# Beeminding beemergencies
**URL:** https://forum.beeminder.com/t/beeminding-beemergencies/5728
**Category:** Akrasia
**Created:** [September 1, 2019, 9:36pm UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/beeminding-beemergencies/5728 "2019-09-01T21:36:52Z")
**Posts on this page:** 7
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@shanaqui](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/shanaqui)
#### Post date: [September 1, 2019, 9:36pm UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/beeminding-beemergencies/5728/1 "2019-09-01T21:36:52Z")
I keep promising I’ll write a bit about the fact that I beemind my beemergencies and what that does to my beeminding. So here is the start of a thread to chat about that!
So first, the why, what and how:
Why: because @adamwolf mentioned doing it and it sounded interesting
What: the total number of beemergencies I have per day is recorded in a do-less goal with an aggday of “max” (so the number that counts is the highest number in the day, even if I get the number down through the day).
How: a script created by Adam and tweaked for me; I suspect a similar thing can be done just by using the IFTTT trigger for beemergencies, though!
The effects: I’ve switched from a “keep bailing out the red goals” attitude to an attitude that wants to prevent red goals altogether. That means that I still have that bright line of a derailment, but since I’m _aiming_ for goals to be yellow “at worst”, I always have one extra day before the derailment. It takes the pressure off, because even when I’m struggling to manage my beemergencies goal, there’s still that extra leeway before I actually get charged.
Does that help? For me, yes. It flipped my mindset into one much more of making and maintaining a buffer, and working ahead to give myself breathing space. Technically, once the buffer is created, maintaining it is no different from just keeping your goals from derailing – but without that red goal (and knowing there’s an extra day _if absolutely needed_) then it feels much better!
A side effect is that I can look at my beemergencies goal and see how well I’m handling life. If it’s on track with plenty of buffer, then I’m doing okay. If I’m falling behind and starting to get into blue, yellow or (god forbid) red, then I know I’m a bit overwhelmed and taking on more stuff is probably a bad idea.
(I’ve been losing buffer steadily on my beemergencies goal for a while now… argh. Something’s gonna give.)
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### Author:  [@adamwolf](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/adamwolf)
#### Post date: [September 3, 2019, 4:59pm UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/beeminding-beemergencies/5728/2 "2019-09-03T16:59:48Z")
I absolutely love beemergencies and buffer as a metric for “how overwhelmed am I” without having to actually _have_ the disaster!
@shanaqui, is it useful to see that you’re overwhelmed, or would you have already realized it and stopped and thought about it without this metric?
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### Author:  [@shanaqui](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/shanaqui)
#### Post date: [September 3, 2019, 5:03pm UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/beeminding-beemergencies/5728/3 "2019-09-03T17:03:04Z")
It’s useful! I think I might have recognised that I was overwhelmed and tried to solve it _with more goals_. My beemergencies goal makes it abundantly clear that it’s really time to stop and consolidate, not pile on more.
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### Author:  [@marcmarti](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/marcmarti)
#### Post date: [September 3, 2019, 9:22pm UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/beeminding-beemergencies/5728/4 "2019-09-03T21:22:08Z")
Amazing!
First time that I would like to have a button for “I also want this goal”. Is the script shareable?
A few days ago I was thinking about all this and the importance of treating the beeminder buffer as an Emergency Fund. ([An Idea: Treating the Beeminder Buffer as an Emergency Fund](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/an-idea-treating-the-beeminder-buffer-as-an-emergency-fund/5677/2)). @narthur send me to a great thread!
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### Author:  [@shanaqui](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/shanaqui)
#### Post date: [September 3, 2019, 9:41pm UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/beeminding-beemergencies/5728/5 "2019-09-03T21:41:25Z")
I’m not sure if @adamwolf is willing, and I don’t have the tech-knowhow to make something myself to pass round, but you could always use the IFTTT trigger for beemergencies. 🤔 That would send a +1 for every beemergency, and end up broadly the same as the script does in my case (for me the script checks how many beemergencies I have a few times a day and sends the number as a single datapoint, and then whatever the highest number is counts as the datapoint for the day).
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### Author:  [@adamwolf](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/adamwolf)
#### Post date: [September 4, 2019, 2:46am UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/beeminding-beemergencies/5728/6 "2019-09-04T02:46:24Z")
I’m not super excited about sharing the script since it’s janky, but if someone could try the IFTTT option and see if that works well, it would be great. If it doesn’t, that’s a little more motivation for me to figure out a better way to share this.
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### Author:  [@marcmarti](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/marcmarti)
#### Post date: [September 5, 2019, 9:49pm UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/beeminding-beemergencies/5728/7 "2019-09-05T21:49:45Z")
Great, no worries. I will maybe try the IFTTT option 🙂