It’s been a fun week getting used to Beeminder and already making some progress on my goals. I wanted to write a bit about my first, week but don’t know if I’ll continue this because I’m more of an analog girlie so will definitely do it on pen and paper.
Current Goals: cleanbee - clean up 10 minutes everyday mustdo - do the one predetermined thing I must do for that day (I got this from the Blog!) getlisty - do 5 listings a day for my reselling business GetToSteppin - 4,286 steps every day ( 30,000 every 7 days) hairybee - try one new hairstyle or technique each month
The last 3 I’ve hardly input any datapoints for yet. I’ve found that the cleaning goal is super motivating. I did derail once already because I was gone for most of the day and kind of forgot about doing it in the limited time I had before leaving. I find this is something I can easily do right after waking up so I may eventually change the fine print to be done by a certain time. Because often enough I have a gig or multiple and I’m gone until after midnight. I also would like to keep my evening free for creative work so I don’t spend my off days lounging around and doing nothing for my overall betterment all day.
I also like how flexible my must-do goal is. Meaning if the next day is going to be super busy I can even set my must do to be something from one of my other goals. I’m totally okay with that, for now I’ve been trying, where possible, to pick the most important, non-goal related thing. But one day I hardly had any time at home and just chose pick my clothes out for the next morning. I derailed on this goal as well and I felt proud because I had written in my journal the specifics of the must do. But in my planner I left one piece of it out (take the laundry OUT of the dryer). By the time I got back home I still had to put the laundry in the dryer and wouldn’t have had enough time to take it out by midnight. I held the line and just accepted the derail, in fact I used the Uncle button so I wouldn’t cop out lol.
And YET. I had a must-do where my goal was to finish 2 hours of practice by 4pm. I set 4pm based on what time I thought I had to leave the house, Which did end up getting pushed up an hour. I only completed one hour before 4pm, I completed the other hour after 4pm when I got home and +1 the goal. Now I did this because the time was really not consequential to the goal at all, and I based the time on something that changed due to something out of my control. Now, I still COULD have done both hours before 4. Now I’m starting to think maybe that was the wrong move. I don’t want to be on a slippery slope. I wonder if I can retroactively derail by changing the data and does that undo the weaseling from my psyche lol
I find the binary goals really easy to work with, I’m forseeing some potential challenges with steps goal, just understanding how it works and making sure it aligns with how I want to do things. I gave myself a weeks buffer on my listing goal, but had such a crazy week that I used it all, that’s one where I do intend to have the buffer so I can choose WHEN I want to do the listings and am not necessarily beholden everyday. I’ll have to slowly build that back up.
Hopefully I have a strong week and I really just want to be extremely accurate and not do any form of weaseling. I really need this to work for me!
You can. Deleting datapoints from previous days or changing the values to be lower will cause a derailment if that puts your total for the day at less than what was needed on that day. So for this specific case, deleting the datapoint would cause the derail that would have happened if you had not added the datapoint. Here’s the official docs page about it: How do I fix incorrect data? - Beeminder Help
That’s just technical information for you though! I’m not writing this to imply that you should delete the datapoint. It’s your decision to make.
I like your points that “the time was really not consequential to the goal… changed due to something out of my control”. I also like your point that slippery slopes can be dangerous. So I’m not being helpful here.
It sounds like you’re doing a great job with Beeminder in general. You’ve started with a manageable number of goals and a manageable amount for each; it seems like it’s a bit challenging but achievable, which I think is a perfect way to start. I love how you’re using the must-do goal; that’s a good balance between pushing yourself when you know you’ll have the time and not overloading yourself when you know you won’t. I really hope Beeminder keeps being useful to you!
Thanks for your thoughts! I had to make sure I held the line! So I ended up changing it so that I’d derail, but it didn’t affect the graph exactly like I thought it would. I managed to fix it though. I’ll have to read that link for next time.
Okay so two weeks have gone by and WOW. I derailed a bunch last week. One thing I REALLY need to get the hang of is when I deal with my Beemergencies. I work a lot at night (musician) I don’t get home til after midnight sometimes, but this isn’t regular from week to week. I know I can change my deadline and I may want to experiment with this but I honestly DON’T want to be cleaning up or practicing or studying when I come home at 2am if I hadn’t done it already that day. And unfortunately current me doesn’t always consider future me enough to do things with her in mind. And that could just be my consequence. One thing I had thought of to solve my problem of procrastinating on Beemergencies was Beeminding the Beemergencies that I take care of each hour starting from a certain time. I didn’t have a regular work schedule so I could during the day starting at 10AM or whenever pick a Beemergency and handle it then the rest of that hour I do whatever else I want or need to do but starting at 11AM I have to take care of another Beemergency. But I decided to go back to school (kinda last minute) and I only have 3 days out of the week now that are guaranteed to be more open like that where I had 6 before. So maybe I can rework that plan. So I need to figure out a way to stop my procrastination from biting me in the butt.
I had a goal to get out of bed by a certain time. But I overslept a couple times by a couple minutes and snoozed the alarm, I’m honestly not that concerned about these things. The time I get up is not exactly what I care about. So it’s currently waiting to be archived and I created a new goal where I count the number mornings I get out of bed without using my phone. Aiming for 9 out of every 10 days.
Changes: I now have 9 goals. I added one for studying pomodoros, practicing bass pomodoros, and not using my phone in bed in the morning.
