An idea I was mulling over as I drifted off to sleep some nights ago: Beeminder as an adaptive tool, one that prompts you to reconsider your original intention.
I’m not sure how this would work, but I’d love a beeminder-like service that:
checks in with me at sensible moments (i.e. if the goal is short, then more frequently to give opportunity for course correction etc) to ask whether I want to adjust the rate.
gives me the opportunity to set a ‘current minimal rate’ and an ‘ideal stretch rate’ where BM would transition from one to the other over a specific amount of time. Or offer different kinds of periodisation options (i.e. the opportunity to set ‘seasons’, where a period of intense activity is followed by a slower less intense period.
goals are considered in the totality of the rest of your goals – i.e. if I have 30 other goals, then BM could / would learn to advise me to think about this, to draw lessons from the patterns of which goals I was regularly failing at etc.
I realise a lot of this isn’t easily automatised, and probably is better suited as something for a regular coaching session or some other opportunity for self-reflection.
I use my 2017 log to reflect on my how I use BM (see forum). I’m always curious what my previous me thought especially with minimal vs stretch vs optimal rate is interesting as I usually default to minimal. Which is already “outstanding” for non Beeminders (what are these people called?)
Re OP, what could be easily automated is an option to periodically remind about re-setting the goal rate.
Default is each, say, month you get a pop-up : “your current rate is X and you failed n times since it is so. Would you want to increase/decrease it ? Options : x.5 / x2 / enter new value / keep the same rate”.
It can be a somewhat obscure feature, doesn’t have to activate for new users, to not confuse them (or it could silently default to remind every month, tunable). Also, this could ignore the akrasia horizon since it is planned from long ago.
Re the third point, maybe the pop-up would say “you failed X times at any of your goals since last rate update” instead of being goal-tied. And maybe the rate update could be goal-specific, or global : every so often, be reminded to tune ALL your goal rates at once. In this case, the pop up could automatically mention : “maybe you are being too hard on yourself ?” / “maybe you would benefit from a bigger challenge ?”, depending on what the number of derails is.
Yeah I’ve used that in the past. Problem is that it doesn’t contain the BM ‘sting’, plus the graphs in the same way etc. I want to consolidate my tools, not have too many new ones…
especially with minimal vs stretch vs optimal rate is interesting as I usually default to minimal. Which is already “outstanding” for non Beeminders (what are these people called?)