Gmzamz’s Beeminder journal

[gmzamz]

I figure I’ll give this whole public Beeminder journal a try. My only guarantee is that I do it for at least 2 months, after that I’ll think on whether it helped and may or may not continue. I try to only do automatic data input type goals, since adding another thing I have to remember to do each day means Beeminder would just derail a ton then I’d just delete my account. This will cover the past week, except for this post which will cover up to today.

Goals

Basic health stuff

• Brushie - Todoist - Working fairly well. This goal, the floss goal and screentime alone make Beeminder worth it. I’ve seen some people split day/night, not sure if I’ll eventually migrate to that or keep a single overall count.
  • dial: It’s currently at 10/week but I’m going to bump it to 12 a week. I haven’t derailed and I’d like to brush more. I don’t think I’ll ever go past that to account for days where I’m not home or are otherwise occupied
• Floss - Todoist - Definitely skating the line on this one. It’s still at $5 and I haven’t derailed yet, which is surprising since I’d figured my aversion to doing it was higher. Maybe I just needed something more significant than a reminder notification.
  • dial: Not increasing yet. Maybe in a week or two to 6/wk
• Moreprotein - Todoist - This was intended as a protein+creatine shake goal, but I generally treat this as ‘any protein >30g in a single sitting’. That however loses out on the creatine when I just slam a can of tuna/salmon. Maybe I should rename this to protein shake? Or make a separate creatine goal. Or consider making this a ‘grams of protein’ instead of just ‘specifically ate protein’ combined with a separate creatine goal. Something to think on.
  • dial: Not adjusting rate
  • derail: Derailed because my shaker bottle was dirty, solved by buying 4x $3 bottles
• Wakeup and earlybedtime - API + iOS shortcuts - right now these are both tracking only goals. I’m not entirely sure what ‘ideal’ looks like and how I should even track these. I have both set as ‘minutes before’ the ideal bedtime (including negative minutes) and both only count the last goal (so I can go to bed, get up to do something, and go back to bed without faffing around with data entry). Ideal bedtime is just a note in the ios shortcut so that might too easy to change once this has teeth, but I’ll tackle that when it happens.
  • wakeup - I will say that right now the wakeup goal is EXTRMELY weaselable. It’s set whenever sleep focus is turned off and it’s just waaaaay too easy to do that while still in bed and just roll over. Eventually I think I’ll migrate to bed detection (somehow) or only adding a datapoint when I first complete a todo in todoist. Or potentially using the garmin2database I saw somewhere and pulling wakeup time or a heartbeat analytic to determine when I actually start moving. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
    • dial: not yet, need to see the data to see what’s reasonable
  • earlybedtime - working fairly well even though there’s zero chance I’ll derail right now. given that it only accepts the last datapoint, it’s fairly robust. I even get a neat little notification on my watch with my ‘score’ for instant feedback whenever I trigger the automation : )
    • dial: not yet, need to see the data to see what’s reasonable
• snooze - iOS shortcut - too easy to weasel. Just cancel the alarm and ask siri to set a timer or something - see wakeup. going to archive this one next week until I figure out a way to make it more rigid. I do like the idea of it but the overlap with wakeup makes me think it might just be a bad way to track things
  • dial: N/A since I’m archiving
  • derail: I derailed once and it just felt bad because let’s be real, I was barely even conscious when making that choice.

Exercise (my enemy!)

• Runmore - Garmin - created this goal simultaneously with actually deciding to run. Primarily been doing long slow runs to increase endurance. sometime next early next year I’ll add speedwork. It’s working well so far but mostly because I’ve actually wanted to run, and Beeminder hasn’t had to nag me. $5 probably won’t be enough when my motivation runs (hehe) out.
  • dial: Bumping to 2.5hr/week to encourage running 3x a week.
  • Since this uses the generic ‘time’ integration it catches my walking activities which I then have to delete the next day. I’ll write a script to fix this #eventually
• gymtime - api + ios shortcuts - how much Time I spend in the gym/doing non-running exercise. Derailed once. set to derail today unless I do some pushups or something. getting the motivation to actually work out is tough. Definitely built an aversion to it after not working out for months. Might change to a +1 ‘walked into a gym/did one exercise’ type goal. or combine with Forfeit for a month or so to build the habit again.
  • dial: uuuuuugh leaving the same
  • derail: one time - got too late and I didn’t want to work out
  • tech wise, this pushes two timepoints before and after the gym focus is enabled. Then Beeminder auto sums it. would be way easier if I could just track a single garmin workout activitiy though. #eventually

Mental health

• Journal - Todoist - self-explanatory
  • dial: rate feels a bit low, increasing to 6/wk to reduce how ‘chunky’ it is compared a an everyday habit
  • derail: looking back, I derailed on a Friday so I probably got very distracted that night and it caught up with me
• Screentime - API + iOS shortcuts + a slightly suss app - iPhone screentime as measured by Jomo. PRAISE BE, this has actually reduced my phone usage. Though now I’m spending some of that time on my laptop/ipad. BUT NOT ALL OF IT.
  • dial: Rate seems good for now, though I’m skating HARD. I don’t want to increase it in case I convince myself to hate this goal and want to archive it.
  • derail: I derailed once this week.
  • truthfully this goal doesn’t really ‘fit’ how I expect it to. a derail gives me a bunch more time to waste? seems like the opposite of what I want it to do. I’m considering kicking around integrating the direct charge API endpoint to have escalating stings the more I use that day. I.E. break past daily rate → $5, next hour → $10 and so forth.
    • going to try reducing the post-rail respite for now, but that feels like it might be a bit too ‘sticky’?
  • tech wise: It works right now, no idea how long it’ll work since I suspect apple might come down on the app exposing screentime like it does.

Meta-productivity stuff

• morepomodoro- todoist - I don’t like this. part of it is that I haven’t had the motivation to actually START a pomo in a while. and partly because friction is a bit high while at the same time being too easy to cheat since it’s just a todo to check off. friction is weird because literally all I have to do is ask siri to start a timer. archiving this
• toggl - toggl - same as above. NOT archiving this in the hopes I use toggl more. but this single goal adds another app to the number of things I have to keep track of. I don’t like this but I NEED to be more intentional.
• beemindjournal - rssminder - partially as a way to get access to the discord, partially as a way to try to stay accountable to more than just myself (since kmy track record with self accountability isn’t great). This is the first entry and like I mentioned earlier, going to do this for at least two months.
  • dial: N/A since it’ll only ever be once a week
• checktodos - ios shortcuts - just a +1 everytime I open todoist. zero danger of derailing. since the point of this was ‘actually use todoist’ and I have goals that require me to use todoist I’m archiving this

New beeminds

• nothing this week, adding for the template next week
• ideas:
  • YNAB spend less on dining out
  • YNAB less non-approved/un-categorized transactions and un-reconciled accounts. I have more than a hundred transactions to approve T_T
  • garmin walk everyweekday
  • min one extra beemind a week (or a similiar ‘improve systems’ goal)
  • whittle-down beeminder blog
  • read less fiction - no idea how I’d track this

Misc thoughts

• legit/nonlegit - all of my derails were 'legit’, though again, not really sure about the snooze one. All the others were deliberately choosing to go to bed without doing it. Looking back, WOW 9 derails. I’m thinking that’s mostly because $5 is well below my ‘this actually matters’ point and my lizard brain can’t multiply. I can see most of my stuff moving to $30 or $90 since that much money actually feels substantial
• Progressive decreasing of the pledge - I’ve been considering when it’s okay to dial back how much money is on the line (I suspect my pledges will get very high soon, but if that actually changes my habits… #worthit). Right now, I’m not not going to be decreasing at all for at least 3 months. I’ve just got this vague feeling that it’s okay to decrease if you haven’t derailed in some time, probably 1-3 months. And maybe only decreasing if you’ve derailed less than 1-2 times at that pledge level to avoid going below your ‘actually matters’ point. but that’s for #futureme to work on. #presentme has enough on his plate
• API - I love it. esp since there’s always going to be some wacky custom onesie-twosie integration that literally nobody else uses and there’s no way that be doable if only official integrations were supported.
  • But also it’d be nice if there was a spec for integrations so we could crowdsource them.
• non-cumulative goals - I’m kicking this around for bedtime/wakeup. I know I’d lose out on ‘graph go up’ but I think these goals are similar to weight loss/maintain goals where you’re trying to stay under a number.
• diet - I’d like to Beemind this since mine isn’t great, but I’m not really sure how to track this tbh. number of healthy meals, number of actual meals and not just fancy snacks, carb/fat/protein numbers, something else? Right now my diet sucks so clearly something has to change
• This is way too long so I’m cutting it off here

Feel free to share thoughts/tips/congrats/condolences/etc

[skorytnicki]

What techniques do you use to reduce screen time and what’s your daily / weekly target if I might ask.