What is the best way to use Beeminder not to whittle down an email backlog but to prevent one from accumulating? Suppose that when I deal with an email I move it from the inbox to the archive and my inbox is presently empty. How should I use Beeminder to maintain this state of affairs? For example, is there a way to use Beeminder to ensure that my inbox is empty at least once per day? I think this is different from whittling down a backlog, as discussed here. And is there a way to do this—or something with the same purpose—automatically, say, with the Gmail integration?
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A whittle-down goal (i.e. inbox zero with the gmail integration) with a flat slope on 0 emails in the inbox will do this!
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Should I beemind read, unread or all messages? The default is read, but it seems there is a problem: if I never open my email I will pass Beeminder’s goal, but that is exactly the kind of behaviour I want to stop. How does beeminding all messages work? Does Beemind check that the inbox is empty at least once a day, or does it have to be empty at a certain time, like 12 a.m.?
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I think read is just the default because some people (maybe danny in particular?) use a workflow where they leave emails that need attention as read, and then archive emails when they’ve been dealt with. If you archive or delete things then all works fine; I use unread.
If you empty your inbox, you should immediately click the little refresh button on the goal to make sure it catches it. Otherwise it checks at various points over the course of the day, I don’t know exactly when. And then the goal value for the day is the lowest value that was ever recorded during that day. (Which isn’t the same as the lowest it ever was—beeminder only knows about how many emails there were at the times that it checked). Hope that makes sense.
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Does the need to click the refresh button not negate the advantage of using the Gmail integration? Is there any advantage over making a Do More goal and manually adding +1 every day when the inbox is empty?
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Right, if you actually set the target to exactly 0, then you may often need to manually refresh. The main advantage in this case would be that it is more weaselproof—there will never be any temptation to do something like “oh, yeah, I’m totally going to clean out the inbox after I shower, let me just enter the data point now so I don’t forget and derail”. The main disadvantage would be that setting breaks for inbox-zero goals is somewhat confusing, if you don’t plan to keep the inbox at zero while on vacation or what have you.
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