That’s good to know! I shared the link to the Beeminder blog post so maybe they’ll reach out 
I got my Oura ring yesterday! I obviously don’t have much data yet since I’ve barely been wearing it for a full day but it’s still fun to look at the app 
It really bugs me that nothing ever comes with a wall plug for a charger anymore, though. I can charge the ring at my laptop but that’s a lot less convenient. We have just one USB-C to wall adapter and my husband uses it for his phone so it’s not in a convenient spot for me either. As more things come in USB-C only I guess we’ll have to buy more (or USB to USB-C adapters to make the wall plugs useful? Those must exist) but I don’t see why I should have to buy another one now.
I’ve been in the green for over a week with my bedtime goal, so I dared to lower the rate, from 10 to 9.9. I still don’t feel like I’m getting enough sleep most of the time so I obviously need it.
Will the bedtime goal be replaced by an Oura sleep goal? Stay tuned!
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OK, so far charging the ring hasn’t been as inconvenient as I thought because it charges really quickly! I have just been putting it on the charger for a few minutes a day while I write and it’s stayed highly charged.
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They do exist, and I would strongly recommend them to everyone. Even if you have more USB-C chargers at home, they really help when in cars, trains, planes etc which still have USB-A sockets. Surprisingly this is something where there is a difference between “correct” implementations and cheap versions, so choose a brand you trust.
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Ooh, that’s helpful, thanks!
It doesn’t surprise me that cheap versions are no good. I ruined an iPhone with a knockoff charger once so now I only buy directly from Apple.
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I keep meaning to update when I calendial and failing to do so! I’ll just update now while I’m waiting for my oncologist to come in.
(Fun note: autocorrect keeps wanting to change “calendial” to “calendula.”)
I mentioned lowering the rate for bedtime. I’ve fallen back into the blue and can’t get out I did give myself a break for Christmas. I hope I’ll be able to get to bed at a reasonable time, but chances are I’ll have to be up late. I’m also considering instead of my current “put the datapoint in when I go to bed” system, putting the datapoint in the morning after and getting the time from Oura. That would require taking a day off at some point, though, I think.
I was going to give myself a break on YouTube while I’m at my mom’s house for the holidays. Then I discovered Vlogmas—some of my followed channels are doing extra videos in December, and it’s made me want to check out other channels doing Vlogmas, too. So I gave myself a positive slope for most of the month. There have still been days when I thought I was going to derail but I’ve managed to squeak by!
I ratcheted my Storygraph goal and I think I increased the slope as well. I’m making steady progress away from it because I have too many books out from the library and I need to read quickly! I’ve also set up (and now accomplished) a couple of book goals to help me get that done—very useful. I have one still in place with the thought that I might try again to have a multi-book goal with deadlines using the road editor.
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Gah, my latest books goal is all screwed up again. Somehow when I put in the final page number for the latest book I set it up for, that didn’t reach the line. I must have done my math wrong somewhere. 
If the iOS app still showed me what number I needed maybe I would have been able to figure it out…
I guess I’m going to archive this one again and start another new one when I want to Beemind another book. And just do that every time going forward…
No, I won’t give up! Next time I’ll write down everything I do and then I can go back and look at it if it screws up again (and maybe someone else can tell me if I’m doing something obviously wrong).
In other news, we’re going to my mom’s house again next weekend so I put in a break for my bedtime goal. As always, I hope I won’t really need it.
My YouTube goal is doing really well! I’ve gotten below 60! If I get below 50 consistently I may flatten the road a bit… not sure though, lower would be even better.
I am once again way above my Storygraph goal due to library books. I just can’t resist them!
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shakes fist Libraries, how dare they be so tempting!
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I’m always just popping in to pick up my holds and then they have all these interesting displays right next to the hold shelves…
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Wow, didn’t realize it had been so long since I updated here!
I spent the weekend at my mom’s house a couple weekends ago. I put a break in my bedtime goal for those two nights, thinking I’d be up later, but I actually ended up not feeling well for most of the weekend and going to bed early. So now that goal is nice and solidly in the green. Actually, I’ve been feeling unwell and going to bed early a lot. But the good news is I only have one chemo left, and then I should start to feel better!
I thought I’d been reading less but I’m still way above my Storygraph goal. So even though it feels like I’m not finishing enough books (I had to return a book unread to the library, and I hate doing that), I must still be reading a lot.
And… I had my first derail since getting back to Beeminder. Unsurprisingly, it was on my youtube goal. I had just gotten the goal to 50 and changed the rate from -2/week to -1/week; I realized that I have a lot of channels I’m trying to watch all the back catalog of, or at least all that’s interesting (at least 30 such channels), and considering how many videos I get through a day, having 50 on my list isn’t unreasonable. But I was watching a movie on Hoopla and failed to pay attention until suddenly it was bedtime and I had 52 videos on my list. Gah!
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No dialing or derails to report this week. I am, however, starting to think about what to do with my goals when I have surgery in 45 days. I expect 3 nights in the hospital, and then 6-8 weeks of recovery, though I’m sure I will be in good enough shape for my Beeminder goals within a couple of weeks at the most.
Storygraph - No need to change anything. I currently have 77 days of buffer so even if I stopped reading now I’d have nothing to worry about. I’m sure I will be reading a lot during recovery, though not necessarily updating Storygraph.
makestuff - Easy enough to put in a break for a couple of weeks. Hopefully I’ll be back to knitting before too long!
YNAB - The ideal would be to build up a buffer ahead of time, but I’ll probably put in a break.
bedtime - I’m not totally sure what to do with this one. I’m sure I’ll be going to sleep plenty early but I don’t want to worry about entering the time manually, especially when I’m on pain meds. I could put in a break but breaks are weird on a do less goal. Maybe I should archive it before the surgery and reactivate it when I’m feeling up for it.
YouTube - Pretty similar to the above… I bet I’ll be watching a lot of videos but I can’t be sure, and I definitely don’t want to have to manually update it every day, or stress about the number. Probably also a good candidate for archiving.
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It’s been 6 weeks since my surgery and I’m back to beeminding!
I did exactly what I said I would do in the above post. 
It’s a good thing I kept my YNAB and makestuff goals. YNAB I struggled with a bit when it was due again, but I’m back on track. The makestuff goal definitely pushed me to get crafting again, and once I started I didn’t stop (crafting every day). In fact, I finished and actually blocked the huge shawl I started right after my mastectomy a year ago! I’m delighted with it, even if it’s a lot bigger than it was supposed to be. That goal now has quite a large buffer. I suppose I should increase the rate but I’ll be going back to work soon so I’m hesitant.
I did a big ratchet on my Storygraph goal a few weeks ago and I once again have a huge buffer. I’m happy to be reading so much! It does feel pretty silly to even have this goal. I should probably replace it with a specific book goal, especially since I’m reading a hardback right now that I really want to finish before Sunday so I don’t have to pack it for vacation.
I put off restarting my YouTube goal but just did a couple days ago. Of course the number has crept up without a goal to keep it low. I’d love to get it back down below 50, and ideally even lower than that, just to keep organization manageable!
I’ve added a new goal as well, walk, which is a steps goal with Oura as the data source. Right now I have the goal quite low, just 2000 steps a day, but I definitely intend to increase it regularly. Now that I’m mostly recovered from surgery I really want to get back into shape for walking and hiking. I have been taking regular walks during recovery, extremely short at first and increasing from time to time, and I want to make sure I don’t stop increasing!
I’ve decided not to restart the bedtime goal as I’m not having trouble getting to bed on time. Getting to sleep once I am in bed has been a bit of a struggle, but that’s not exactly something I can Beemind!
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I restarted my booksss goal to beemind finishing The Listeners before I leave for vacation (even more important now that I’ve made a library trip and picked up… rather more books than I expected). Of course, I screwed it up again. 
notes to myself on what went wrong
I believe I made the goal number correct. However, I accepted the previous rate of 30, which was too high. I know better! I mean, 30 pages a day is a totally doable number, but I didn’t actually want Beeminder to force me to read faster than necessary. Especially since the goal date was less than a week away from the start.
I also failed to make the goal number the actual end, so the line keeps going up after the number I want to reach. I guess I’m going to have to put in some fake numbers at the end. Oh—or I could beemind my next book and put in those page numbers. That would work.
I currently have 3 ebooks out from the library—normally I don’t have more than 2 at a time, and more staggered than this—so I’m going to create a goal to finish them before the last one is due. It shouldn’t be too hard to finish them, especially since I’m going on vacation, but it will be nice to know whether I’m on track.
2000 steps a day seems to be ridiculously low, in fact, so I’ve increased the rate to 3000!
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I now have two reading goals, booksss for paper books and ebooks for, well, ebooks. It’s easy to add a new book to the end of the ebooks goal since I measure those by percentage! With booksss I’m trying to include the page count in the goal description since I don’t always count end matter like an index or bibliography and that confused me with The AI Con. Those goals are definitely helping me keep on track to finish books before they’re due back to the library!
I was really edge-skating with the YNAB goal while on vacation (not my usual mode) because I decided not to bring my laptop and it turns out it’s really hard to reconcile my main credit card account using only my phone. That took a lot of time and frustration to reconcile once I got back. Lesson learned, I hope! There was more than one day when I thought about just derailing but remembered that it would be really easy to reconcile my main checking account so I did that. I absolutely would not have reconciled on vacation and it would have been a pain to catch up without the goal, so Beeminder is really pulling its weight there.
YouTube goal continues to be -1 a week and going well. My list had definitely crept up so I’m glad to be shrinking it again.
I increased my walking goal to 3500 steps a day. Still have a big buffer. I also still have big buffers with makestuff and StoryGraph. I’m comfortable with those because with the number of goals I have now they’re also not really visible on the app at first glance, and if I can’t see them easily I want them to lack urgency!
I’m also trying out Time Stream after reading the blog post about it. I’ve been thinking for a while about tracking my morning and evening routines, partly in hopes of helping decrease the time they take. Time Stream seems to be exactly what I need! I’m not sure if I’ll Beemind anything with it, but I’m considering adding a writing session to one of the routines and that would be a really good thing to Beemind—just noting whether or not I did it, not how much time I spent (if and when I decide to Beemind writing time in the future, I would use Toggl).
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I ratcheted my steps goal to 3 days and increased the goal to 4000 steps a day. I also increased my steps goal inside Oura, though I’m annoyed that the goal options are limited!
I am loving Time Stream more and more! Pretty sure soon I’m going to start a writing goal to integrate with it.
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