Beeminder Forum

I'd Like to Set Up A Weekly Google Hangout Crew

#1

Hi all-- NewBees and Veterans alike:

For myself at least, forums are inefficient. I love forums in theory, but in practice I spend so much time writing my thoughts, waiting for responses, or scavenging for insights that it’s just blatantly evident how low the information transfer per unit of time is. We all intuitively know how much faster these talks would be if we were, you know, actually having a conversation. The information transfer per unit time is just so much higher… so why not try that?

I am looking for folks who are interested in meeting up over Google Hangout once a week (preferably Sundays) to

A. collaboratively design and try out a Weekly Review Ritual.
B. discuss topics regarding habits, behavioral economics, and the Quantified Self.

The purpose of this “ritual” is to come up with a fast, habitual, social, & highly procedural weekly event that can help me (and you) revisit progress on goals, build a game plan for the week ahead, and learn new methods for life tracking. Doing this as a group (in theory) increases accountability and the flow of ideas, thus accelerating the natural selection of best practices.

I fully intend this to be sloppy at the beginning, indiscriminately taking ideas from wherever they come. Hopefully the scientific method will prevail and by the end of the year we could have a very streamlined, evidence-based, socially-engaging, and enjoyable weekly ceremony that makes us all better human beings.

If this sounds like something you’d be into, I welcome you to join me in this experiment.

Please let me know if you’re interested by responding to this forum post and do feel free to offer suggestions on how to go about this.

Note: I’m new around here! So forgive me if I was unaware of a pre-existing thing that looks like this already. (In which case, help me find it!)

6 Likes
#2

Sounds interesting! - Will keep an eye on the thread.

#3

I kind of want to debate the claim about forums but also I’m hugely in favor of experiments and am eager to hear how this one goes and may be interested in listening in on one of the sessions. Thanks for taking the initiative on it!

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#4

Interesting! But why Hangouts? It’s so dead.

#5

What is “dead” supposed to mean? It’s somehow “uncool”? Or not used as much as the lastest hip technology? How is that relevant?

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#6

It’s relevant because Google announced it is going to shut down Hangouts in 2020.

They have since also announced that there will be two new different versions of Hangouts to follow in its footsteps. But it remains to be seen if those will catch on. Their other messengers didn’t, after all.

So, no, I’m not saying this because of hippieness or anything but because Hangouts is actually sentenced to die.

This made quite the news back then (many months ago), so I assumed this was common knowledge.

Here’s a link: https://9to5google.com/2018/12/02/google-hangouts-shutting-down/

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#7

Ah! I didn’t know that. Figures.

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#8

I’ll be using Hangouts until the bitter end. I love the product. :sob:

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#9

Fair point. Any suggestion for a different service?

Preferably something that does not require software downloads.

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#10

Whereby.com is good.

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#11

Personally I’m a big fan of http://discordapp.com/. One noteworthy thing: it allows you to have different nick names for each community or server you join.

Available as browser only and as stand alone desktop client and on mobile.

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#12

Okay folks, I’m thinking next Sunday will be Day 0, but I’m open to Saturday.

If you're interested in participating, share your time/date preferences with this When Is Good Poll by Thursday at 12 EST.

http://whenisgood.net/beeminder-weekly-review

I’ll post again on this forum on Thursday evening with a preliminary agenda flow (although “agenda” is probably too strong a word) and a specified time and video chat link.

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#13

What a great idea! I can’t join in this week, but I’m already curious about how it goes! Someone let us know!

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#14

When? Sunday 12pm EST

Where? https://whereby.com/ji

https://whereby.com/ji

What? A Weekly Review Session

Agenda (beta version 1.0):

  • Introductions / Icebreaker (5 min)
  • Set & Share Intentions for Session (5 min)
  • Introduce the Preliminary Methodology (a.k.a. The Method) (5 min)
  • Share Resources, Best Practices, Beeminder Tips (10-20 min)
  • Update The Method (5-10 min)
  • Initial Methodology Work-Through (10 min)
  • Open-Ended Working Time & Conversation (10-20 min)
  • Take An Oath (5 min)
    (i.e. Commit publicly to your goals for the next week; Establish and share your accountability method)

Total Time = ~1 hour +/- 10 minutes

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#15

After every Weekly Review session, I will post the meeting minutes on this forum.

I am holding myself accountable to holding these sessions-- even if nobody shows up-- for the rest of this year. Made a beeminder for it. If it catches on and more people attend, I’ll start a fresh new forum for Weekly Reviews and start posting updates there. In the meantime, here is fine.

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#16

It just occurred to me that one slightly similar thing to this is Complice’s co-working rooms: https://complice.co/rooms

(They’re for doing sync’d pomodoros, or tocks as we call them. In fact, I think that could be a great thing to have as part of this weekly review session if others like the idea!)

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#17

I’m going to attempt to attend tomorrow, but I’ll have Toddler Watching Responsibility, so we’ll see how well those combine.

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#18

Did I do timezone math wrong here, or are we starting next weekend? I thought 9am pst was 12 est.

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#19

(post withdrawn by author, will be automatically deleted in 24 hours unless flagged)

#20

Is this still on? I’d join when the timing is good for me. :slight_smile: