Beeminder Checkpoints (possible idea for Beeminder?)

I approve! I mean, I don’t think this should be part of Beeminder itself but I think it’s great to add such schemes of one’s own. Here’s a sort of related thing I’m doing: Temptation bundling for inbox beeminding

Also maybe relevant to some of the things you said: Beating Beeminder Burnout | Beeminder Blog

Delighted to help! Collapsed here to spare others since the linguistic nerdery is off-topic...

first of all, your english is great! everything you wrote here was nice and clear. if you mean “help me identify things that give me away as a non-native speaker” here’s a sampling of such things:

it brings both a commitment device and a form of quantified self

“brings” is clear enough here but doesn’t feel quite idiomatic. i think better would be to say “is” instead of “brings”. i think something like “gives us” could also work.

(i think the grammatical issue is that “brings” wants both an object and an indirect object. but “brings us” doesn’t sound right.)

Beeminder, of course, tells you when you derail; but doesn’t explain why and how you can avoid next time, obviously

the “of course” and the “obviously” feel redundant. and that semicolon should be a comma or maybe elided altogether.

and “avoid” needs an object. like “avoid that”.

can bring you to burn out

“can cause you to burn out” sounds a bit better.

why you even started on the first place

“in the first place”

i.e. read one book a month

“e.g.”

you wander what is the point to even continue

“wonder”

Especially this happens if you don’t have an end date for your goal

“This especially happens if” (I don’t know why but “Especially this happens” jumps out at me as wrong. oh man, native speakers must be infuriating to get grammar suggestions from! i should also emphasizes that when i say it jumps out at me, i only mean in the most pedantic sense. your meaning was crystal clear!)

PD

“PS” (maybe “PD” works for speaking? post dictum?)

and just for fun even though language-wise it’s totally fine:

[Beeminder makes sure] that you commit to something

this one’s subtle but technically beeminder gives you a way to commit to something and “committing” means making sure you’ll do the thing you committed to. unless you set up a beeminder meta goal, beeminder doesn’t make sure you commit in the first place. we sometimes call that beeminder’s achilles’ heel, or beeminder’s bootstrap problem: you need something like beeminder to get yourself to start using beeminder in the first place!

3 Likes