Last night I’ve derailed on ~10 goals all at $5. These were relatively fine-grained, covering a total of 3-4 primary goals I’ve talked about in another thread. As part of that attempt to reap all the benefit from Beeminder… Here’s what’s going on through my mind.
Some are tangentially related, but I think they relate to one of the problems addressed here: the jump from $5 to a many-times higher cost disincentivizes making more fine-grained goals. (Fine-grained goals are otherwise helpful in covering various aspects of one goal. Putting such “multi-dimensional guardrails” in place helps, otherwise, optimize the awesomeness achieved by Beeminder usage.)
I’d then take it one more step that otherwise remains too implicit: Awesomeness points of doing this isn’t worth the many-times-$5 cost, hence our willingness to consider alternatives that cap the cost.
Few aspects of my Beeminder usage are relevant.
Fake-data is a no-go. Most of my graphs display numbers on Y-axis. An aspect of Beeminder I’ve long under-appreciate is that I accumulate motivation in units of “X units of A by date D.”
On motivating no-fake-data like this…
I’m focusing primarily on “By D, a total of X units of A.” Most of my goals (being of a particular nature) benefit primarily from this. “Having never dipped below bright line” matters much less, if at all.
This focus allows for “borrowing from future” to prevent derails. I have mixed feelings about this. When internal motivation is fueling me, it helps me avoid unnecessary costs while tracking a total of X units of A by D, albeit at lower resolutions. (In the long run this has no impact.) When I’m out of fuel, this is simply path to ruins. I’ll eventually start a fresh goal on the same topic. In the process I’ll lose all “accumulated motivation”.
I wonder whether Beeminder team would ever consider borrowing from future as a feature? (@dreev ?)
Learning how to make sure it’s worth it OR preventing it is valuable. I use Beeminder mostly as a stinging reminder to achieve these. What happened last night stings quite a bit: (1) Some of the goals I derailed on have not delivered $5 value between the previous and this derailment. (2) If I sat down 7 days ago and just added flat spots without guilt, I’d be able to save bucks. I haven’t even tried.
My immediate action has been putting in a(n additional) 7-day flat lines to all derailed goals, starting as early as possible.
In this period, I’d like to look at each and choose:
- derailment was worth it
- I most likely ramp up to the rate I left at so I can pursue it into the future.
- Also consider no-excuses mode for these goals
- derailment wasn’t worth it
Not sure what to do when it wasn’t worth it. But I’d rather do that explicitly, rather than having to account for that in this process.
I suppose there’s some math magic in the way Beeminder is formulated, that could guide me in choosing this. Perhaps “Was this worth it?” after derailments + some guidance as to how to frame things would be a nice level up for Beeminder?