That’s not really a reward. Repeat after me: “Beeminder users don’t cheat”.
Not because we’re paragons of effectiveness and self-restraint—quite the opposite! Often deeply flawed, but with a dose of self-awareness and an ability to use tools to bolster our intentions.
Beeminder is the most powerful tool that I know of, and I don’t want to break it. @dreev calls it the ‘nuclear option’, to be used carefully and deliberately in pursuit of your goals.
If I’m ever even just tempted to lie to my graphs, then something extreme needs to be done!
- archive the goal; [apparently it’s not actually important]( “what a valuable thing to learn!”)
- add another goal that measures a [different aspect]( “productivity through triangulation!”) of the same real-world goal
- change the slope [for a while]( “Take a Break tab below your graph”), either slackly or [steeply]( “30 day challenge, anyone?”)
- adjust the pledge, [one way]( “downpledging takes a week”) or [the other]( “deliberately no-mercy derail, or sign up to Beemium”)
- use another tool for this, and have a Beeminder goal to make sure you use that system!
My life would be much [poorer]( “literally and figuratively”) if I didn’t use Beeminder to help me get more of the important stuff done. I won’t risk making it powerless. Sure, you can defeat the system; it’s not that hard to find loopholes. Don’t do that to yourself.
(If you find yourself getting overwhelmed by all the beeminding, there’s a blog post for that, and several forum posts.)