I’ve tried to use Beeminder a few times, and I always end up cancelling all my goals in the first couple of days and giving up. I understand that it’s best to start small and not overwhelm yourself, but even when I do that, I give up. As far as I know, there’s no way to prevent this even with the Beemium membership. Someone’s mentioned that I could turn on no-excuses mode, but I can literally turn that on and off whenever I want. So it’s pretty useless to me. I feel like I’ll never be able to use Beeminder without being forced to go through with my goal commitment that first week.
I work for myself and am flailing. There’s no boss keeping track of my output, and I’m feeling very alone without a sense of community and accountability. This doesn’t help my motivation any. I’ve got a rebel personality, and I’ve only ever responded to strict accountability. It’s like I need a drill sergeant yelling at me all day to get things done. If I’m left with any way to weasel out of something, I’ll do it. I keep letting people down day after day, including myself, and it needs to stop.
Ooh, this is good feedback. We previously predicted that the ability to turn No-Excuses Mode off wasn’t causing serious problems. (The current mitigation is that any interactions with support display when you last turned No-Excuses Mode on/off – so basically we’re leveraging shame to dissuade people from turning it back off akratically.)
Anyway, have you tried creating goals with a week of initial flat spot? Then there’d be no temptation, presumably, to delete the goals in that initial week when Beeminder lets you do so.
Like Danny said, I think the temptation to delete the goal comes strongest when you’re about to derail, so pushing any potential derailments out of that initial trial period would help the goal survive in the long run, even if the motivation to make progress isn’t as strong at first. So setting the initial leeway at 7 days at first (and maybe opting into No Excuses for good measure) is probably the best way to deal with this at the moment.
You could start a commitment journal on here. Make it a requirement for your goal to not derail and publicly commit to go over the week mark (I usually check the forum daily and would be willing to follow the thread). If you want a one on one I would recommend something like Boss as a Service + Beeminder. Used it awhile back and it worked well for me.
Thank you, I might try this approach. Yeah, shame doesn’t work with me over the internet. If I don’t know you personally and I know there’s no REAL consequence to turning off no-excuses mode, it won’t stop me. Maybe that says something bad about my character, ha, but I’ve always had that personality.
Just wanted to check back and see if you had been able to give boss as a service + Beeminder a spin or not. Was curious if it was working for you or not.
