Advent 2022: 07. Waterfall Goal Deadlines

i very much feel this! i didn’t try waterfalls yet, but i do have one goal with a “weird” (for me) deadline (3 p.m.). it’s in the middle of my day, but necessary that way, because it’s a beenary goal for (not) doing a thing the previous day—so i have to set the deadline far enough into the next day to account for sleeping in on free days, if i’m able to.

i also feel this, though:

i don’t even think i’d want that kind of thourough planning-every-minute-in-advance-organisation? (this reminds me a bit of the discussion of omniminder/nannybot.) also, i feel this would work best for people who have the luxury of planning their days more freely / have not only non-work-related beeminder goals? i work every week day, and none of my beeminder goals revolve around work. if i got a work-related goal it would just be to always be on time in the office, which doesn’t make much sense to waterfall.

i guess waterfalling goals is not really appealing to me yet because:

  • i want the freedom of doing X before Y one day, and Y before X the next.
  • i don’t have a lot of goals i need to do every day.
  • i have a lot of goals which either don’t make sense to waterfall (autodata daily steps goal), or which automatically have a certain-time-of-day-deadline anyway (flossing always happens after i brush my teeth at night).
  • i’m very good with almost perfectly consistently finishing one goal in the morning / pre-noon / considerably-earlier-than-flossing-hours, anyway, without it needing a waterfall-deadline (my duolingo goal).
  • autodata goals are the best, but most autodata goals are awful for waterfalling, because they default to midnight / pre-set deadlines that you can’t really change. (i think.)
  • i have too few goals (currently 7). (this is probably the biggest issue i face in regards to waterfalls, and i might actually need to try out waterfalls if i ever get to 15 or 20 or so goals!)
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