of Murder Gandhi, you have to read this one for yourself: https://blog.beeminder.com/schelling/

[1]: https://blog.beeminder.com/psych/ [2]: https://blog.beeminder.com/punishment/

Interesting, but doesn't this incentivise the boss to not do their job quite so well?

Edit: read the second part of your original comment which clarified this. Perhaps the charity idea circumvents the wrong way risk altogether.

What if the money was donated regardless. But if you fail it goes to an organization you don’t like.

For instance say I don’t like Donald trump. If I fail my money goes to trumps reelection fund. But if it succeeds it goes to a charity that buys malaria nets for poor communities around the planet.