Camille's Beeminder Journal

Life
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Hello dear bees,

I’ve decided to start my own Beeminder journal to add more structure to my meta-minding.

You are welcome to comment! :slightly_smiling_face:

Goals that make me feel overwhelmed

  • morning_walk: 10am is too soon; moving to 11am
  • schedule_car (lessons): I scheduled lessons at 10am, which requires me to wake up at 8:30am :cry: so I’ll lessen the rate

Goals that are not working

  • write_dreams: happens too late so I actually forget my dreams; moving deadline to 12am
  • prepare_meds: happens too late; moving deadline to 11pm
  • sleepyhead: there should be auto-ratcheting so that I don’t accumulate too much sleep and go on a no-sleep streak
  • mh_video_driving_license: I should just have to OPEN the teaching video (micro-habit). upated description to reflect this

Goals with some problem

  • process_letter: there’s no letter anymore, so I’ll add +1.

My ideal day

(trying to draft up a good routine)

11pm: ready to go to bed
6:30am: wake up, and go to sleep again
10:45am: wake up and go for a walk
11:15am: back home, write dreams, prepare environment to start working on most important task of the day
12am: work on the most important task of the day EXCEPT when there’s family home, and I’m DRAGGED outside my room to eat

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Goals that make me feel overwhelmed

  • tag_uvi_yitag: derailing it and pausing it since there is not much more to improve here
  • bee_bvi: boss-visible improvement are not super required since we now have weekly calls and I have to show something for my week of work anyway

Goals that are not working

  • tidy_room: my room is ok but I’m not improving it really. I need an “improve_room” bee goal

Goals with some problem

  • prepare_meds: comes too late in the day
  • at_workstation: too soon in the day
  • tag_dvi: not specific enough
  • nosugar: not specific enough

My ideal day

10:00: wake up, go for a walk
10:20: start eating breakfast
10:40: day prep
11:00: fun side projects
13:00: eat meal + break
14:00: start working on serious stuff
19:00: start maintenance tasks (beeminder)
somwhere here: eat and time with family
23:00: day finished, ready to theorically sleep
00:00: sleep

(yep, that’s 10 hours of bedtime because my sleep is super inefficient)

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Defragmentation

I’m feeling super overwhelmed because I have to switch tasks too much in a given day.

Beeminder pause

I’ve been thinking about this for a lot;
I’ve created tons of Beeminder goals and they are all useful.
However, my days are getting way more fragmented that I’d like.
At the same time, mostly thanks to Beeminder, I’ve gotten my life more in control than before and some goals are not that useful anymore.

To fix this:

  1. Schedule a break on most of my goals
  2. Move deadlines to 11pm again
  3. Every day: allocate 3 hours to beemindery (= life maintenance) and 6 hours to work

Contracting semi-pause?

I’d like to pause contracting for a bit, but I don’t really know where to start.
I have responsibilities that I’m the only one to be able to fulfill; maybe I’ll start here.

Ideal day

  1. 0-12h: sleep & anime
  2. 12h-14h: starting up (breakfast, getting some sunlight)
  3. 14h-21h: working hard
  4. 21h: forcefully getting dragged out of my room to eat
  5. 22h: comms
  6. 23h: winding down
  7. 0h: sleeping
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Defragmentation pt. 2

Checkpoint: do I like Beeminder?

Yes! I love it.
I paid a ton, I think about $500 in pledges, let alone the premium membership.
It looks like I’m pretty Akratic.
(I can’t really know the right number since my mail provider is down)

I definitely got $500 in value for using Beeminder because my life improved a lot as a result of using it.

On the other hand, I’m a super hardcore-optimist, so I ended up with tons of Beeminder goals.
Since the pledges are exponential, I’m starting to pay wayyyy more money than I’m comfortable paying for. But I’m fixing this today!

I’m going to write a bit to know which goals to keep and which goals to delete. You are welcome to read The Boring Details :tm: below for inspiration.

Juicy details

An usual day

My attention curve

  1. morning: will only focus on creative tasks
  2. afternoon: will only focus on creative or administrative tasks
  3. evening: All my brainpower is available

My morning routine

In no particular order:

  1. Wake up (usually at 12am)
  2. Take breakfast
  3. Morning walk
  4. Cerebrolysin injection (are there other biohackers here?)
  5. Watch anime because I got no mood to do anything else

Some ideas:

  • Do a one-hour hardcore creative task in the morning to wake up my brains
    • enjoyable
    • impactful
  • Wake up sooner

My afternoon routine

Then, I usually fall into Beeminding/do administrative stuff mode, since I know that I’ll get interrupted by family to eat or other stuff. Because of this, I cannot start to concentrate. I think that I’m accustomed to this now, so I’m conditioned to not be able to concentrate at this particular time of the day.

I really hate having to do “stuff I need to do because otherwise X will be mad / Beeminder will charge me / family sad if I don’t eat with them” first thing in the day. This feeling makes me want to go live alone on an island.

But since my day starts at 12am, I’m kind of obligated.
Sometimes I even get called to eat while I’m sleeping, lol. At least I recognize that I’m lucky to have such kind of problem :sweat_smile:

If coworkers ask for it, I accept to log into my computer and help with urgent stuff.
The stimuli must be at the right size: I can do something about it, but it should not require galaxy-brain power.

Some ideas:

  • Shift circadian rhythm to the left
  • Move Beeminder deadlines wayyy later to not be in administrative mode in the afternoon
  • Don’t eat in the middle of the day - only breakfast and dinner

My evening routine

In the evening, I usually do stuff that Beeminder asks me for and/or actual work.
Sometimes I have to prepare for the day ahead. I also watch anime.

Observations

→ watching anime is the “reset button” for me. I use it when I switch tasks and when I need to do something but don’t feel like it yet.
→ task switching is the root of all evils
→ waking up my brains should be my top priority in the morning
→ I perform better when I can dedicate two days in a row to a project - not working on anything else meanwhile. My brain easily picks context back up when I get to work again.

Goodbye, (most) of Beeminder!

For the past 4 months (woah!), I’ve been building a mountain of Beeminder goals (and got stung hard for them).

It’s now time to cut back to be more free in my day-to-day.
Ideally, I’d like to get out of constant beemergency mode and contribute towards my Beeminder goals a bit every time that my head is in fog mode.

Goals best-off

I’ll keep the “minimum viable day” goals as well as long-term goals.

Here are the goals that brought the most value to me:

  1. goals related to learning how to drive a car
  2. goals related to personal hygiene (tidying my room, showering, brushing my teeth, changing bedsheets)
  3. sports goals
  4. meds goals
  5. administrative goals (inbox zero, process_letters)
  6. goals for learning (books, academic literature, side projects)

Actions

Moving deadlines

I’m moving all deadlines back to 3am.

I’d like to be able to focus deeper, and it requires being able to move chores to later in the day.

Archiving most goals

I’m going to archive most of my goals to make more room for improvisation.
I’ll probably see which ones I miss pretty soon enough.

Dropping pledges

As said before, I don’t feel good paying $30 for failing super simple stuff.
Most of the time, I just don’t have enough time in a day or miss the deadline because I am too focused on a task in front of me and forget about Beeminder. Since I could’ve theoretically put a timer, I don’t feel ecstatic about paying, but I don’t feel comfortable derailing them either.

Thanks!

Thanks for reading this. I will appreciate any wisdom from the hive (comments) :grin:

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Defragmenting has been pretty great. I’m going to continue this way.

This week, I’ve discovered Shape Up. It’s radically changing the way I approach work

Changelog

  • tag_boomy_tvi: I’ve switched to a more intentional way of organizing work with cycles, so I don’t need Beeminder to remind me. Either I’ll do it or I don’t. Archived
  • bee_check_health: I will not do it anymore on the weekend
  • less_anime: I’ve removed the anime app from my phone… But this goal failed to prevent the anime-lethargy phenomenon I’m faced with. I dialed down to max 4 hours of anime per week to be able to follow my favourites as a treat. I’ve also tweaked auto-ratchet to 6 hours from 10 hours
  • empty_trash: it doesn’t really work, I end up derailling it each time. I’m archiving it
  • mh_walks: I’d like to use my fitbit steps goal more, so I’ll archive this one.
  • pr_biz_sheet_improv: having a list of business ideas is great, but I’m not sure if rationally evaluating them is that good in my current state. I have enough money-making projects; I need more projects that make me enjoy programming like before
  • ankizero: I’m missing it a lot! I’m putting it back in with a lowered commitment (0.3 per day)
  • less_instagram: I’ve built too much buffer and I feel too safe. I will now cap my buffer to two hours. There is no reason that I truly need Instagram more than that in regular cases (sometimes I do because of video calls, but that’s rare and call it a beemergency)

New goal

  • tag_check_backups: I love this kind of goals. The value of checking for backups is immense, so having this Beeminder goal is life-changing. At most, I’ll lose one week of data. That’s bad, but I’ve seen worse.

Project Bookminder (clone of Nicky’s)

  • book_shape_up: finished it with 16 days of buffer! It was an excellent book
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My ideal day

  1. Sleeping when I feel like it
  2. Making music when I feel like it
  3. Eating when I feel like it
  4. Seeing friends
  5. Messing around with tech that I like
  6. Small bugfixes
  7. Working on business features
  8. Working on freelance projects
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Hi!

Some news:

  1. I’m getting Ritalin !!!

New stuff I’m doing

  1. Listening to music on my computer while doing my beeminder tasks in the evening. I find it relaxing, I enjoy this part of the day now :slightly_smiling_face:

Some goal changes

  1. I want to build a buffer, so I moved some goal to not be 1/day
  2. I want to build buffer, so I do stuff that’s not beemergencies, now :slightly_smiling_face:

Misc

I’m feeling way greater than a few weeks before.
It’s funny how can life can change dramatically with a few tweaks here and here

In retrospect, what helped most was:

  1. Tweak meds
  2. Move beeminder deadlines to wayyy later
  3. Stop micro-managing myself
  4. Allow myself to wake up at any hour as long as I don’t oversleep
  5. Having a new exciting objective in life (traveling abroad)

Traveling!

I’m still trying to figure out which place I want to go to!

I want a place with friendly people, good internet, and OK air (I wish I could go to Bangkok but I would probably age 20 years from just the air :joy:)

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Hi Camille,

Are you still writing down your dreams?

I only do so if I want to really remember it.

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I sure do! But sometimes I’m too lazy or don’t remember anything, so I don’t write them down.
I have a notebook with a NFC tag and have to write a dream and scan it for it to count (goal link)

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My appreciation of life is increasing these days

striving for more harmonious work

Ritalin helps a ton. I feel better about work; more in control. I know that if I need to work, I can eat 10mg and I’ll be able to choose to work. This makes a lot of my anxiety go away and my life is drastically improved as a result.

Basecamp is also making it healthier working on my business; I don’t have endless communications on Telegram. Now it’s asynchronous so I just drop some ideas, and move on with my days. It removes tons of anxiety. We’re more in harmony than before where our work would sometimes clash.

Reading books from 37signals changed my views about work so I know how to handle customers better too; when to say yes, when to say no, how to define scope… Less stress!!

TL;DR: I changed my relationship to work for the best recently; it removed a lot of anxiety from my life.

travelling

I’ve decided to travel on my own for the first time to Las Palmas in Islas Canaries. It’s really scary, but in a good way. I’ve learned that discomfort should not be automatically seeked; it should only be done if the benefits are worth it. I think it’s worth it since I’ve been dreaming of going to this place for at least a year, now xD

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Here’s my latest trick!

I noticed that sometimes I have a “good feeling”. I just “feel good”.
It usually doesn’t last very long.

I think that it’s possible to summon it by thinking about it.

  1. It feels good
  2. It seems like I make better choices

It’s like a flame. If I do a bad choice, it might die, and I’ll have to bring it up again.
I just tried this, but it made me stop doing stuff, like compulsively googling about a particular subject.

I’m starting to try this because I don’t really feel “connection” when talking with people IRL. I avoid eye contact, that kind of stuff. I wish I would connect more with people.

Also weird enough, while bringing this feeling up, it made music sound way better instantly!
Once I started trying to summon the feeling, the music felt much wider, more detailed, more emotionally impactful… I really wonder if what I’m experiencing has a name.

I swear I’m not doing some kind of weird guru stuff; it’s really just a practical trick that I’m rediscovering every few months!

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Some of my beeminder goals became unnecessary since I started living somewhere else.

Like now, I cannot NOT shower because if I don’t do it, I feel very bad about going out. Same thing with teethbrushing but I want to keep it to be on the safe side.

So, I decided to archive my “shower” goal.

So far I’m really enjoying my new life in Las Palmas.

Now that I have Ritalin, I can actually do all the work I need.

I’m even starting to think that I should accept my long-term job offer and just live my life without even running 12 companies :laughing:.

I met new interesting people every day; I think that’s what I was really missing back in my hometown, where everything was the same everyday

So yeah, life’s been very good. Still up-and-downs because I’m like that; but the beach is an alright place to cry at :slightly_smiling_face:

Huge shoutouts to Beeminder&Complice. I cannot imagine a timeline where I’m here without these two apps :pray:

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Feels amazing to hear this. Thank you! (Also thanks to Beeminder for making me spend more time in the forum and thus spot this amazing compliment!)

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i don’t think that’s just you! or, if it is just you, it’s just me, too. but i think everyone has their ups and downs, if probably at different frequencies / intensities. but even if you’re a super happy, cheerful person, some things just happen to you sometimes that you can do nothing about and that turn that great mood around in a blink.

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You’re right… Thanks for reassuring me, enbee

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Life is good but I was very down today.
Like I woke up, took Ritalin and gone to work.
Work was okay but it didn’t make me happy.
I eat something but I’m unhappy
People are friendly and say nice things to me but it doesn’t make me happy.
I’m in my dream life and it doesn’t make me happy anymore
Did I get used to it? What’s wrong with me??

… and then I take a nicotine gum and after a few minutes stuff slowly sorts itself out; I got out, meet people, slowly warm up and life is good.

The day before, I literally craved a cigarette :smiling_face_with_tear:

It was only a small experiment to self-medicate ADHD at the start, but I made the mistake of keeping it in my pockets at all time and not restricting myself properly :sweat_smile:

So yeah, I believe that I now have a nicotine gum addiction that I’ve been creating since a few months :joy:

I just realized today that this pattern is very much present in my life now. There’s not much to it that it tastes bad and is bad for the health. And that it makes me very cold for no reason.

I don’t know when I’ll stop. It takes like 3 weeks to get rid of it cold turkey and I don’t like the idea of being depressed for 3 weeks :slightly_frowning_face:

Like, tomorrow I’m meeting a friend, and I don’t want to be depressed!! I cannot just disappear for 3 weeks or be moody :frowning:

I also took a cigarette from a friend. Really dumb dumb dumb. Me who was so careful now gets into the good old nicotine addiction. At least I’m aware of it now!

If I had to fix it, I think that I would get a patch that slowly delivers nicotine over time.

But for now, I’ll just survive with these horrible tasting gums until I get home and I can explain the situation to my pharmacy (They warned me so they’ll probably LOL at me xD)

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OK, I created a new goal and it’s awesome!

Problem: I always procrastinate on doing my beeminder goals before sleeping, and I sleep super late because of this
Solution: the “beeblitz” goal! If I don’t do all my beemergencies one after the other, in a super-optomised fashion, I loose. This means that I cannot e.g. start scrolling on the forum between the moment I brush my teeth and the moment I take my meds.

I’ve done it two times, and it’s pretty good. I currently set it at 0.5/day

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I think I might try this as I have the same problem with procrastinating on Beeminder goals. I think it would also push me to create buffers as I won’t want to be constantly at beemergency. Do you follow the same rules on weekends?

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For creating buffer, I’m investigating creating a manual “superbee” goal where I get +1 if I do one goal that is in orange (or blue if no orange goal can be done)
This way, I’ll build buffer. I’ll do the task while in a “beeblitz” streak so it shouldn’t be too much of a burden.

For beeblitz, I plan to do it this weekend too. I only started since a few days. I now avoid procrastinating on my beeminder tasks by default, even if the beeblitz rate is only 0.5. So I might already have a good buffer already :muscle:

My experience is pretty positive with this one :slight_smile:

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Problem

It’s 7 am. I’ve spent the night in Hyperfocus, on my computer. I was tired at the end and sent an angry message to a customer who wanted to negociate. I hope they’ll forgive me.

I also worked and answered concerns of my coworker. I didn’t really disconnect today.

There was an opportunity to go out and have fun as I spend my last days on the island, but I didn’t take the opportunity.

I feel like I have a problem with time hygiene and respecting myself and enforcing time boundaries. Nothing’s exploding. (well, numbers are bad and customers are waiting, but my well-being should benmore important than that).

And then, it’s an endless circle.

sleep hygiene with beeminder

So, research tells us that chronic exposures to light between 11pm and 4am blunts dopamine.

Turning off screens and starting a calm activity, like reading, at 11pm could be a good start. Like, a “do-more” goal. I should naturally start to want to sleep.

enforcing resting days

I often fall into the trap of “answering just that one message” or “looking into this small issue” on the weekend. And some days, I cannot really work because I have other obligations, and I end up neirher enjoying life nor enjoying work.

So, I want to really be more intentional about how I use my days.

Here are the criterias to get a +1:

  • professional telegram notifications are off. If an emergency happens and I get contacted for it, I’m disqualified
  • I prioritize well-being and rest over a sense of achievement. Resting and feeling calm are the achievement.
  • If I get an idea for work, I note it down for later
  • I disable Basecamp notifications and set myself as “out of office”
  • I put my Telegram status to a :no_entry: sign
  • I do not answer professional stuff on Discord as well as set my status to red
  • not activating my work profile
  • not starting a Toggl entry – I don’t have to be productive, but instead, have fun!

In an ideal world, I would put all work apps on a separate profile on my phone; but what if an emergency happens?

Maybe I could have one Telegram account for emergencies, for my coworker, as well as casual chats.

My existing account would only serve for professional stuff.

Same for Discord and Slack;

for mail, I don’t know…
I need to have access to it for some stuff.

In a similar way, I could decide to not activate work apps unless I’m at the office. Clock-in, clock-out.

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