Brennan's Beeminder Journal

Life
21

Week Fifteen! This has been an difficult week, full of pain and hurt–and attempts at healing. In my non-coding time I’ve been figuring out ways to best help the BIPOC community, I helped make a small, local resource list, specifically on trying to find some sort of semblance of healing or peace.

I think the most difficult part is recognizing that this isn’t novel or out of nowhere–only this intensity of response from others. I feel regret not being as involved in activism as I ought to be, particularly being an indigenous person in Canada.

There’s a sense of ease when doing things in a logical, Matryoshka-esque order. In theory, only focusing on myself at first, then my community, then the world at large.
I am a layman, and have no expertise or academic insight to share. I lack confidence and a sense of competency trying to make big changes when I feel like I don’t have my own personhood set in order.

But, of course, when is anybody ever actually completely functional? There is no end destination, nor is there any objective criteria that you can reference. At the very best, we can all only do what we think is right. Talk isn’t enough–I do not care of what others think of my personal meritocracy–meaningful intent and thorough action is the only thing that matters.

New Systems

  • /weight: Again, switching it from a manual input to automatic through FitBit in order to integrate the data with the rest of the fitness suite.
  • /weightcheck: A manual, daily check-in for measuring my weight. I know you’re not supposed to weigh-in that often, but I figure the more data, the more insight. I don’t really have any feeling about this one way or another, either.
  • /collection: A new, experimental system that I’m going to be trying, where I put anything interesting that I find as a data input, as a way to try to be more cohesive with my curation of interests.
22

Week Sixteen! This was a pretty big week for me. I built my first website from scratch, a web portfolio for myself. It’s still a bit of a prototype–I gave myself only 3 weeks to complete it.

Of course, Beeminder is on the homepage. I’m sort of using my system embeds as a means of a “Now” page, an idea that Derek Sivers came up with. Sure, it’s useful to display all your accolades and past accomplishments, but what are you currently doing? What’s being worked towards?

On the topic, I was listening to an audiobook that had the quote now is now. That’s all there ever is for us, really. There’s no point in ruminating on the past or being anxious about the future. We are always stuck in the present, and might as well make the most of what we have.

I know that sounds like a corny (and obvious) platitude, but there are moments when I really feel like I’m snapping into the moment, like I’m coming up for air from underwater, gasping in somewhat-horror that I was underneath for so long without realizing it.

Even with all the pokes, prod, and reminders that Beeminder gives me to do good every single day, I still find myself managing to get stuck on autopilot and waste time mindlessly.

I’ve been ramping up a lot of my different Beeminds, as I find that if I’m in the red for something, I’ll do it 100% of the time, but really just neglect a task entirely if I give myself a safety buffer. I’m getting closer to having an ideal daily routine that I can feel good about.

I feel like there’s a paradox that, even though I’m juggling a lot of different systems, there’s plenty of time still left where I can afford to do nothing. Maybe I need to step up even more, but I’m still trying to figure out what that’d look like.

Current Issues:

  • Idea Generation: I have no idea how to really beemind ideation. It’s a tricky and somewhat nebulous concept.
    • Ideally, I’d like to collect and curate interesting things (hence my new /collection system).
    • I think it’s very important to be mindful of the fact that creative output requires creative input, which is a reason why I’ve been reading more.
    • But there’s something paradoxical and counter-intuitive of trying to mechanically capture that at a set amount of time.
  • Analogue Writing: I want to write more on paper, like a lot more, but I don’t see a way of making myself do that.
    • A manual input goal isn’t really working because it’s so easy to fabricate. Is there a way to hack that?
    • And, that’s also one of those things that I want to do less if I need to do it. Maybe I’m just being dramatic.

I’ve also noticed that the #1 indicator of failure for me is social pressure. I’ll stay up late and essentially ruin my sleep schedule just to hang out with friends, or waste money ordering (usually unhealthy) food. I need to be more strict with myself and others. I need to actually live out and apply these principles.

(P.S. Didn’t know where to put this, but I actually had a possibly-good idea: Imagine if you could sync your sleep tracker with your phone’s audio so it’d automatically pause whatever you were listening to when it detected you fell asleep. Anyone do that yet?)

23

Week Seventeen! It’s been a rather quiet week for me. I’ve mostly been doing team-based assignments learning and studying the React library and the large amount of novel concepts it brings to the table. Having my nose to the grindstone has let me had time to meditate on the difference between planning work vs. doing work. Or, as @adamwolf quotes ZeFrank, sharpening pencils vs. using them. I wonder if this Bee Journal is merely the act of sharpening–navel-gazing that doesn’t really propel me forward.

I used to be a lot worse at this when I was younger. When I did feel like I wanted to actually work hard, I’d spend hours reading about self-improvement, and plan out what my ideal day would be, and then I’d be too tuckered out to actually start implementing anything and just go back to my regular, lazy routine.

I know that I’m doing a lot better, relatively speaking, I’m doing something productive on a daily basis. Doing anything, even small things, is far better than zero-days. The small, incremental work you do builds up over time, whereas zero is always just zero. Regardless, though, there feels like a lot of fluff in what I’m tracking.

A handful of my systems are there simply because there’s a fantastic API for it, and there are other things that I’d like to beemind, but don’t really have a practical way of doing so yet. I suppose a simple solution would just be to ramp up what I already have, but I’m afraid that I’ll just end up fudging the numbers if I do that, I know myself too well.

Systems Review

  • Derailment on /twitter, /weightcheck, and /distraction! Definitely in a bout of laziness. Though, the first two were simply just from putting on the simple task of updating them until the last minute, and then totally forgetting until around 12:30am. I need to set a hard limit for myself to make sure nothing is in the red after 11pm.
  • Finally added /photos, in spite of the above, my Twitter system has been going well, so I figure I’ll try something similar with Instagram, where I practice my photography daily on a private account.
  • Added “weekends off” for all of my systems, as I figure I should give myself time to actually relax and not worry about productivity. And also not try to work seven days a week. Crazy idea, I know.
1 Like
24

Beeminder does have this - it’s a Beemium feature!

For both these things I just beemind spending time on it - so beemind just taking a pad of paper and thinking for 15 min a day, or beemind writing in your journal every day.

What do you mean about being easy to fabricate? If you mean entering false data, don’t ever do that! It messes up your records and then they’re no longer accurate! Doesn’t it freak you out to think of that?

2 Likes
25

You bring up a very good point. I wish it did, hahaha. In the grand scheme of things, absolutely I don’t want messed up or fabricated data. But in the past, when I felt exhausted from other work, then in-the-moment I just caved and just press the simple button to prevent derailing without doing the work.

I suppose it just a matter of holding myself up to a higher standard, and accumulating more willpower.

1 Like
26

Ok that’s easy to fix.

All you have to do is fix it the next day and delete the false data. You’ll be properly charged then.

Maybe set up a daily beeminder goal to check the accuracy of the data and delete any that’s not accurate.

It might be easier for you to do that way, since it’s no longer in the heat of the moment with the timer ticking down. :bomb:

1 Like
27

Week Eighteen! I wrote a post on productivity already this week, so I feel as though this is gonna be a little short.

  • /collection is going to be deleted, as I’m not really using it at all. I thought it’d be an interesting idea to try to collect interesting things as Beeminder data points, but it seems like using a dedicated program, such as Notion, would be more sensible.
  • /spending also needs to be deleted, or at least restarted, as it’s become a bit of a headache to retroactively go through my purchases. The easiest solution would be to stop spending, of course.
  • /writing needs changes to the automatic saftey buffer, since I’ve been getting into the habit of doing a lot of writing in a day then doing none for a few days after. Although this is far better than nothing, I’d much rather have the consistency of doing a small amount daily.

I’m really glad you added your input, Zed. And I’m glad I thought about it for awhile before responding. Initially, I thought the reason I prefer automatic data input vs. manual was because of mere laziness. The reality is though, I enjoy them because they are precise, as required by such a mechanical process.

In other words, I think I just wasn’t being specific enough with something like /bulletjournal, since there’s a lot or a little that you can do within that method of journal writing. I believe I need to implement the SMART criteria when creating a new system, particularly being specific with manual goals.

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28

Week Nineteen! I’m relieved to finally be finished with the React.js portion of the curriculum that I’m studying, and moving onto Python. I find the language to be a lot less hair-pullingly frustrating than JavaScript is. I’ve also finally had the time to go through a serious mind dump session and figure out what I want to be doing outside of the systems I already have in place.

An issue I have is trying to do things that I don’t have explicit Beeminders set for. I think it’d be a good idea to jot down all my thoughts and ideas and maybe try to figure out a way to Beemind them? Or, gasp, just actually do them regardless. I think.

Mostly, I want to somehow find a better balance between my technical work and my creative work. Hopefully I’ll be able to find a few publications to submit my work to, and have some more time to write. There’s this concept from the Do Work Journal from Baronfig I’ve been looking into, which is the dead-simple idea of:

  • Starting with your Quarter Milestones (or as Grey would put it, Seasonal Themes).
  • Having monthly goals that are directly related to getting progress done towards those milestones.
  • And then, having weekly tasks that are directly related to getting progress done on those goals.

Systems Updates

  • /photos, I’ve noticed, will not update in time for the midnight deadline if I post late at night. I’m not exactly sure why this is. Since my other IFTTT work fine with last-minute updates, I’m guessing this has something to do with how Instagram deals with their API.
  • /writing is also a little finicky, Draft doesn’t count words that are directly pasted instead of typed, although I could see this being a feature instead of a bug, it just means that I have to do practically all of my primary writing within Draft, or hack my way around it.
  • /french is going great! I’ve moved up to the Sapphire League. Duolingo’s competitive-based approach to learning motivates me a lot. I originally started with just 10XP/day but usually do at least 40XP daily.
  • /fitness is getting a harsh auto-trimming of the saftey buffer, as I should be doing 10,000 steps a day, minimum, to keep healthy.
  • /distraction is one of a couple of systems that I’ve zoomed in on (starting on my restart date this year instead of its inception in 2017), and I’ve noticed that having an auto-trim on a do-less goal makes it look rather interesting!
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29

Week Twenty! I started this experiment back in February, meaning that I’ve been my own accountability guinea pig for just over half a year now. Of course, I feel as though I’ve barely chipped away at my bad habits and negative traits, there is still progress I’d like to review.

Specifically, the idea of zero days, which is an idea that came from this Reddit comment that gained a lot of popularity within self-improvement communities.

TL;DR: The idea behind it is similar to James Clear’s idea of atomic habits, where it’s better to do one push-up in a day, than nothing at all. With the hope that, once the person is in the position to do a push-up, they’ll instead do five or ten.

As action begets more action the way inaction begets more inaction. Don’t let a single day go by where you don’t do anything at all that would better yourself.

Before jumping into this, there were many zero days where I felt strung-out. Now such a day would cause me a lot of money and derailments. Instead with Beeminder, I find myself having bare-minimum days instead. On days that I feel totally unproductive, here’s a qualitative list of what I have to do in order to not derail:

  • Meditate on what I’m grateful for.
  • Write ~500 words in a journal entry or some other medium.
  • Take an hour to study programming and work on assignments.
  • Take an hour-long walk outside to reach my step goal.
  • Read a couple chapters of the book I’m currently on.
  • Study French for around twenty minutes.
  • Write a summary of the day’s events.

That might seem like a silly humblebrag, but it’s more of a prelude to a cautionary message I’d like to share. In spite of all the self-help articles that list these kind of things as being important to start doing, and all the aspiring people looking to better themselves with this kinda stuff, I have to say that it doesn’t really change how I feel at the end of the day.

There is no buzzing sense of joy or euphoria when consistently practicing good habits–no deserved dopamine hit^. There is no balanced or equal reaction that you might get from indulging a bad habit, for instance.

I suppose I continue doing these things is because I feel as though I ought to, and I know there’s a vague building foundation towards larger works down the line. I know it’s a personal fault for not having something more concrete in the long-term future I could be telling myself I’m working towards, however.

That all said, I look forward to continuing this, and to keep adding new ideas and systems to keep pushing myself. I kind of regret putting 2020 in the title of this forum thread because I plan to go well beyond this year.

(^) There is, of course, a major exception to this: exercise.

30

Week Twenty-one! I always had this thought that being more mindful of my time, and being intentional would lead to a sense of time going by slower–since you’re taking everything in and thinking slowly. But time is going by for me just as quickly as ever–I can’t believe July is almost over! Of course, maybe it’s just because it’s good weather, as the cold Canadian winters always feel like they’re at a snail-pace, no matter how much I’m procrastinating.

This week has been rather uneventful, I feel. I’m currently in the Ruby league on Duolingo with a 60-day streak, and I feel like I’m actually beginning to learn French for the first time. Of course, I need to actually apply ways of immersion and application far beyond linguistic and grammar studying.

I also had a small emergency early in the week, and was surprised to see only two of my systems having non-legit derailments because of that. A good sign that I actually am beginning to know what I’m doing. Speaking more on that, the past few months feel like a trial run–showing to myself (and others) that I’m capable of consistent, routine work. Instead of constantly restarting, I have a bit of a foundation now, which is good! But it is just foundation.

I require of myself more concise guidelines for my future: 1-year-plan, 5-year-plan, 10-year-plan, etc. These have a lot more gravity to them than just a daily system. I’m reminded of a quote from E. L. Doctorow:

“Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”

I wish life was like that, and I suppose a sort of life is, but I feel like long-term vision is mandatory when creating momentum for yourself. I’ve noticed it’s almost universal that success is a compound phenomenon–wherein the longer you work at a singular objective, the more exponentially it grows. But that requires both intelligence and wisdom, because there are also conversely those that work on something for a really long time and don’t really have anything to show for it–perhaps because of the sunk cost fallacy.

Anyways, that all being said, I have plans to centralize all the small projects I’m working on (warsaw mountain, journal bar, wander notebook, etc.) in an attempt to unify my work and have something that could actually make an income for myself. I’m really looking for communities (digitally, mostly) of similar-minded people to try to expand my plans, but that’s been rather difficult. I don’t even know where to start with that.

1 Like
31

Week Twenty-two! As someone who’s inherently anti-authoritarian, it’s weird to be happy about how the status quo and how its been going. I don’t really have much to say in the way of updates, since everything is working as intended.

For instance, it’s nice to see that my writing has gone from sporadic large entries to consistent small ones instead. Similarly, I stepped up to the Emerald league on Duolingo in just a week. I’ve been thinking of adding a Clozemaster system as a supplement.

Also, a new system that I’ve introduced in the past few weeks is /foodlog, which is a simple manual text-entry where I enter what I’ve eaten the day with the syntax Breakfast: X + Y // Lunch: Z + A // Dinner: B + C + D, etc. I figure that just the act of recording my dietary intake will help improve it.

I’m also trying to look for a community. Without having the ability to attend networking events (safely, at least) it’s a little puzzling still. The internet offers so much in means of opportunities, platforms, weird niche subcultures, etc. But where do you go if you’re trying to find people that wanna actually commit to doing meaningful work and have fun doing it?

I particularly want to find or start FOSS projects, now that I’m essentially a week from finishing my web development program. I’m not sure if it’s imposter syndrome or whatever, but I don’t really feel prepared to take on the landscape of the tech sector. I definitely feel like I learned a lot, but at the same time the more I learn, the more I realize I don’t know anything at all.

More related, I’m really curious about Beeminder’s metrics. For instance, how the average user (or poweruser) makes use of Beeminder. I wonder if I’m “doing it right” or if I’m being too lax. I wrote about burnout in another thread, and I wonder if my fear of it is causing me to not push myself or work as hard as I’m really capable of. Although one thing that I’m sure these Bee journal entries are too long and self-indulgent, haha.

Oh, and next week’s entry is going to be a few days late, since I’m actually scheduling a vacation for once.

(PS. Totally unrelated to Beeminder: I love GitHub’s new profile README feature.)

32

I look forward to your posts every week–I do not think they are too long or self-indulgent.

It’s nice, isn’t it, that paying a little bit of attention to something as you record it can help you make changes in it?

I understand wanting to find a community, but I would recommend “staking your own territory” and not putting “finding a good community” 100% ahead of doing the things you’d personally do in that community. I am always on the lookout for ways my brain is trying to put unnecessary dependencies or perfection ahead of actually putting myself out there :slight_smile:

I have been a professional developer for over a decade now, and I started out as a die-hard Linux and FOSS evangelist. I volunteer a lot more hours than I “should” on FOSS projects, even today. There definitely isn’t a single “FOSS community” but I know there are a lot of alternate universes where my FOSS experiences have just crushed my spirit and soured my heart.

If you are interested in FOSS stuff, I would recommend a few things, most of which are applicable to all of life, not just FOSS:

  • Be careful about what you tie your identity to. If you define yourself as a developer and then isn’t right for you or the world or it turns bad or just isn’t purposeful anymore, you can spend a lot of valuable time towards something unhelpful.
  • Be careful about others, especially about security. Just because tech and programming can make the world a better place doesn’t mean that it always does, and there are folks out there who aren’t like the programmers at all who will use software in ways the programmers don’t intend. Try to look out for them and stop them from blowing their fingers off.
  • Keep an eye out towards which things in projects change over time, and which things stay the same. One of the key “senior engineer” skills is to balance abstractions and changeability, balancing “you’re not gonna need it” with “every project like this tends to morph this way–let’s see if we can make it easier in case we need to move that way in the future”. I have no solid tips here except for “do it a lot and you’ll see, if you care to stick with it.”

I’m not sure if straight metrics will help you find out if you’re using Beeminder “in the optimal way”–and they may even be counterproductive. I do, however, suspect case studies and people talking about their goals in journals like this would be helpful.

2 Likes
33

Week Twenty-three! I know I said this entry would be late, but I couldn’t help myself. I’m currently in a rather comfortable hotel room that I managed to book last minute as I make my way back to the city and back to work.

I tried my best to prepare Beeminder accordingly, but I’m afraid that it seems like I found out about my impromptu trip a little too late, and had a handful of derailments occur when I was out in the woods and couldn’t do much about them. I feel like that might have to do with me being forgetful about auto-ratcheting overriding breaks, I think? Regardless, I need to plan better.

Really, I’m not at all used to actually planning time off. I either work really hard, or I’m resolved to absolute laziness. Structuring my relaxation in general is entirely new to me. But I think it’s really great, as I am really biting to get back into the swing of things unlike when I procrastinate or otherwise neglect work for a handful of days (or longer).

It’s probably a problem that a lack of progress is so bothersome to me. In full transparency, looking at the flat lines that now encompass all of my beeminders begrudges me. I don’t think it’s the work itself, but rather the consistency of the work. Perhaps I am moreso wary of my own behaviour of letting the dying off of momentum beget less and less momentum.

Anyways, enough about the minutiae!

I wanted to thank you for your insights, @adamwolf . I’m glad I take a week to respond and meditate on such helpful advice instead of replying quickly and having it thrown into the ether with the insurmountable amount of other information that I find myself surrounded with.

It allows me to take the time to look into your work, and I simply have great admiration for what you do. I’m very grateful to get advice from somebody so experienced and I’d like to respond to your thoughts in detail.

First and foremost, identity: This is something I have had a reckoning with my whole long life. There are many labels that I associate myself with–be it out of voluntary want, or the realization that there’s an inability to escape them.

Specifically, I originally went to college to be a software developer four years ago. Three years before that is when I first began tinkering with makeshift themes on Tumblr, and installed Crunchbang! and began to fall in love with ability to create and destroy just by typing things.

I have realized at this point, whether I like it or not, I am a developer. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ It’s just too much fun to make websites and write out documentation and learn new technologies. Of course I don’t think I’m a good developer, but I develop.

Second, and I’m sure this can be attributed to my lack of experience and naïve attitude, but I frankly am not worried about being careful. I understand (or at least think I do) the consequences of the openness in open-source, and the weight of dependencies others inevitably cause. Even with worst-case scenarios, time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.

I sincerely recognize where you’re coming from, but these are things that I’m steadfast in, whether that’s a good or bad thing.

(PS. Related to Beeminder this time, my girlfriend suggested I refer to my entire group of Beeminder systems as a Beehive. I’m really not sure if that’s too clever or too cheesy.)

34

Week Twenty-four! Another rather uneventful week. I’ve been working with Python frameworks like Flask and Django recently, and I’m starting to piece together a plan to start an independent project, probably with something like Stripe integration for a simple way to become self-sufficient. It’s crazy to me how many prerequisites come with using any sort of framework. It reminds me of a quote from Carl Sagan:

If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.

Anyways, back to Beeminder. Once thing I’ve noticed whenever I try to explain the entire concept to people (maybe ‘pitch’ is a better word), their first question is to ask where the money goes–and they’re usually displeased by the answer–Beeminder itself.

Of course, this is absurd if you think about it carefully. I’m not sure why people would approach systems or goal-setting with the generalized or personal notion of failure-by-default. Obviously, it should be the complete opposite! I’m trying to give the least amount of money to Beeminder by successfully completing the promises I’m making to myself (excluding the subscription I have, due to being a superuser).

Just a small tangent rant I thought I’d share. I don’t really use Beeminder for the punishment consequence anyways, I just like the pretty graphs that are slowly built–like plants in a garden. There are a couple of things (bugabees?) I noticed this week:

  • /photos kept derailing before, and I thought it was due to delayed updates from IFTTT. Not the case! It actually doesn’t track multi-photos (posting multiple photos as one “entry”, sort to speak). So if I uploaded photosets, nothing happened. I’m not sure if this is a bug or a feature, since IFTTT doesn’t have any options regarding multi-photos, just single photos and videos.
  • /github sometimes goes up a wild amount. I realized this is because it tracks all commits, not just ones on the main branch. It even tracks commits from deleted branches or repositories, so I assume they’re cached somewhere?

I don’t think either of these are explicitly bugs, just points of interest that you notice when you’ve had your head stuck in the honey too long. (Too many bee puns?)

35

+1

Re FOSS projects: Is it possible that you (Brennan) are still on some level wondering “can I find somewhere where I can make myself useful”?. The answer is yes: FOSS projects are an inexhaustible ocean of work people would love you to tackle that you’ll be able to do. Projects people would love to have you help out with, projects people wish somebody else would create, projects people didn’t even know they needed.

If you haven’t done it yet, why not:

  1. Pick a project you want to use, or are already using
  2. Is there a little thing that’s annoying? Fix it – or pick an (easy) existing bug filed by somebody else. Don’t ask permission to fix it, just do it and push a pull request
  3. Keep doing that

You’ll probably find people very happy you’re doing it before long. If they don’t show that and you want some appreciation (why wouldn’t you), keep moving around / doing different things until you get it.

After the initial effort to be useful, my initial experience with doing open source work was (over a period of years in fact) I let the positive feedback from this sort of thing overwhelm my own sense of my personal goals. Your experience may vary of course.

I’m sure you realise that will continue forever, or at least as long as you pay attention.

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36

Week Twenty-five! I was feeling a little down and tired during the middle of the week (two derailments!) but I feel like I got a pep in my step again! I’ve got a lot of things going on, probably too many, but oh well!

First, I wanted to address @halfplane’s excellent advice. The world is filled to the brim with open projects that are looking for help, or even revival–and I do need to get out of my little bubble. It might be a good idea to beemind contributions / pull requests?

The Code Newbie podcast just released an episode on the subject to! Talk about serendipity. Here are some other good resources as a note to self:

Speaking of, actually I’ve been seeing this really cool trend of “Digital Gardens” after reading a post by Joel Hooks and Tom Critchlow on the subject. I definitely need to start centralizing my scatter-brain thoughts, and I’ve still been neglecting to start using Notion or Roam Research.

Also kinda related is the JAMstack, since that’s a pretty easy and good way to get one of these kind of sites up-and-running. Similar to my ideals with FOSS, I love seeing ways to make it easier for people, tech-savvy or not, to have their own website and internet real estate–instead of having to rely on the social media oligopoly.

That being said, I’m realizing the importance of social media for connecting with others and finding different projects as well.

Anyways! Let’s talk about the bees. Just the bees. That’s the entire point of this, after all. I haven’t done a comprehensive systems review since May. :scream:

Systems Review

Writing:

  • Writing: I’ve gotten into the habit of using Draft for all my writing now, and it’s going great! Folder organization is simple, so I can’t over-complicate things for myself.
    • Blog: I’ve been writing articles more consistently, but they’ve been informational posts the past few weeks, I want to get back into doing longer and more opinionated pieces again. I also really need to update the layout of my Jekyll blog, I’m probably moving it over to Gatsby.
    • Journalbar: This has been going great! It makes being accountable fun, in a way, and it’s entertaining to try to think of things to add each week.
    • Poetry: I’ve sort of been going into a longer form with my creative work, which I like. I think I need to add a new beeminder to curate my previous stuff to start organizing hundreds of previous small works over the years.
  • Twitter: I think it’s helpful to do small, daily updates and then have that to synthesize into these weekly updates. Although I do think I’m going to actually have to start using Twitter as a platform instead of a journal.

Productivity:

  • Productive Time: Been going well! I’ve found there’s been an upward trend of productive time use on my computer for the past few months, using the limited amount of data the free account provides.
    • GitHub: In spite of how good this seems to be going, as described by the quirk I found last week, I’ve actually been committing less this month. I probably need to stop spreading myself so thin.
    • Courses: Going very well! I’ve been completing a lot of courses recently. I just have to go back and retroactively add them in.
  • Distracting Time: Orobably a lot lower than it should be, since I can’t use RescueTime meaningfully on iOS, but it does deter me from using my computer for distracting fun, at least.

Fitness:

  • Weight: In spite of keeping track of both my daily activity and diet, there seems to be an upward trend! I have plans to fix this, though.
    • Foodlog: I’m going to be more detailed and thorough in my logs, to make sure I’m not glossing over any unhealthy details.
  • Daily Activity: Right now, I usually average only around 8k-9k steps, so I’m going to bump that up to 15k to try and be more healthy!
  • Sleeping: This looks nearly perfect, but in reality it’s not, my cat wakes me up consistently at around 5am, and I’m going to bed way too late. I can’t really remedy this using Beeminder at the moment.

Lifestyle:

  • Gratitude: I find the longer I go at this, the more creative I have to be, as my one rule is never repeating any gratitudes, but I do think it helps me be more appreciative.
  • Duolingo: Still stuck in the Emerald League, and only doing around 30XP a day from my previous average of 50XP, I think I’m getting a little fatigued.
  • Books: Not going very well, as I have gotten back into listening to podcasts instead of audiobooks. I think going on longer walks as per /fitness will help with this though.
  • Photos: Although there isn’t much artistic merit to my Instagram, it’s still been to fun to take pause and really appreciate my surroundings.
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Week Twenty-six! Another uneventful week for myself. Initially I had a bit of hair-pulling trying to figure out deployment with Django, and luckily DigitalOcean has a great guide on just that. I really need to start revamping my website, but it’s so fun to put that off and work on little projects instead. :stuck_out_tongue:

One thing that I’ve been pondering is Beeminder’s alerts. I’ve found that I derail way less if I have phone notifications turned on that remind me through the day to do what I said I was going to do. The way I have them set up right now is super unhelpful however, with 10 or so notifications buzzing (hah) my phone every few hours.

It’s like a bombardment and kind of annoying. So, I suppose having a single alert would be really useful in contrast, but I don’t really know which system to set the alert for. Because if I complete that one specifically early in the day, then I won’t receive any alerts for other systems and will most likely derail.

Also, fellow Beeminder user @grayson made an informative thread on skatesum goals, which is a very interesting albeit niche goal type. One place where I think it’d be perfect would be tracking sleep! Right now, I’m using a do-more goal, but enough oversleeping can also cause problems the way sleep deprivation can.

Anyways, there are a few systems I think I’m going to restart, like /books. I need to entirely re-think my approach to certain things that A) I’m still not doing well and B) I still want to be doing. The good news is that the majority of daily tasks that I used to think would be impossible to do daily without much friction are happening on auto-pilot. It’s just a matter of deconstructing what makes them work vs. what doesn’t.

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Week Twenty-seven! Rabbit rabbit rabbit! A little late, but I was in the process of a hectic moving and didn’t derail on any other goals, so I’m giving myself a break on that. (I also don’t have internet utilities set up yet either, thank goodness for personal hotspots!)

The good news is that I’m going to have a lot more time to work now, so I’m going to be readjusting my current work schedule and flow-of-things. I believe I’m at a point where I need to formalize my tasks with something like Todoist, and huzzah, that’s easily integrated as a Beeminder system itself.

Speaking of, one solution to the constant-reminder problem I was writing about last week would be to reinstate a /meta system, but have it explicitly set to have a data point added once there are no other Beemergencies. Might only be a good idea on paper, though.

It might be symbolic, but I really feel like I’ve been given carte blanche to start doing different self-experiments now. There’s still a lot of setup that I need to do, but I look forward to trying new things that I’ve been putting off. Cold showers is a good example (once I figure out how to switch to the shower nozzle, hah!), and perhaps a stricter wake-up schedule. It’s all really up in the air for now.

Also, one fortune side-effect of a system, /fitness, has been going on wayward walks around my community and noticing things I would never otherwise if I was just going from point A to point B. I’m looking forward to doing that in a brand new neighbourhood!

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Week Twenty-eight! Well, after talking about it for quite a few weeks, I finally finished the majority of work redesigning my website this Labour Day weekend. I look forward to dedicating my time working on little projects again, hehe.

I am afraid of this Beejournal getting rather boring, as I haven’t had any new systems in awhile. I spoke last week about experimenting with new things, but I’m not really sure where to start. I’m honestly a little worried about causing a disturbance in the equilibrium, if you will.

There are two things I want to discuss though, and that’s limitations and arbitrariness.

When I first moved to my new place, I was worried about having too much time and energy. I’ve found these to be a rather detrimental to my psychology towards work. Working hard and producing my best work has happened in environments where I’ve had the most restrictions–be it a slow, perhaps sentimental computer, no internet connection, a lack of time, etc.

When there’s limitations, I don’t feel the overwhelming pressure of trying to produce my best work because of those limitations and the restrictions they bring. I can only do the best I can. Thus I have to give myself permission to do as much as I can with reckless abandon.

But when I have all the ducks lined-up in a row, everything set up, then there is no excuse. I have to produce my best work. That can cause me to avoid trying to do any work at all.

Luckily, as I grow older, the lesser that self-defeating barrier that becomes. I remind myself of a line from the poem Desiderata by Max Ehrmann that goes:

“You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.”

I can only do the best I can, no matter what, and I ought to try to and do that, just because.

Now, onto the topic arbitrary things. I’ve seen other Beeminder users talk about changing to default midnight deadline to something earlier. This is obviously more sensible, as it’s extremely uncommon for someone to want to work until that late.

But I know that would be detrimental for me. If I allow the deadlines of goals to be 7pm, or 7am, then it’s just an arbitrary number that my weasel-monkey mind could change to whatever is most convenient for me.

The only time of the day that is arguably objective, and not arbitrary, is midnight. Since that’s when the day is over, obviously. It may seem silly, but little fixed rules like that is really the only way I’m capable of getting anything done at all.

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Week Twenty-nine! As @narthur mentioned in another thread, IFTTT is moving to a limit of 3 applets per account. Frankly, I’m surprised it took so long for this to occur, but it does seem disappointingly sudden. I don’t think that even IFTTT realizes the consequences of this, however. Automated content on the Internet is everywhere, especially lower budget/quality websites. There’s going to be a lot of defunct meme pages, that’s all I know for sure.

Thankfully I only use 3 IFTTT apps on my Beeminder, and it’s good incentive for me to just learn and use direct APIs from now on.

I haven’t written anything related to COVID-19 for awhile (rather, since it became a global pandemic), but I wrote a small article on how to get unstuck, as I feel like there’s a zeitgeist of being stuck right now. But that might just be me. Though, I recognize that I’m in a place of privilege which is why it’s been so easy for me. Being such an introvert, things haven’t changed much for me, although I will gripe about how cheesy virtual networking/meetup events feel, is that just me?

Also, deadline epiphany! Last week, I spoke about how only midnight deadlines worked for me. But I had an idea to hack my way out of that. Creating a schedule and routine via dynamic deadlines. For instance, having a smaller writing deadline in the morning to complete my daily Morning Pages, or having a step-goal deadline in the afternoon to go on a walk each day.

It’s still a little difficult to wrap my head around the fact that, if I’m savvy and clever enough, anything can be Beeminded, including meta stuff like Beeminder burn-out. I’ll start experimenting with this idea with new systems this week. (Although you’ll just have to take my word for it, since creating a Beeminder to track new Beeminders is one meta too many for me.)

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