A Goal with Goal Date in < 7 days

Newbee
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Hello,

(New Year Greetings everyone)

Besides the longer term goals, I’ve found beeminder to be handy on short goals that last for one and only one (long) weekend. e.g. getting started on a new skill. However, the goals I create on beeminder don’t let me set a Goal Date before 7 days? Am I missing something or is beeminder not meant for such short term goals?

Thanks

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Yes, that’s right, technically there’s no way to create a goal with a deadline earlier than in 7 days. But there’s a workaround! One can create a goal with the total that you want to achieve by whatever earlier date and the earliest possible deadline. Then use the graph editor to make it harder, so that you have to reach the total by the date you originally had in mind. You cannot have the goal end earlier than in 7 days, so you just leave the bright line flat between your actual intended date and the one you had to create the goal with.

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Beeminder has always had a mixed relationship with goals that actually come to an end on a particular date, whether that’s prepping for an exam/conference/event or your example of a focussed long weekend.

If there’s a clear set of tasks to be done and you value the financial penalty and deadline more than the graph of progress, then @narthur’s taskratchet.com might work well for you.

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There are workarounds for short-term goals which I’ve discussed in the past – I do it fairly regularly! I can’t find the post right now, but the basic trick is to start by setting up an initial goal with a very, very easy rate, then you can adjust it to reach the amount you want by a given date (in the graph editor, either the built-in one if you have access, or the visual graph editor). You can then set the goal to a rate of 0/day from that point until the akrasia horizon, where you can set an end date for the goal. This is basically what @scarabaea describes above, I just start where the goal is really easy so any and every change will make it harder with no ambiguity.

That said, it’s not really what Beeminder’s designed for, so there are quirks to it.

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Thanks for confirming. I’ll keep it simple for the time being and stick to the longer term goals. As I just deleted the short term goal to prevent derailing. And the 7 day safety net saved me here.

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