Writing has a snowball effect, once you start writing every day it's easy to keep writing every day. But it's hard to start that habit, and hard to pick it up again if you've been away from it.

As a side project, I'm building a service designed to form better writing habits by making you set goals, then rewarding you for achieving them (or punishing you for failing). I'm struggling to find the best ways to motivate myself (and other users) to write.

Do you have any suggestions for ways to motivate users to do something?

For me, a points system isn't a good enough motivator. I need something stronger to make me take action. I was considering using money as a motivator.

I'm not understanding how you're using money to motivate yourself? Are you paying yourself?

I have a bottle of expensive scotch on the shelf that I bought last November when I tried to reach 50,000 words that month. I was going to celebrate and open it when I reached the goal. It's still sitting on my shelf, and I won't touch it until I have those 50,000 words.

You'd lose some money when you miss a goal. For example, you fund your account with 10 bucks, but each week you miss your goals, a dollar is taken and either distributed to people who achieved their goals, or donated, or something. But I've decided that money isn't a good way to go, too many issues.

Jess and I have started diving into scotch. It's awesome.

The greatest motivation for me comes when there is some healthy competition, so that might be something to think about. I would like to write more as well, and have been a little. If we were to set goals, or keep track on a weekly basis, and kept tabs on each other...I don't know how we'd do it, count words I guess.

Lay down some ground rules, and first person to accomplish whatever goal we're shooting for wins a bottle of scotch.

Something like this got me back in shape. Nate and I bet a bottle of good whiskey one year at the beach. We weren't psyched about our physiques and so whoever was in better shape the next time we were at the beach, the loser would owe him a bottle of whiskey. This totally motivated me. Healthy competition.

And it wasn't the whiskey that motivated me. It was the competition between brothers. I didn't care about winning something.

Let's test it out. Honor system. Starting today, whoever writes the most words by the end of the month? What's the prize?

I added a few more folks to this discussion, but their comments didn't show up. Whitney mentioned the idea of having writing prompts to avoid the problem of the menacing blank page.

I've also thought about enabling writing groups, or writing partners, with whom you can share moments of discovery and points of confusion. Along those lines, you could also compete with them and have monthly word goal contests. Maybe the system pairs you with writers of similar output so that the competition is tight. Or you can choose your friend to compete with.

My goal was to find one motivator that works well for many people, but people are motivated by many different things. This may be impossible. May need to have a bunch of different methods at play. Or maybe I just start with the one that works best for me, and add new ones later.

Well, I guess, it's firstly about inner peacefullness. However, Here the question is: How can we accomplish it? I don't think money, scoth or competition can help us. There must be something about human. This motivation shouldn't come from outside of person or from communicty, from which, I think, three things you mentioned come. After that thought, I realized this is a very subjective issue. However, as Kant said about works of art and taste, There can be some common parts, which can lead us to answer.

Firstly, we must ask, "what does lie behind the 'human' perspective?" It is a very controversial issue, I must admit. There is a kid, i guess, behing the whole humanity. The kid, who wants to show off, shouldn't be restricted. You must give all of your tolerance to your inner kid. It is very abstract and subjective. I think there is no other strategy different from this for me. Give yourself ultimate freedom, get bored, wait. Then, write in a way you want. This is very important. Use pencil and sheet, or dactilo, or computer, anything you want. It is up to you, and your enthusiasm, your inner kid's enthusiasm.

However, I must admit that Quirk's emphasize on finding a friend and competing with him or her can be delightful experience!

For a self-motivated person, reward should be the achieved goal itself.