I mentioned how the plan-to-forget trick was not very Beeminder-relevant but a couple of you defended it (thanks!), which got me thinking about what broader category the plan-to-forget trick is part of. We could call the category anti-flake strategies, as in preventing yourself from flaking out, failing to follow through on things. Here are examples I can think of off-hand:
A convention with our kids that when they agree to do something they hand us a $20 deposit that they get back when they do it, so we donât have to nag them (itâs parenting genius, if we do say so ourselves)
Chatmendozas
The commits.to system, sadly moribund as it is these days
The Soule-Reeves family convention that you only borrow or lend books by doing 1-to-1 trades, with the intention to trade back (so in case you forget, no effective book-stealing happens)
Putting things on the calendar when you agree to them
Checking the calendar before agreeing to things
Complice â weekly, monthly, yearly review things
Rolodex minding
Only ever adding finite flat spots to Beeminder goals rather than perma-flattening or archiving (unless youâre certain that youâre done with a goal for good)
Beeminder support rule about not closing support threads without thinking ahead to the possibility that the user fails to ever reply
My delayed-mail system from the 90s, which Iâm proud to say I pretty carefully designed to be future-proof (itâs how I kept track of my 9/11 experiment, for example)
[UPDATE: I gradually added items 9-15 after initially posting this]
A sort of TAP that Iâve never formalized but have just realized I have is something along the lines of
If you are in even a semi-serious conversation about scheduling something, the only acceptable outcomes are âdeciding not to do the thingâ and âcreating a calendar entryâ.
The calendar entry can be âping $who about scheduling options for thingâ in a pinch. I accept must-do entries as calendar entries. Obviously, also, modulo things like âthis group of people has a dedicated slack channel for events that we use instead of, like, Google Calendarâ (ok actually I do have a group that does that, and it is actually backed by a google calendar, but my point is that âcreate an eventâ means âsend a slack message with the right formatâ and thatâs fine).
My friends are consistently surprised when I finish the âyeah we should hang out next weekendâ conversation with âok sick, blocked out a few hours for Saturday afternoon, whatâs a good email to invite?â
If your kids are keen on the idea of being written about you should maybe tell the press about this one, surely theyâd be all over it? Or er $social_media maybe, I donât know.
Only EVER? You never archive any goal, even when youâre quite sure youâve moved on? Donât really understand this one.
Ha, yes, they eat that stuff up! Our philosophy has always been that if you let us promote Beeminder weâre happy to be your monkeys.
Oh, yes, not literally never. Only archive a goal if youâre certain youâre done with it for good, is what I meant to say. (Lemme edit that in the original post; thank you for clarifying it!)