Oh interesting, so you are Beeminding the time you spend writing as opposed to the number of words written? (I’m not saying one is better than the other – I don’t write anything haha)
yes. Time is the asset that I’m investing. So 25 minutes is enough to get up to speed, write some decent quality and add it to the existing post. The end goal is a post of 8k words. Then I’m evaluating.
I’d be curious to see what happens if you were to also Beemind your word count, just for the data / quantified self aspect. I mean create a word count goal with a slope of 0 so you never derail. Then at the end you could see if there’s any interesting patterns (e.g. do 3 pomodoros in a row produce more words? does a brainstorm pomodoro make your next pomodoro more productive? etc.).
Just archived the goal. I’m convinced I can spend my time better than working on this goal. It’s a suboptimal activity. But it still takes 7 days for it to be archived. I’ll see if I keep this conviction during the next 7 days. I’ll just write more here to formulate a structure / definition of the next habit.
When does one become good at setting habits/goals?
I think it’s natural to have a lot of false starts when it comes to habits/goals, regardless of whether we’re talking Beeminder or otherwise. It’s just a bit more in-your-face when you discover your Beeminder goal is lousy, because New Years Resolutions just fade away when you forget about them.
I wouldn’t get discouraged. But it can legitimately take a long time to discover what framing/structure for goals can keep you motivated.