Hi Matthias,
Yes, I’ve implemented a similar goal to experiment with custom goals, so it
is possible (didn’t try zero road width though). However, it worked badly
and I would not advise using it. Why do you want to use such a system?
There may be alternative strategies to account for special behaviours or
needs.
It seems clunky and less intuitive to me than using the system Essentiae
suggests (again similar to my own).
In spite of the e-mail reminders, there is less incentive to report with a
flat line rather than a moving limit, including pessimistic presumptive
reporting for set-a-limit goals. I don’t use PPR for my sleep goal though,
because the double-rate penalty seems a bit scary for me when I’m skating
near the edge (like today) and as I am pretty compulsive about keeping my
data current.
One of the great strengths of Beeminder is documenting a continuous habit,
so in my opinion, resetting every week doesn’t gel as well with the mindset
of establishing uniform routines over long periods of time. For sleep,
aiming for consistency and low variability is really important. It is also
easier to see interesting trends with the normal set-a-limit goals over
weeks, which are somewhat arbitrary divisions anyway. I should confess that
I do use some rules that Danny probably wouldn’t like, such as halving
values when I’m out on a Friday night, but they are fairly consistent and
planned.
More generally, when I first set up my sleep goal, I set an alarm to remind
me to turn off my computer (or at least social media/phone/distracting
websites) and try to go to bed. Remaining mindful of the habit becomes more
natural with time (I don’t need alarms anymore), but just remembering to
check the time is not always easy. I then added a physical calendar that
lives at my bed to ensure that I record the data, also without playing with
the computer or phone seconds before bed, as all that light makes it harder
to sleep.
Apologies for the rambling. I’m a little sleep deprived. 
Cheers,
Julian
On Monday, August 19, 2013 10:16:09 AM UTC+10, Matthias Ferber wrote:
Hey Alec and Essentiae,
Thanks for your suggestions. Both of you suggested, basically, a limit
that increases by 3 weekly, and both of you pointed out exactly what’s
wrong with that approach: I won’t have the full leeway at the start of the
week. I would have no flexibility on the first night of the week, ever –
if I slip by even a minute, I derail, whereas by the end of the week I
(might) have lots of leeway. Not only is that arbitrary and sort of weird,
but it’s a near-guarantee that I’ll fail.
Still open to suggestions, and still pondering it myself. There’s got to
be a way to quantify this better.
Alec, to clarify: I should have said I was planning on resetting to 3
hours of buffer each week manually. I didn’t expect to automate that
(although your IFTTT idea is temptingly clever and I might use it if I ever
get this working). And I’m not having trouble getting the road flat, at
least not initially, or giving it a width of 0 – I’m using a custom goal.
What isn’t working is getting the road to stay at 0. Beeminder is setting
it flat at -3, matching my first data point (which was supposed to
represent my buffer for the week).
I’m trying an experiment where I leave today’s first data point at 0, and
wait till tomorrow to add the “reset” data point of -3 for this week. I’m
not sure if that will leave the line at 0 or not.
Any more ideas, anybody?
Thanks,
Matthias
On Aug 18, 2013, at 6:31 PM, Alec Brooks <zab...@gmail.com <javascript:>>
wrote:
I don’t think there’s a way to implement your exact idea without using
the
Beeminder API. You could have a script [0] that fires once a week and
subtracts
3 from the total, which wouldn’t be too hard. The other downside is that
I
believe Danny and Bethany plan to obsolete permanently flat roads
eventually,
although your graph might be grandfathered-in. At the moment you should
be able
to make your road flat – I don’t know why you’re having problems.
The standard approach would be to make a “Set a Limit” goal that
increases by
three each week. Under this scheme you are trying to stay below a total
that
increases by three hours every week rather than trying to stay below
zero. It
would be mostly the same, but look slightly different. One actual
difference is that you get more leeway slowly rather than all at once.
(The
total hours of leeway would be the same.)
You need a custom goal to make roads zero-width, I think.
Best,
Alec
[0]: Or an IFTTT recipe. You could tell IFTTT to send an email to
Beeminder
once per week subtracting three from your total. As far as I can tell,
you need
a Gmail account to do this.
On Sun, Aug 18, 2013 at 05:02:41PM -0400, Matthias Ferber wrote:
Hey akratics nerds,
I’m starting to experiment with beeminding my bedtime, and I’m having
trouble setting up the sort of goal I want. I know others are using
bedtime goals – I’ve read the recent thread on that topic – and I’m
hoping people will have suggestions for me? I want to leave a lot of
flexibility, at least at first, since this is going to be a real, real hard
one for me to stick to.
Here’s the ideal behavior I’d like to have – as you’ll see I’m
starting with a gentle approach; for now I’m mostly just trying to cut down
on the nights I compulsively stay up till 3 a.m. for no reason.
- Aim: to be in bed by 11 every night.
- Every Sunday, I start fresh with exactly 3 hours of “free” buffer
that I can “spend” throughout the week.
- When I go to bed earlier than 11, my buffer increases (I earn leeway
for nights later in the week).
- If I use up my buffer, I derail.
The problem is in the implementation. Here’s how I imagined it
working:
- My goal line is flat, at 0. [Maybe not possible? See below.]
- Each day I add a data point for how late I was getting to bed (number
of hours past 11:00).
- The YBR is effectively zero-width: I don’t want any additional buffer
on the “good side”.
- If I go above the zero line, I derail.
- Every Sunday I add a dummy entry to reset myself to -3.
[Alternatively, the YBR could have a fixed width of 3 and I reset
myself to 0 every week; not sure that makes a difference.]
I think this is sort of a “set a limit” goal, but I’m not getting it to
work. The main problem I’m hitting right up front is, I can’t find a way
to fix the goal line at a specific, flat value. I’m actually using a
“custom” type goal and even there I don’t see a way to do it. (I can make
it flat by dialing in a rate of change of 0, but it’s picking the value for
the centerline based on my initial data, of course, and I don’t want that.)
Beeminder also seems to really prefer values that increase or decrease.
My question to you all is: (1) Can this be implemented in Beeminder?
How? (2) If not, is there a better way to model this that preserves most
of the behavior I want?
Thanks for reading, everybody, this is a lot of detail here.
Matthias
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