Goal for not working more than x hours

Akrasia
1

Some people have a work-life balance. Others are freelancers and load on the work while we can get it, which cough might not be healthy for us, and coughcough our wives might wish we would rein it in.

Now there’s always my usual standby (manual goal, +1 when I meet the goal), but I’m actually thinking I’d like it to be somewhat out of my hands (to avoid the temptation to say “well today it was justified” so it doesn’t count)… and I’d like to be stung every time I go over, with no buffer or anything (because my work can be quite variable and I could easily rack up safety buffer for months and months and then go a month overworking every day, or something stupid). So I think that’s a non-cumulative goal I want, probably… which means I’m eyeing @mary for potential advice here. :stuck_out_tongue:

I track my work hours using Toggl. I have beemium, so I can do custom goals.

Have at it, what should I do?

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Are you thinking “no more than n hours / day,” or “I never want to work after [insert time here]”?

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The former! I don’t mind the time I stop, just the overall time worked.

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Just set up a do-less, non-cumulative goal - that should do it perfectly.

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This makes me wonder: Why is there no goal type that combines do-more and do-less in one? That would be perfect for this, wouldn’t it?

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That was my first instinct, but I remembered Mary saying non-cumulative goals can be tricky… I suppose the easiest thing is to give it a try!

We get occasional requests for this, but really not that many. Not sure how technically difficult it is… :thinking:

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Oooh… is this so you wouldn’t have to worry about autoratcheting?

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Yeah, that was my initial reason for thinking it sounds like a non-cumulative goal – no ratcheting, no buffer, exact same expectations every day.

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I don’t understand what you mean - why would autoratcheting be an issue?

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I think @narthur means that in the sense that it avoids needing to use autoratcheting.

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Still so confused! :confounded: :confused: (lol that first smiley is described as “confounded”!)

Why would it be needed? How would it work with autoratcheting?

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If you wanted to ensure that you worked less than 8 hours every day using a normal sum goal, you’d have to use autoratcheting to avoid building up buffer on days you worked less than 8 hours. By not using summing, seems like you avoid that need.