Hello,
Tried creating a goal where I consume 0 units but realized I can have only 1 or more. Do I need premium for that? Or is beeminder philosophically not meant for such goals?
Thanks
I understand you are looking to reduce something, consuming something less. There are a few ways to do this in Beeminder. One way is to make a do-less goal. With this type of goal the parameters would be “up to x allowed per day” (as in one jelly bean per day, on average) and you would enter how many consumed. As long as the accumulated amount consumed stayed below the accumulated amount allowed (after all, you are allowed seven per week), then you would be in the safe zone. The help doc on do-less goals can be found here.
Another way would be to use a do-more goal, where instead of tracking amounts consumed, you track either yes/no if you consumed your target amount (none) on a given day. Your goal, in beeminder terms, might be to have 5 of 7 days per week, on average, where you do not consume the thing you wish not to.
There are other ways as well. Another example, using a do-more goal with entering negative numbers for the amount of things consumed you wanted not to consume.
After a few weeks or months of having such a beeminder goal, what might you like to be able to infer from the graph and data afterwards? “oh look, I have gone 23 days without” or “ah, but see in May I reduced my consumption of that to just 3 items and only on two days” or “it seems during the daylight hours I have been great at avoiding consuming the thing but still struggle a bit with not consuming it in the late afternoon”
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Thank you for taking the time to write such a detailed reply. I ran out of do-more goals but I liked your 5 of 7 days per week suggestion.
The free plan apparently doesn’t allow do-less or negative numbers on do-more. Which is fine as I have enough do-more goals to worry about now.
Until next goal…
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