Gym blob?

Have you ever had a gym membership? If so, how long did you maintain your workout regimen for? If you're like 80% of Americans, it wouldn't have taken long for you to find a plethora of other priorities that prevented you from attending more than once a week. And then, when you realized you were spending around $800 a year for the privilege of little more than a membership card, you probably did the same thing as half the people who get gym memberships, and quit within the first six months.

This equation doesn't work for you, and it doesn't work for the gym.

Which is why Yifan Zhang and Geoff Oberhofer came up with Gym-Pact. Inspired by their Harvard Economics Professor, Sendhil Mullainathan, who asserted that people are more motivated by immediate consequences than by future possibilities, Zhang and Oberhofer have developed a social enterprise program in Boston that encourages people to keep working out through monetary incentives.

These incentives work both ways: if you stick to your attendance commitments at a selection of fitness venues around Boston, you get great discounts on fitness memberships. If you don't, you get fined!

It's for your own good. Huge Red Bear doesn't want you to end up like him (and you don't want to argue with Huge Red Bear):