I want to stop a bad habit. I’ve tried using Beeminder to stop before but when I set it up, I get charged for each day I engage in the habit. What I want is to get charged each time I engage in the habit. That way if I engage the behavior once, I still have incentive to stop the rest of the day.
Is there a way to do that with Beeminder?
You could perhaps try using a “stack” of goals for this?
If you want to avoid having to tick multiple goals, is a slightly complicated trick: you set goal 2 as a “metaminder” goal, whose source data is goal 3, and goal 1 as a metaminding goal whose source is goal 2. Then on clear days, you just tick goal 3, and it cascades down the line. On days you did the thing 1 time, you tick goal 2 only, and it cascades down to goal 1. On days you did it 3 times, you don’t tick anything at all, and all three goals miss their target.
It’s a bit counter-intuitive, as you’re ticking from the other end of the goal stack, but with some creative naming of the goals it ought to work!
There is a very hacky way to do it, if the data is entered manually. You can set the goal to have zero respite after derailing, and then when you do the bad thing, enter the data yesterday. This will make you derail immediately, and then you’ll be at zero buffer yet again.
Achieving something like this without the hack would be a possible use-case for the “uncle button” that people occassionally talk about being added to beeminder!