Halflight - beeminder journal

Life
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I’ve been testing the waters for a few weeks now, and thought it might help me to keep a journal of my findings.All my goals have a cap on $5 for now, I’m already motivated by merely the thought of derailing.

My initial motivation for starting with beeminder was toothbrushing. I was unable to get it over once a day for longer periods. And started a bit optimistically with a goal that forced me to brush twice a day for six days, and three times a day on one day (measured as (6*2 + 3)/7).

Now I just keep it to twice a day, to cut myself some slack. I haven;t derailed yet - but had quite a few days that I really had to stick to it to prevent derailing. If I ever get to the green line, I will make the slope steeper (not sure how much yet, but enough to make sure I’ll eventually drop back to blue - to prevent slacking. To make things easier, I made an ios shortcut that will log if I brushed for breakfast or lunch. And an automation that will automatically log dinner, because I already have a healthy evening routine.

My second goal was weight. There’s a big choir performance coming up, and I want to feel good about my look (I’m short and a bit overweight). Initially I had 2 kg buffer, but past me was very optimistic about how well it would go and ratcheted a lot away within a few days. Now it’s about between + 0.2 and 0.6 , so I’ll probably derail.

But that’s fine. Should I derail, I’ll get my original buffer back. In the meantime, I paused the goal, to a point that I should have my buffer back if I keep making healthy choices. I hope that’ll do the trick, but else I’ll derail in a week (that’s the max I go without weighing).

My strategy on this goal is: walk at least 6000 steps a day, complete my activity rings on the apple watch without lowering them and don’t take too much sugar (drinks / candy) and unhealthy snacks. I have no complementary weigh-in goal, but that’s ok. My scale is connected to apple health, so as soon as I step on it, beeminder knows.

My third goal is also choir related. I want to practice at least three times a week. At first I created an ios shortcut that made me log all the details about amount of minutes and the type of practicing (choreography, just listening to the audio, singing with sheet music or just reading sheetmusic / lyrics). It went ok, untill I made a separate choreo goal. That made me stressed instead of motivated. Now I just log the amount of times with as aggday non-zero.

I can enter the data manually. But if I open an app that I solely use for choir, streaks will log my progress too. In the evening, as I open beeminder, the automation will check if I completed my goal, and if so, log it automatically. Because of the non-zero aggday I will only create more buffer if I start practicing more days. For now I aim to keep the goal blue.

My final goal is screentime related. I find myself doomscrolling too much, so I log my browsertime for phone and tablet with an ios shortcut. I use it next to ios screentime, to make sure I actually stick to it. As a bonus I switched my phone browser to firefox focus, and gradually switch it on my tablet too. This means I’m adjusting the screentime settings for amount of time on normal browser daily, and the total amount of time weekly.

Luckily I have made two ios shortcuts to help me calculate the required amount and the total current amount.

That’s it for now. Maybe I’ll create a goal about grocery shopping or beeminder posts. Nothing too hard, but to encourage myself to drop by on the forum if I need anything and make sure I’ll never find an empty fridge if I want to start cooking. But I tried more than four goals, and up until now, I always found myself deleting them again within a few days. Let’s see how it goes!

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By the way - in my introduction post I mentioned scrolls too - for browsing on the phone in general. I replaced it with allowing less screentime for my browser on my phone before I max out on all browsing time. And I’ll ratchet that goal and match screentime settings to it - when it’s ridiculously easy to get to the goal for more than 2 weeks. The comment of the data shows how many hours / minutes for each device, so it’s easy to see if I’m not setting myself up for a disaster :sweat_smile: .

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This is often so powerful! It can get difficult to always have your goal in the red/never feel like there’s an easy win, so making sure there’s a little bit of slack in the goal really helps, even if it’s just a little. And there’s always ratcheting if you build up too much safety buffer but don’t want to make the goal harder.

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Yeah I tried - but as for losing kg’s it’s the worst thing to do :sweat_smile:. That’s a lot harder to keep up to - I found that the first weight losing is the easiest, and every value within 2kg range is possible when you have a ‘good’ day followed by a ‘bad’ day. So I’ll never touch it again for my weight.

But for the other goals it’s an option.

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Still wondering if it’s the right way of logging for screentime. I made a little iOS shortcut that lets me log

  • if I browsed at night
  • if I tampered with browsing restrictions on my pc or devices
  • I I overruled iOS screentime settings
  • If I ate dinner or daytime meals without screens
  • My own feeling about today rated 0-10

This generates a rating between 0 and 5. I must score 3 to pass.

I’ll try both for a couple of days, maybe I’ll archieve the original screentime goal for a while - as it’s a lot of work to log and adjust. In the meantime this way lets me finetune iOS screentime every week without any hassle.

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Oops. Had a bad night. Not the best start for this new goal, but I refuse to start with a clean slate. Just serves as a very good reminder why I shouldn’t go on a browsing spree at night. I spent more than my screentime allowance and installed another dedicated app to avoid using my browser. So I defined two extra rules:

  • installing an app while browser has same functionality counts as breaking screentime
  • a day starts after I get up (specifically: 7:30 AM) so that I won’t start a day in the negative

For yesterday it meant I had to log 1.4, as I didn’t break blocking apps and thought I scored 4/10. Everything else didn’t work

Now I re-installed Offscreen, to warn me from using all my browsing minutes at night.

I’m not entirely happy with the choir goal anymore. Maybe I should lower Streaks too. Or do something else that makes it more worth it to practice.

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Even though I was about to archieve the screentime goal, I still filled it in today. And derailed. I dreaded as much when I saw the screentime yesterday after lunch and couldn’t be bothered to recalculate how I should adjust iOS screentime.

But somehow it feels actually good to own it. How easy it would have been to say: nah, not going to add any data today. Or just fudge it a bit because screentime didn’t work entirely as intended. However - I could have prevented this easily by adjusting iOS screentime - or go looking for some other way to pass time. Just makes me rethink about archieving. Maybe I’ll keep it after all.

It’s like some sort of tax on how I spend my time.

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My goals are doing good today.

Screentime-hours was a valuable lesson. I went to the guests room, because I couldn’t sleep, and on purpose didn’t take my phone with me. Normally I would - I listen to some music podcast to help me sleep. But as it was 5 AM already, I just knew I would go for some browsing if I did. Maybe I’ll look for a podcast app on my Apple Watch- then I can have the music without the browsing trap.

The screentime-rating app makes me more aware of some other habits as well. I intentionally uninvited my phone and browser for dinner. It feels good to have an extra incentive here. From today, I’ll see what the blocking app does too. It makes sure I won’t cheat the hours goal.

Yesterday was logged as 4.1. I rated 6/10 did almost everything: no phone in bed, no iOS screentime or blocking app adjusted, no phone at dinner. It feels almost too easy - but no phone at dinner is still hard. And having a bad (sleepless) night invites all kinds of rule breaking. I’ll see how I feel about this in a month.

Weight is doing good. Currently on BMI 24.8. More than 1 KG below my goal for today. I’m not doing anything extreme to get there. But replacing some food and drink choices with healthier ones pays off. The small break helps too, maybe. But I’ll keep monitoring it. At least weekly.

Brushing tooth is fine. I had one weekend day when I didn’t brush after breakfast or lunch, but today I’ll do both to make up for it. My intention is to try to push that line to green, without making it harder.

Choir: automations adjusted. Now everything should log effortlessly. I’m wondering if I should change the aggday to sum, but that gives me too much room to cheat. So I’ll just stick to this.

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Same for me, so I don’t have a real weight goal anymore. You can see the historical fluctuation on the goal’s statistics page, as 90% variance. Mine is 0.9kg, or about 8% of my current mass.

Weighing regularly helps awareness which then has a chance to influence behaviour, so a meta goal that gets a +1 every time you weigh yourself can help. (Choose Beeminder as the data source new goal.)

You’ll find loads of weight-loss discussion on here, but a lot of it boils down to goals to improve the inputs rather than the outcomes. e.g. steps per day, days without carbs, time spent exercising

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Yeah, I rather not put some extra pressure on it. :sweat_smile:

When I have enough buffer, I’ll probably weigh more often. But I know it won’t help me right now, since I’m already very well looking after my eating and activity habits. Beeminding my weight is more like a compass, and an incentive to be careful with the sugar and fat intake. And it’s very easy to track. I either meet the goal, or I don’t.

If I stop weighing altogether, I’ll derail soon enough anyway.

Still thanks for pointing out the possibility of tracking beeminder itself and the discussions on weight though, I’ll dive into it.

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On beeminding weight…

I’ve been thinking a bit about this for a day. When I made my goal, I had a few reasons for wanting to beemind it.

  • My BMI indicated that I was overweight, which made me concerned about my health.
  • Up until I was a young adult, I used to be thin (BMI < 20).
  • Because I’m small, I’ll look heavy easily.
  • I feel like I don’t look like myself on stage, because of that.

So I set a beeminder, targeted to a weight that wasn’t impossible (BMI 23.15), but definitely would make some impact. Now that I’ve been with this goal for a month, I see some changes already. Both on the scale and how my clothes look on me. But I also feel some anxiety about the pace that I have to keep up with to prevent derailing. I regretted not setting the goal to 2 kg above my original value.

As mentioned, I could have logged input instead of output. But the scale doesn’t lie, and a lot of activity-based logging doesn’t work for me, because of other health issues. On top of that, I’m too lazy to log food / drinks - so yeah, it has to be weight.

Still, something felt off. I mentioned before I wanted beeminder as a compass, not as a threat. And while the stakes are still low, I knew something needed to change. Yes, I want to lose weight. Yes, I don’t want to see the numbers I left behind back anytime soon. But the big choir performance happens only once in three years and I don’t want to go back to were I was after that. So I reformulated my goal.

“I want to gradually lose weight. Before the choir performance, I want a hard cap on my current weight - 1 kg, to make sure I won’t see the high numbers back again. In the end I want to keep a healthy weight, beneath BMI 24”.

I see the flaws of using output, but I hope to reduce them. Now I can log every day without pushing too hard, but in the end I’ll still meet my goal.

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Yesterday was a bit of a screentime trap - as it was too hot to do anything outside. I noticed in time to prevent myself from derailing with browsing - so that part works. But it was a very close call, and I noticed that I switched to other apps.

The rating says I was a bit off too - the only box I could tick tonight was no phone in the bedroom. Today I’ll try my best to do it all: no disabling of screentime and blocking settings, no phone during daytime meals and dinner and no phone in the room. With some mindful tech usage today I might approach a full score - even though rating myself 10/10 is impossible unless I have a real tech detox day.

Tooth brushing is good, I’ll try for 3 times today again. I love how I finally manage to stick to at least two times, with Beeminder as a help.

Weight is fine - I’ll try every other day now.

Maybe today it’s time to practice some choir. That’s still falling behind a bit. I guess I should create an extra timer goal for it after all, and link it to an x times / week goal.

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I’ve been thinking a bit about my goals. Weight is still going strong, slowly but steadily I keep approaching my goal. I’m weighing myself about 3 times / week. Sometimes it’s 0,5 kg higher, sometimes 0,5 kg lower. But clearly cutting out the chocolate, candy and sugary drinks is paying off.

Brushing my teeth is great too - I actually have increased it to brush 3 times on one day, and add one more day now.

As for browsing: the browsing goal itself feels like a bit of nonsense. I barely come close to the deadline and it’s not helping anything to fill in daily. I started the archive process yesterday, but maybe I should just log weekly and use the average of all week. Then I still have some guideline, but no daily obligation.

Screen time rating has had a bit of a review.

I have a rating from 1 - 5 based on

  • if I browsed before 7:30 AM
  • If I broke screentime restrictions
  • if I used my phone during daytime meals
  • if I used my phone during dinner
  • An own rating that takes into account how I felt about my screen usage.

Choir: still not sure about the best approach. One day I want to log time and the other just the effort of rehearsing. For now I’ll just log efforts, as times / week means more consistency.

Summary: I try to keep logging as easy as possible and not measure one objective with two goals. Because they’re so tied that if one fails, the other probably as well, and it’s just extra work. My goal for next weeks is keep the goals just as they are right now and stick to it - the tooth brushing goal and weight goal show that it works already.

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Update: weight is still slowly but steady trending downward. I still stay away from the sugar and burn at least 350 active calories / day, and it shows. It makes me pretty confident that I’ll reach my goal for October. Maybe I’ll even reach my original target - but there’s no pressure anymore. Just a gentle nudge, and that works for me.

Teeth brushing has no issues either. Looks like all I needed was a nice graph and a shortcut that I can use to log. The only thing that might need improvement is that I shouldn’t log after 10 AM for brushing breakfast, or after 14:00 for brushing after lunch. But that rarely happens so it’s okay for now.

Choir: I need to adjust an automation. It’s not very reliable. At least I’m practicing 3 times / week again. But I should create a plan on what to practice on longer sessions.

Browsing: I’ll see how it goes next Monday. Probably I’ll have to ratchet it for a bit, because it’s way above my average use. On the other hand, night browsing is still an issue. But I was inspired by another users post about Brick and how to block the settings app with it. A Brick has too much shipping costs for me - but the instructions are useful with other apps like Freedom as well. So I’m using that instead.

Screentime rating: adjusting was a great incentive for no phone during meals. It’s starting to become normal. I just wish the nights were better.

Finally, I’ve created a very easygoing goal on forum posts. But it doesn’t need any attention, so it’s no effort at all.

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No real news until now, so no updates. Still no derailments, but today I’ll cut myself some slack for toothbrushing. I’ve been traveling for 8 hours yesterday, to help my mom get home safely. And while it was fun and felt good, I feel a bit drained today. Some goals went from green to blue, no big deal. And I decided that I’ll give daily screentime logging a try once more.

While it’s a bit more work, it’s much more honest than an average of the whole week. I’ll probably put more effort in screentime rating by beeminding this goal more often, too.

Now it’s starting to feel like: oh, I already accomplished some parts. So now I can eat with an iPad next to me, or ignore the designed no news updates hours. While writing this, I’m starting to think it might be related to when I log. I used to log in the morning, with sleeping without phone as the very last thing I could get extra points for. Now I log before sleep, making it easier to compensate for one of the hardest smartphone habits.

I’m considering two options.

  • upping my threshold rating a bit, so that I can’t compensate too much within a day.
  • logging in the morning again

Might be the first - it motivates me to stay on top of my game more.

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I noticed that I’m not really motivated to do the admin for the browsing goal, since I never even got close to derailing again and it’s in a way a duplicate of the screen time rating goal. So I scheduled to archive it.

Screen time rating is more useful. It helps me to stay aware of when I use my devices as intended. There’s still a lot of buffer, but also some bad ratings. I’ll keep it steady at 3.5 / day.

Tooth brushing and weight are both great motivators. I barely touch any chocolate again, and brushing my teeth after breakfast starts to feel like a habit. But I like the graph and the extra nudge - I’ll keep them.

Choir: I’m 100% sure I do a lot more than without the goal. Maybe I’ll try to practice choir choreo more too, starting now

New goal: I want to try two new things.

Forum posts - not with a high amount of posts, just a gentle nudge to drop by.

Reading - I want to join the month challenge, and I want to rediscover the fun of reading. Maybe I’ll start rereading Harry Potter as a first. It’s been so long, and it helps improve my English too.

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It has been more than a week since I wrote here, so let’s see.

Browsing goal is gone. I don’t miss the amount of logging it requires, and I’m starting to see that for this goal, I rather focus on specific situations and what I should do instead of using my iPad.

Screentime rating is still going strong. Current score is mostly above 4, and it definitely feels more routine - like to remove devices from the table if I’m going to have a meal. Yesterday I forgot to log though. But with the amount of buffer I have, I won’t add the data today. Today I slept badly because of stomach issues, so I won’t have the best marks for today either. And that too is ok, I still have plenty of buffer and this is a bit of a nudge that I should leave my phone alone at night.

Tooth brushing - steeper graph and forgot to brush in the morning or make up for it in the afternoon. Now it’s orange - oops! Maybe I should try for 3 times brushing today and hope the goal won’t come haunt me before the weekend ends. I can’t brush tooth for lunch this weekend, as I’m on the road during daytime.

Choir - I’ve been slacking a bit and it shows. Another orange. Good thing I expect to practice today and am planning to listen to the audio files while traveling this weekend. Yesterday it even eeped. I’m glad for it. Without the goal, I definitely would keep on postponing until suddenly choir rehearsals start again.

Forum: it’s neither hurting nor helping. Just there for the stats at the moment.

Reading: well, that escalated quickly! I didn’t realize that I could almost literally devour books if I really like them. I’ve already read up until the last book, but never logged the last one because I didn’t want to interrupt my reading. So I’ll have an attempt at reading the last book again starting today. For sure I won’t log chapters anymore after the Harry Potter books are all tracked. I’ll just log when I lay down the book. I also modified my red line heavily to be more in tune with my reading pace. After the Harry Potter books it will just become a nudge again - as I expect to have a lot less spare time.

Almost forgot: weight hit a bit of a plateau, but it’s okay. Friends say it’s starting to show, and I’ve been a bit slacking on the sugar intake.

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I made some changes - so here’s an update.

Tooth brushing is back to twice a day, because I skipped a few times and it was quite a struggle to get back from the red.

Weight is going pretty well. The numbers on the scales are dropping slowly but steadily, just as I wanted.

Screen time; could be worse, could be better. No device at the kitchen table is almost 100% successful, as is no phone in the bedroom. And yet I find myself scrolling on the couch a lot, leaving the table in a hurry after a meal. I think I’ll block news sites during breakfast, lunch and dinner times, and hope that will do the trick.

Choir has gone, because the rehearsals started again and it comes with enough homework and motivation to put some effort in it.

Forum goal: I’m having mixed feelings. One day I think I should delete it, since it’s not hurting nor helping, and the other day I think: it’s just a gentle reminder and I like the stats

Reading: Harry Potter books were logged and finished soon after the last post, and I’m diving into a new series now. The Lunar Chronicles, by Marissa Meyer. But I’m not done with Harry Potter yet, I want to write a fanfic now. I’m not sure which one of both I’ll choose for the goal of next month. Could be reading in general, could be writing.

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Here’s an update - because a lot changed.

The day the choir goal disappeared, I instantly felt regret. Because within two days I realized that choir wasn’t going to practice itself and I felt like I didn’t do my homework while rehearsing. So I got it back, and had to ask support team for some help too - because it was set up in a way that it instantly derailed when resurrected.

Weight - I made it a bit harder. My current limit is 0.5 kg above my current weight, because I was starting to see an endless amount of buffer. To keep it doable, I created a break that keeps it on that weight for a while.

I also made a check-weight goal, to make sure I don’t get tempted to skip weighing while my current data looks pretty good and weighing is a risk.

Screentime rate: no change in rate, but in the parameters:

  • sleep with no screen
  • meals (with no screen)
  • don’t change screentime settings
  • wake up (no iPad until dressed, breakfast and brushed teeth)

Extra questions about

  • breaking app limits
  • more than 3h screentime
  • unintentionally iPad on the couch

Sounds pretty harsh, but I really want to end this endless browsing habit.

Forum - still doing its job, actually an eep today, oops!

Brush teeth is going just fine, no problems there.

Other new / old goals:

Write - new goal, I want to improve my writing habit. This will be my September goal

Read more - I want to keep the reading habit but without too much pressure. So no chapter counting, just new books and start of day.

Read - this went too fast, I can’t believe it took less than two weeks to finish all Harry Potter books. Archived for now

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It has been a while. And I’ve adjusted a lot, because I found that due to choir and my general wellbeing, I shouldn’t push my self too hard on ‘nice to have’ stuff. I really don’t want to derail and it asks too much of me to do everything at once. The only remaining goals are:

  • tooth brushing (helps my teeth stay healthy)
  • weight (I’m down to BMI 23.7, dropped about 3 whole bmi points since I started)
  • choir (I just can’t quit practicing, with a big performance this Friday and Saturday and change to Christmas songs right afterwards)
  • rate screens (revamped version with new graph starting tomorrow, I disliked how I kept re-inventing what I actually logged, making it unclear).

I’ll just have to adjust some final things for rate screens, and then I’ll set it up tomorrow. Initially just with a minimum of 2/5, and then see where it goes in a month.

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