I am at 35 goals now. I am also beeminding Habitica, which has much more.
Some of my goals are microhabits: 200 hula hoops a day. Some push-ups. Some belly crunches. An aromatic stick. Moisturizer. Etc.
At some point, I feel Beeminder UI stops scaling. And I mean, visually scaling. So I am not adding more goals where I really want to.
Solutions?
Are you primarily using the website?
And you are primarily entering data manually?
Are you primarily using the website?
Not really. I’d like to use it more though.
And you are primarily entering data manually?
No. Mostly its API from my Google Sheet.
I got 46 right now on my home screen!
The Android widgets are great for this.
But it’s true that your brain only has limited slots for things. Every Beeminder goal takes up a scarce resource. Sure, it might be great to add a Beeminder goal for something, but there’s a cost to each new goal - in time, attention, energy, and effort. So choose your goals wisely and carefully.
One way of dealing with it might be to use staggered deadlines (the “waterfall” system) so you don’t have to think about every goal at once, just the upcoming ones.
I just wrote about this in a different thread: I use beeminder as a visualization tool as much as an accountability tool. It’s true that a human brain can only juggle so many things, but it’s also true that we routinely do way more than 40 things a day without pausing to think. (And what about weekly and monthly things, such as vacuuming the car?)
The whole philosophy behind GTD is that the more we write down, the less we have to remember, the better we function. If after a week or two of recording my push-ups, I realize i want to do more push ups, I don’t add a goal (I already have one), I’ll just make the yellow road a bit steeper. It makes sense to me.
It’s the accountability part that runs into limits. Like with GTD your lists might have hundreds of tasks and projects, but they don’t all need to be addressed now under penalty of being stung.
You are right. That’s why I set accountability to be symbolic, initially. I only add accountability later as needed.
