feature request: hush the app after derailment is certain

Hi, is there a way to tell the android app and the email bot that I’ve failed the goal for today and it can stop telling me? For example, I have a goal for my morning routine, but the deadline is at midnight (no internet for data entry). So after I fail, the app still keeps bugging me. I’d like a way to shut it up.

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See also: Feature request: Derail or Archive Straight Away

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That thread deals with paying to push back the deadline and how people are cheating to do that.

This request is to leave the deadline as it is and silence the reminders. Because for some goals, it is possible to derail well before the deadline, regardless of later reminders.

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I’m not sure I understand the distinction you are making. When you derail, three things happen:

  1. You pay money to Beeminder.
  2. You re-rail the goal, setting a new deadline.
  3. Your new deadline means that you stop getting reminders.

The Uncle Button proposal would do all of those immediately. It sounds like your proposal would be to silence reminders only…but then at midnight you’re going to derail so why not just derail immediately per the Uncle Button? I think it all works out the same.

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I am not the original poster, so I do not know what distinction was meant… but my immediate idea would be “because the do-less goals’ loophole” :smile:

Oh good point. I forgot about that because I moved all my Do Less goals to separate account to disable notifications for all of them. :slight_smile:

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EDIT: I stand corrected. DrTail’s request is a superset of mine.

For clarity, I’m requesting to make all reminders actionable in the following scenario.

I need to take action in the morning. And I need to enter the data at night. So the daily beeminder deadline is at night. Example goal: send out meeting notes, but meetings take place at irregular times.

In case I don’t take action in the morning of an emergency day, the beeminder app keeps reminding me from morning to midnight. The reminders demand to be resolved, but they cannot, because my chance to take action has already passed. After the morning, I want to tell the app to shut up.

Unfortunately, some comments here miss the point.

Option one from DrTail’s linked thread is superficially similar to my request. The difference is I don’t want reschedule when to derail. Remember I need to keep entering the data at midnight. Pressing derail-me-now at 11am would move the the deadline to 11am. But that doesn’t work because I will not be able to enter data at 11am from now on. (The linked thread muddles the issue with an additional proposal to pay for respite: option two).

Do-less versus do-more does not matter, either. A do-less goal can still take action in the morning and record data at night. An example goal, count the number of minutes late to work in a place without cellphone reception.

That’s not true. The time-of-day for your deadline is independent on when your eep! day is. So I still think my proposal is equivalent.

Edit: For example, note that when a goal derails it is usually at some random time after the deadline, whenever Beeminder gets around to processing it. Just because your goal derails at 12:04 AM doesn’t mean your new deadline is 12:04 AM. The deadline time-of-day is a setting that is never affected by derailing.

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I’d also like a way to say to beeminder (app and email bot) that while I know I am due to derail you shouldn’t panic because it is in hand and I don’t need to be reminded.

For example. I have a cycling goal of ride at least 50miles a week. Suppose I start the day needing to ride 5 miles. I may know already I have to get somewhere and will definitely be riding more than 5 miles.

Or maybe I have already ridden 5 miles to a meeting but because I still have to ride home I haven’t saved the ride yet because I want the round trip as a single ride (less work on the expenses report). At this point the goal is in the bag and it would be good to tell beeminder so I don’t keep getting warnings. This is especially true when the datalag caused by garmin -> tapiriik -> runkeeper -> beekeeper can be several hours.

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Yes, thank you for correcting my misconception.

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Just chiming in to point out that you can silence reminders altogether on individual goals.

I look at the website and app often enough that I’m already aware of what emergency days exist.

Accordingly:

  • Many of my goals are configured not to remind me at all
  • Others are configured with a more strategic reminder-start-time

I’d like not to receive reminders, except when I need to receive reminders. That’s not something that the server can predict for me…

But by setting a reminder to start arriving at, say 4pm, I’ve had ample time already to get rid of the beemergency, so maybe I actually do need a reminder. And for a goal-deadline of midnight, that means that the next one will be at 8pm, by which time I really ought to have done the thing, or be reminded to enter the data for it, etc.

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Thanks. I think tuning the reminder time would be a good first step for me.

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I would LOVE to see a snooze option for reminders (specifically on the android app) to make this happen. Your advice to change the reminder start time is great if you have a predictable schedule on which to base that start time. My schedule is unpredictable enough that I may dispatch my beemergency after the first reminder at 9am today, but tomorrow will be unable to do anything about it until 9pm and have to put up with the zeno polling until then. I don’t want to turn off reminders and zeno polling, because I rely on them, but I want to snooze it until it is actually possible for me to do the thing I’m being reminded about.

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+1 for this!

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Me too! That’s exactly why I don’t rely on the reminders to remind me to do things in the morning.

You may be able to find a combination that means that you’ll only get one spurious reminder on busy days. e.g. a goal deadline of 4am and a first-reminder of 2pm would place the second reminder at 9pm.

But I fully agree that getting into the habit of ignoring reminders disempowers them and is a Bad Thing™, so being able to silence reminders temporarily would be strictly better.

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This would mostly work. I prefer the simplicity of having all my deadlines at midnight, though I suppose if I changed them all to 4am that would be almost equivalent. However, it’s not hard to imagine a goal where snoozing is useful and the deadline is important. Going to bed by a certain time is the first one that comes to mind.

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