I’m new to Beeminder, and one of the things I love most about this forum is hearing from all the awesome people using Beeminder in interesting ways.
Having just wrapped up the year, I thought it might be interesting to reflect together on our Beeminder journeys from the past 12 months. I’ve put together a few questions as conversation starters, but please share whatever resonates with you:
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What was your favorite goal this year? What made it stand out?
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How has your relationship with Beeminder evolved? Did you discover any techniques or mindset shifts that made it more effective for you?
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What did you let go of? Were there any goals or approaches you abandoned because they weren’t serving you?
Looking forward to hearing everyone’s stories and learning from what worked (and what didn’t) for all of you!
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Favorite Goal
My favorite goal I made this past year was my wakeup goal. It tracks how many minutes after 7am I wake up. This goal has been invaluable during the winter, when waking up is hard due to lack of light. It’s also cool to get cool metrics and see my average wakeup time (and variation) go down over time.
What makes this goal awesome? It gives me more time in the morning. I now have been able to practice music singing because I have time in my day before work starts, which is something that makes me really happy. It’s also a super simple goal and is easy to track.
How has your relationship with Beeminder evolved?
I’m still new to Beeminder, so I’m sure it will evolve much more over the course of the next year, but so far the biggest shift has been has been using Beeminder as a forcing function when excitement wanes during a long-running project.
The goal that comes to mind is my Job Interview Prep goal. I was originally using Beeminder as a way to add gasoline to the fire, since I was already excited about the project and it helped me work even harder. Now that I’m in a waning phase of my excitement, it’s still nice to have the goal there because I don’t have to feel guilty - I know that as long as I’m doing the amount equal to what is in my goal then I’ve met my commitment to myself.
I’d also note that I don’t have any auto data goals. I’d like some, since it would be great to not track everything, but I’m not sure how to do that with my current setup.
What did you let go of?
Never derailing. I’ve now derailed a few times and learned that it isn’t so bad, and I don’t need to be perfect, as long as I’m moving in the direction of my goal overall.
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