How to modify y-axis after auto-import from Fitbit

Newbee
1

Hi there! I am working on setting up my first Beeminder goal tonight and I’m running into trouble with my graph after importing from Fitbit.

Simply put, I want to set a goal to hit 3,000,000 steps in 2025 (so from Jan 1 2025 to Dec 31 2025). I was able to get the start and goal dates set correctly, and the progression of data from day-to-day is correct, but the cumulative total steps on the y-axis is wrong.

According the Beeminder’s FAQ,

When you create the goal, we’ll import all the available data for that metric, but your graph will only show starting on the goal creation date. The y-axis will start at your current cumulative total according to all the data we’ve imported, so e.g. if that data already includes 100,000 steps, the y-axis will start at 100,000.

It seems that the importer is pulling data points in from December 2024 as well, setting the starting points at ~200,000 steps on Jan 1. However, I actually only ended Jan 1 2025 with ~2,500 steps.

I tried deleting the 2024 data points, but the graph’s y-axis didn’t update, so all that happened was that it told me I had 5 hours to walk 130,000 steps :woozy_face:

Is there a way to edit this part of the graph retroactively, or change the way I set up the goal to tell the importer to only pull Fitbit data from Jan 1 2025 onward?

I did send a support email as well to see what might be able to be done on their end, but for the time being I deleted the original goal so I don’t have to worry about derailing while still figuring out the setup. It’s also really important that I get this to display properly, because I need this graph to serve as visual proof of goal completion for lifestyle points (aka an HSA payout) from my employer :confused: so I can’t leave it like this and just do the mental math.

Here is a link to the currentl, incorrect goal: three-mil-steps-2025 – maehoosadie – beeminder

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Hi! Thanks for sharing your feedback around this; always useful to hear when someone’s confused about something. I’ve replied via the support email, but just so there’s an answer here if anyone searches for it, all of this is the expected behaviour!

More specifically, it’s intentional that we import the last 30 days of data on goal creation with Fitbit, and it’s also intentional that you can’t edit where the y-axis starts in a way that makes it easier because of the akrasia horizon.

If someone doesn’t want the imported data on a Fitbit goal, they can delete it and ask the support team to adjust the bright red line – but there’s no real reason to, since the imported data doesn’t actually progress your goal at all because of how we set the y-axis. (To put it another way, we import all your data, check where that would put you on the y-axis, and then start the y-axis from that point, so that you will have progress due after any leeway you choose to start with.) For a yearly goal, you’d then simply add the amount you want to end up with to that starting value, and set that as your end total target.

As an example, if you have 59,000 steps imported, and you want to do 2,000,000 steps over the course of the year, you’d set your end target to 2,059,000 and your end date to 2025-12-31, and that would force you to add 2 million steps for a cumulative total of 2,059,000. The 59,000 steps imported initially wouldn’t count toward your 2 million steps, because the y-axis already excluded them.

For some goals it’s fine to delete the imported data, and Fitbit’s one of those. It can’t be avoided on other goals, e.g. ones set up with StoryGraph or Trydeepwork, for example, because of how we get the data from them.

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Hey Nicky, thank you so much for your help with this! I’m so sorry for sending messages to both the forum and the email— I got myself freaked out and I panicked lol.

If I’m understanding the logic correctly, it is possible to edit the y-axis scaling, but if doing so would make the goal easier within the next week, it could be used as a way to cheat the system? So if we have a legitimate reason for changing the scale, Support can help with that (as you did for me, which I very much appreciate!)

I also see what you mean by just adding the new goal to the imported start cumulative total. If I were just doing this for myself I think I would be happy with that, but I’m uncertain of how closely the third-party checkers at my workplace will be looking at the data, so I thought it would be cleaner to just ‘start over’ on Jan 1. While I understand the reasoning that adjusting the bright red line isn’t necessary, I do think it could be nice to be able to set the start date of your goal as well as set it to start at 0 regardless of the data present from before that date, if the integration would allow it.

Beeminder was recommended by a coworker of mine, and I’m very interested in the philosophy so far and how it will work for me! I’m going to suggest it to my partner as well— he struggles with internal motivation (he’s neurotypical, so is mostly motivated by importance, reward, or consequence) so I think the pledge system could be great for him.

Thank you so much for your responsiveness and thorough explanations, I appreciate it a lot!

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