Today’s Advent Calendar post comes from Orange Is The New Red on the Beeminder blog. It’s a simple idea:
Each day treat your orange goals as if they were red - be as dedicated to working on them as you are to your red goals. If you can be consistent with this, you won’t have any red goals at all on any day.
I find that the best way to manage this is to do my orange goals first each day. I can rely on the threat of derailment to make myself do my red goals later in the day when I might be tired.
Alternatively, you can add pessimistic presumption datapoints to your orange goals to make them actually red, without losing the safety buffer they already have.
The blog post advises you to get a head start on this strategy by scheduling a one-day break on all your goals for a week from now. Make a note to yourself that that day is your orange-is-the-new-red day and don’t fall into the temptation of taking the day off. (See Advent 2022: 01. Setting Breaks and Beethinking Breaks for some tips about setting breaks.)
My favourite version of this strategy is actually to do my blue goals first: “Blue Means Do!”
When I see a blue goal, my instinctive thought is “It’s so close to green! With just a bit of effort it can be perfect!” and I find that more motivating. I also love seeing more green goals on my dashboard, so that helps to push me to work on the blue ones, especially on days when there’s only a couple of them.
The advanced version of the strategy is to treat your green goals as if they were red, until you have 7-day buffers on all your goals. This is “Dark Green is the New Red” as @dreev said once (now copied to this comment below).
I love this strategy and in theory use it every day. And you are all absolutely forbidden from looking at my dashboard today! Do as I say not as I do! This week has been a little chaotic.