Hi,
I just joined BeeMinder and wanted to setup a goal for my InboxZero. I run my own IMAP server.
How can I set this up? Currently I have 1374 emails on my inbox. I created a whittledown goal with 1374 and it created a flat road with 547 days left.
I am confused. I thought that beeminder would create a road that decreses to zero…
Can somebody help set this one up properly?
Thanks,
Paulo
I think all that whittledown does is tell Beeminder how to interpret your data. You still use the road dial to specify what your goal is. If you want to get to zero, then I think you need to set Goal Total “0” and a date and click DIAL-IT-IN.
I might be missing something but I can’t see a place to set Goal Total or a date.
Hmm, if you’re looking at the goal it will be right where I cropped this image (at the bottom): https://www.dropbox.com/s/4at64epsb27f58k/Screenshot%202015-03-26%2009.04.19.png?dl=0
Can’t see your image. 
Huh weird, I see the image when I’m logged in but I see “preview failed” when I’m signed out, even though this is supposed to be a link anyone can follow.
How about http://i.imgur.com/MXquldG.png ?
Thanks, I see it. Strange that it doesn’t allow me to say: look, I want to have 0 unread emails in my inbox by Sept 2015.
Hi pmatos,
Check right below your goal and you’ll see something that looks like this:
[image: Inline images 2]
This one is set to be down to 0 by May 15th. You can see it here if you’d
like: https://www.beeminder.com/chipmanaged/goals/email
Now I got it! 
Thanks.
Hooray! Now go read your email!
Now that you’ve figured out the road dial, your next challenge (presumably) is to figure out how to get your IMAP server to automatically enter a datapoint for you.
If you can extract the count of emails automatically, then you’ve got several options, including:
subject: user/graph, body: ^ value)Keep us updated with what you get working!
Thanks philip. I will take a look this weekend at the different options and see what I can do. Might just roll my own depending on how accessible is the Beeminder API.
What about the date? I thought it would be “XX YY” (XX=day (“09”), YY=value)
It’s magic! Or syntactic sugar.
^ always means ‘today’ from the perspective of that particular goal.
Being a necromancian by digging up an old thread: @pmatos, or anyone, did you eventually code up a small script to Beemind IMAP email count, by chance? Thought I’d ask before starting mine (and thus give myself a chance to avoid yak shaving 
)
I also have this problem and I’d love to reuse your solution.
Curious if anyone ever got something like this going for IMAP.