Hi, I’m still a newbee so I’ll be happy to have this message moved to a maybe existing relevant thread didn’t find
My issue is that I tend to forget to enter data when finishing a goal. I do the task, everything goes well, then I totally forget about the data (this happened to me at least 2-3 times in the past month).
This usually happens on a good day after a bad period (after I’ve eaten up my buffer). And I got used to the buffer so I’m not very careful.
The other issue is that when I’m in a bad period, after a good period where I built buffer, I have to eat up through all of it before reaching beemergencies that’ll get me moving (I of course sometimes need the time, but I as well sometimes need the stuff done).
I know there is auto-ratchet, but I think I’d have trouble accepting that whatever the effort I do it will get caught up by the bright red line.
So what could I do to avoid all those issues with buffer, and not forgetting about the data?
Do you bees use this auto-ratchet a lot? Do you have some other recommendations? As I’m most probably not framing the question right, how should I approach this?
For example, I’m thinking I feel betrayed because maybe I’m not ready to pay even the small amounts of my current pledges. Lowering them could maybe releive the current frustration.
I’m as well maybe somewhere on the ADHD spectrum, because I do tend to forget things, even important things, even if I was reminded about them 10 minutes prior (including being reminded to enter data).
Another tings is that only SMS notifications reliably reach me (my other notifications are disabled, sanity requires this). But right now those aren’t really possible to have in Europe if I understood well; plus I’m not in any paid plans yet.
How about setting up a ‘check Beeminder regularly’ reminder/goal? Calendialing is similar.
Maybe you set it at a rate of once per week and when you head to beeminder you go through your goals assuring they have the data you want entered.
(Typically the check-once-week is used for adjusting the upcoming rate and setting breaks.)
Then you enter 1 and know you have entered all data for all goals up to that point.
Don’t fret, everyone forgets sometimes! It’s just a question of getting that number as low as you practically can, for your particular circumstances!
One thing you can start with is take advantage of all the autodata integrations: I never have to record my gym workouts, for example, as that comes “free” from the Garmin integration. Same with time worked on projects, where I record that with Toggl, and that is integrated to various Beeminder goals. Or maybe you might use Pomodoros, and link those automatically to Beeminder (Toggl has that feature too, although I don’t use it myself).
Of course not everything can be autodata’d. I wonder if you could link the action of “check today’s Beeminder data is added” to something you do every evening? Even something simple - put a Post-It note on your bathroom mirror so you see it when you’re cleaning your teeth, or something?
Indeed, automating would help, but I tend to use custom stuff that I would need to work on to get automated (custom apps on de-googled phone, computer running Debian, etc.)
I could indeed have reminders in strategic places, but my brain tends to phase them out when they’ve been in place for a while. Plus, I can always have a habit change and miss it, especially when I’m finishing a last goal before going to bed (and 20 minutes before the deadline I get distracted by something and forget to enter the data).
But maybe I’ll get better at this
I’m more and more thinking of setting all my deadlines for noon so I can just go to bed and finish the next morning if I want, just like @johnmarkos does (from his message in the Introduction thread)
The only subtlety I’d maybe like in consequence is my goals to switch to beemergency (in red) on midnight the day before the deadline, and not just 24h before.
This is an interesting feature request! Right now, you could use the autoratchet function (which does require premium Beeminder subscription) to keep you down to 1 day of buffer max. But if your deadline was noon, that would put you in the red from noon the day before - not from midnight, which is what you want.
This might be a case for a script: you want to run it at midnight, and reduce the buffer to 0 days but only for those goals that haven’t had data entered that day. (You need this last bit to save you if you’ve entered data earlier that day) I just asked my LLM of choice (Gemini) to do this, and it came up with some credible-looking code, which I won’t paste as I haven’t debugged it!
You could run this with a cron job on your Debian machine; if that might be offline, you could put it in the cloud with a scheduled cloud function (AWS and Google both let you do this, in slightly different ways, for cents a day).
Thanks for your indications! I can do some scripting with beeminder? How do I start? Ooh there’s an API right? Ok, found the docs, I’ll eventually look into this: http://api.beeminder.com
Indeed, auto-ratchet seems it would fit well some of my needs, but I’m frightened It’ll demotivate me to see my efforts constantly “compensated for” by this system (for example, right now I’m confortably ahead on many goals, and for now I like those moments when I can breathe a bit before beemergencies start banging on my door)
I’m realising I don’t know if I was clear about this midnight thing though: I’d like the goal to switch to beemergency on midnight 2 days ahead; so if the goal is set too noon: 36 hours before. The idea beeing that I’m reminded the day before is the day when my goal needs dealing with, but if I’m really late I can decide to go to sleep and carry on the next morning (not too often ideally).
(Maybe there could even be a small cost to push it back to the next morning, like a fixed $2.5? But this is getting probably too complicated)
This part you can do already, if I’m understanding your request correctly: as well as the countdown alerts on the day of potential derailment (when your goal is in the red), you can also get regular daily reminders for some number of days beforehand (max 30, iirc). You do this by setting a number in the “Lead Days” field of the Deadlines & Reminders section of the Settings tab.
Here’s an example from one of my goals: Lead Days is set to 1, so one day before the last day (i.e., 2 days before the ultimate deadline), I’ll be sent a reminder that my goal is getting close to derailment.
