At one point I saw either a forum post or blog post from @dreev about hacking a weight loss goal to beeminder bedtime (or maybe something else time related) from which I learned that beeminder will convert 3:59 to 3 + 59/60. I can’t find it now, if anyone knows where it is let me know.
I put in the first value as 4. This is just about the worst bedtime that I tend to have. My goal is to consistently go to bed at 1AM by April 1st.
Is using a weight loss goal the only/best way to do this? Are any settings of Line type, Turquoise swath, or Moving average going to be particularly appropriate for this goal?
Any other thoughts or ideas appreciated!
Something I’m worried about is if my trend downward is good but then one night out of the week I blow way past it.
I’ve done it both by using the same kind of goal you have (a down/below goal in advanced settings) and the “do less” kind (an up/below goal). The latter allows you to build up the occasional day of going to bed later (though… you won’t; you’ll just use up all of that extra space every day and blow past your goal on that night anyway).
The way you have it set up is what I currently use (just restarted this one today, in fact: https://www.beeminder.com/chipmanaged/sleep). I just use a very precise fine print that allows some flexibility (for example: I don’t have to enter a datapoint on a night that I’m out past the time, since that’s not what this goal is targeting for me). I definitely prefer this way. It forces me to think more clearly what the goal is for and prevents me from just squandering my buffer and having the goal be a pain at times it isn’t intended for.
What’s this mean? Some sort of way to mimic a Lose Weight goal without having the body image on the right? Does it still do the funky road width calculations (which, to my understanding, is appropriate for things like lose weight and earlier bedtime).
Ah ha, great solution - I just won’t enter any data
Would be great if Beeminder had a metagoal that could be attached to a goal that, say, required at least 5 data entries/week.
Sorry, that’s a setting in the advanced settings tab for custom goals. The direction of the road is down, and you have to stay below the road.
Well, it’s not like you’d never be entering any data, just that if there are well-defined circumstances under which you can invoke the fine print without weaselling, it makes the buffer, which will never accumulate anyway (ymmv) not needed.
On the website you can enter a datapoint like: ^ 23:30
if you went to bed at, say 11:30pm one night, which will translate to 23.5 in the recorded datapoint. If the next night you entered ^ 24:30
because you were up until 30 minutes past midnight (24.5), then the average of those is midnight (24).
As normal, your average day-to-day achievement is what Beeminder minds. In this case, a do-less goal so that you need to keep your average time-of-going-to-bed below the road. Admittedly there’s some hassle in wrapping around midnight without creating negative numbers, if you’re ever up that late.
I think what I didn’t emphasize in my original post is that I’m trying to whittle down my bedtime from its current value to an earlier value. So a Do Less won’t work for this, unless I keep manually adjusting the daily “rate” every now and again (right?). And I’d have to adjust it every day or two for the effect to be correct.
I think with a narrower yellow brick road, this would work well (is this possible with a higher account plan?)
I just tried retroratcheting to see if that would help things… somehow that ended up moving my goal date back by a month. Then I reset my goal date back to where it should be… and my graph is now very strange.
I’ve since updated to a paid beeminder plan and have simply fixed my YBR to be 30 minutes on each side. Also @bee adjusted my YBR that had been mangled by various retroratchets and goal date adjustments. Yay!
)
