Hey, I’m new to Beeminder. So I set a goal of doing 500 intensity minutes / week via my Garmin watch. I hit sync on everything.
This week on my actual Garmin app so far I have 86 minutes which means I need 414 more. My beeminder goal says that I have done 143 minutes and I need to complete 57 more… so not only does it have the wrong amount completed but the goal itself is wrong even though it says 500. I am terribly confused.
Hi! It sounds like the main confusion here is how we handle weekly goals. It sounds like you’re expecting a goal where you need to complete 500 minutes by the end of the week, at which point the amount you need to do resets and you start from 0 and need to get to 500 again.
However, what Beeminder does is set up a graph with a slope of 500/week… i.e. 500/7 per day, since the x-axis is in days. So we’ll say you need to do 71.4285714 minutes per day. If you do more than that, you’ll have less to do in the coming days… if you do less than that, you’ll need to do more. In other words, Beeminder measures whether you’re on track for your goal of 500 minutes per week on average, and that amount is constantly rolling. We don’t have a start/end of the week, in consequence.
I suspect that the data you were seeing was including intensity minutes from previous days, as a consequence, but it’s difficult to say without taking a look at your graph. If you’re not comfortable with linking to it here, you could send an email to us at support@beeminder.com with a link to the goal, so we can take a look there!
Thanks so much for sharing your feedback about what was confusing for you – it’s always really helpful to hear this kind of thing.
Understood, that makes sense, thank you!
So… it sounds like I would in effect be charged the penalty for missing the daily rolling goal? Just want to make sure I understand.
Yep! But you don’t have to meet that exact amount every day: you can build in buffer by overachieving on other days, by having initial leeway set up, or by setting breaks.
Does that all make more sense now?