Focusmate morning loop holes

Bugabee
1

Hello, newbee Beeminder user here. :slight_smile:

I use beeminder with focusmate because it helps me with two goals that I have struggled with for years (1. not waking up early, and 2. not wanting to study). This year I started residency, so I really can’t procrastinate studying as much as I used to, and my work schedule is not as flexible as when I was just a student, so I really can’t afford to not study early in the morning before I go to work.

I was using a morning beeminder deadline to force myself to get up early for 2 focusmate sessions (this has worked great so far!) however, I also use focusmate on the weekends for studying, usually I do multiple sessions on Sat and Sun, however these sessions counted toward my beeminder goal…thus, I felt like I was creating a loophole for my future self, by creating a “buffer zone.”

To get around this loophole/buffer issue, I created a second focusmate account, which I will use on the weekends, or any other time that is not the daily morning focusmate sessions I want to go toward my goal.

So far, this has mostly worked for me, however, sometimes I skip a morning session and then log in later in the day to do a session so it brings my counts back up so I stay on the green line. Which I guess is still okay, because at the end of the day I still do a session (but I would really prefer to not have the ability to do this, that would force me to reach my morning goal)

Also, if I’m really tight for time (usually because I didn’t wake up on time), instead of doing a 50 minute session (which is what I want for my goal) I’ll do a 25-minute session, which still counts toward the same focusmate count value I dont like this loop hole at all… (I am really trying not to do this!)

I am not very tech savvy, but I hope someone could eventually create/add features that would help eliminate my loop holes, (especially if it took away my ability to just do 25-min session instead of 50-min sessions). Also, if I could have it specifically look to see if I did a session either at a specific time, or within a specific time, to see that I did wake up early to study/do a session(s).

I will say, even with the loop holes, I still am more successful at waking up early compared to before I started beeminder by a significant amount!

Thanks for reading! :slight_smile:

1 Like
2

Closing one of the loopholes should be straightforward: you can set a Focusmate goal to count just sessions, or to count total time. So your daily rate could be 1 session/day or 50 minutes/day, with different effects. The help for setting up Focusmate goals is here: Focusmate - Beeminder Help

If you have a premium subscription at Bee Plus or higher, you can also take advantage of some of the custom goal features to help close the other loophole. For example, the “skatesum” option counts only enough of your achievement to keep you above the red line. So if you’re in the red, and your daily target is 2/day, then even if you record 5 sessions, only +2 will be added to your total - just enough to stop you derailing.

See more about these custom goal data aggregation features in the help, over here: Custom goals - Beeminder Help