low-friction ad-hoc beeminding

I could benefit a lot from a low-overhead way to create temporary but
highly binding ad hoc beeminder goals for things that need to happen
"soon" or “asap” or even “eventually”.
I want to retain as much flexibility as possible but commit to at
least keeping it from getting swapped out, so to speak, of my brain’s
short-term memory.
So like a near-zero-cognitive-overhead way to be like “ok, self, i’m
on the hook to average at least 5 minutes a day on X until it’s done”.

This could be anything from “get the API published” to “book a
scandinavian ice-skating tour”. Anything that’s important but that has
no built in deadline.

Does that sound like something others would have value for?


http://dreev.es – search://"Daniel Reeves"
Follow the Yellow Brick Road – http://beeminder.com

Isn’t this what David Allen’s Getting Things Done system is supposed to do, with its Weekly Review and annual reviews of big priorities?

Admittedly, I never get around to doing this weekly review, so maybe what I need is a Beeminder contract to do that. But regarding your idea, it’s almost inconceivable to me that there is a low-cognitive-load way to do what you say you want by putting money on the line (unless it’s to get yourself to review all your priorities on a regular basis as Allen recommends).

David

On Jul 28, 2012, at 4:16 PM, Daniel Reeves wrote:

I could benefit a lot from a low-overhead way to create temporary but
highly binding ad hoc beeminder goals for things that need to happen
“soon” or “asap” or even “eventually”.
I want to retain as much flexibility as possible but commit to at
least keeping it from getting swapped out, so to speak, of my brain’s
short-term memory.
So like a near-zero-cognitive-overhead way to be like “ok, self, i’m
on the hook to average at least 5 minutes a day on X until it’s done”.

This could be anything from “get the API published” to “book a
scandinavian ice-skating tour”. Anything that’s important but that has
no built in deadline.

Does that sound like something others would have value for?


http://dreev.es – search://“Daniel Reeves”
Follow the Yellow Brick Road – http://beeminder.com


My home page: http://www.davidreiley.com

We had a great discussion related to this right here almost a year and
a half ago, with subject “one-more-day syndrome” which culminated in
an awesome proposal by Bethany, based on ideas by you and Dan
Goldstein:

“We should revive our shared calendar and set up a blanket contract on
it such that any items we put on the calendar are subject to the
doubling fines rule. [$1 the first day overdue, then $2, then $4, etc]
Then once we agree to that […] realifying deadlines becomes as simple as
putting items on the calendar (which for me admittedly is still a not
insignificant hurdle, but a lot smaller).”

I’d like our imminent API to make it easy to implement that!

On Sun, Jul 29, 2012 at 9:32 AM, David Reiley david@davidreiley.com wrote:

Isn’t this what David Allen’s Getting Things Done system is supposed to do,
with its Weekly Review and annual reviews of big priorities?

Admittedly, I never get around to doing this weekly review, so maybe what I
need is a Beeminder contract to do that. But regarding your idea, it’s
almost inconceivable to me that there is a low-cognitive-load way to do what
you say you want by putting money on the line (unless it’s to get yourself
to review all your priorities on a regular basis as Allen recommends).

David

On Jul 28, 2012, at 4:16 PM, Daniel Reeves wrote:

I could benefit a lot from a low-overhead way to create temporary but
highly binding ad hoc beeminder goals for things that need to happen
“soon” or “asap” or even “eventually”.
I want to retain as much flexibility as possible but commit to at
least keeping it from getting swapped out, so to speak, of my brain’s
short-term memory.
So like a near-zero-cognitive-overhead way to be like “ok, self, i’m
on the hook to average at least 5 minutes a day on X until it’s done”.

This could be anything from “get the API published” to “book a
scandinavian ice-skating tour”. Anything that’s important but that has
no built in deadline.

Does that sound like something others would have value for?


http://dreev.es – search://“Daniel Reeves”
Follow the Yellow Brick Road – http://beeminder.com


My home page: http://www.davidreiley.com


http://dreev.es – search://“Daniel Reeves”
Follow the Yellow Brick Road – http://beeminder.com

Daniel’s just told me I need to join AA for a discussion going on here, and
I suspect this is it. :slight_smile:

So, in a nutshell, I’ve linked my TODO trakcer (RememberTheMilk) to
Beeminder. I get points for completing tasks (joining AA just scored me
one point), with things like work tasks, and ‘hard’ tasks being worth much
more. (Points are configurable by list and/or tag). Of course, Beeminder
lets me set how many points I score each week before I start losing money.
:slight_smile:

I also have the problem of some tasks never getting done, so I have a few
ideas on how to encourage me:

  • Dynamic point values. Tasks are worth more points the longer they stick
    around, so eventually I’ll be encouraged to stop procrastinating and do the
    task I’ve been putting off.
  • As above, but tasks are worth less points the longer they stick
    around. This is dangerous, because eventually it becomes easier to scrap a
    task than complete it.
  • Staleness penalties. Tasks start generating negative points if they stick
    around too long, even if they don’t have a due date. Some lists (eg,
    “Ideas”) are excluded.
  • Quests. Each day, my system randomly picks a task (weighted by staleness)
    and puts a bounty on it if completed within a given timeframe. If I
    complete that, I may get another quest, etc.

Since I’m essentially using Getting Things Done, any task I have recorded
should be something I can execute (it’s a “next step”), so I’m unlikely
to get a 24-hour bounty on “eliminate stupidity from the Internet”.

I’m looking at probably using a combination of staleness penalties (which
will encourage me to move on old tasks in general) and quests (which are
attractive alternatives to being productive).

Of course, tasks with actual deadlines will have severe penalties if those
deadlines are missed (or postponed too close to their end-date, since I
have a chronic habit of using socialmancy to avoid work).

I’ll write more later (I think Daniel and Bethany want me to do a guest
blog post), but right now I actually have a hard work deadline that needs
to be attended to. If you’re curious at poking around my code (which is
still very much an alpha work-in-progress) you can find it at:

https://github.com/pfenwick/remember-the-beeminder

Cheerio,

Paul

On Saturday, July 28, 2012 4:16:17 PM UTC-7, Daniel Reeves wrote:

I could benefit a lot from a low-overhead way to create temporary but
highly binding ad hoc beeminder goals for things that need to happen
“soon” or “asap” or even “eventually”.
I want to retain as much flexibility as possible but commit to at
least keeping it from getting swapped out, so to speak, of my brain’s
short-term memory.
So like a near-zero-cognitive-overhead way to be like “ok, self, i’m
on the hook to average at least 5 minutes a day on X until it’s done”.

This could be anything from “get the API published” to “book a
scandinavian ice-skating tour”. Anything that’s important but that has
no built in deadline.

Does that sound like something others would have value for?


http://dreev.es – search://“Daniel Reeves”
Follow the Yellow Brick Road – http://beeminder.com

I’d love it, sounds really useful to me.

I could benefit a lot from a low-overhead way to create temporary but
highly binding ad hoc beeminder goals for things that need to happen
“soon” or “asap” or even “eventually”.
I want to retain as much flexibility as possible but commit to at
least keeping it from getting swapped out, so to speak, of my brain’s
short-term memory.
So like a near-zero-cognitive-overhead way to be like “ok, self, i’m
on the hook to average at least 5 minutes a day on X until it’s done”.

This could be anything from “get the API published” to “book a
scandinavian ice-skating tour”. Anything that’s important but that has
no built in deadline.

Does that sound like something others would have value for?

I’m excited to try Paul Fenwick’s scheme below, but in the meantime
Bethany and I are trying something dirt simple that may capture enough
of the spirit of this to be valuable.

The idea is to pick one task that you Must Do the next day. You have
to write down the task the night before and it counts if you actually
do it the next day. You then commit to some number of such tasks per
week.

How to do that with Beeminder (the idea is to use the previous day’s
datapoint comment to commit to the next day’s task):

  1. Create a Do More goal like mustdo – d – beeminder
  2. Add an initial datapoint like
    ^ 0 “tmw: file tps report”
    which commits you to filing your tps report tomorrow.
  3. The next day, if you filed your tps report, enter a new datapoint,
    along with a new task, like
    ^ 1 “tmw: take over the world”
    or if you didn’t file your tps report then
    ^ 0 “tmw: take over the world”
    or if you didn’t file your tps report but still need to (before you
    can take over the world) then like
    ^ 0 “tmw: ditto”
  4. Dial up your road to commit to however many tasks per week you want
    to commit to. (I’m starting with 3.5/week – one every other day.)
  5. Rule: always enter your datapoint with a caret. You have to finish
    the day’s task – and specify tomorrow’s – by midnight.

If you want to get ambitious you can enter compound tasks (“file tps
report and clip toenails”) and still make the datapoints binary.

My datapoint yesterday read “tmw: describe this system on akratics
anonymous” so after I hit send I’ll give myself a 1 for today and pick
a task for tomorrow!

On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 6:07 PM, Paul Fenwick paul.j.fenwick@gmail.com wrote:

Daniel’s just told me I need to join AA for a discussion going on here, and
I suspect this is it. :slight_smile:

So, in a nutshell, I’ve linked my TODO trakcer (RememberTheMilk) to
Beeminder. I get points for completing tasks (joining AA just scored me one
point), with things like work tasks, and ‘hard’ tasks being worth much more.
(Points are configurable by list and/or tag). Of course, Beeminder lets me
set how many points I score each week before I start losing money. :slight_smile:

I also have the problem of some tasks never getting done, so I have a few
ideas on how to encourage me:

  • Dynamic point values. Tasks are worth more points the longer they stick
    around, so eventually I’ll be encouraged to stop procrastinating and do the
    task I’ve been putting off.
  • As above, but tasks are worth less points the longer they stick around.
    This is dangerous, because eventually it becomes easier to scrap a task than
    complete it.
  • Staleness penalties. Tasks start generating negative points if they stick
    around too long, even if they don’t have a due date. Some lists (eg,
    “Ideas”) are excluded.
  • Quests. Each day, my system randomly picks a task (weighted by staleness)
    and puts a bounty on it if completed within a given timeframe. If I
    complete that, I may get another quest, etc.

Since I’m essentially using Getting Things Done, any task I have recorded
should be something I can execute (it’s a “next step”), so I’m unlikely to
get a 24-hour bounty on “eliminate stupidity from the Internet”.

I’m looking at probably using a combination of staleness penalties (which
will encourage me to move on old tasks in general) and quests (which are
attractive alternatives to being productive).

Of course, tasks with actual deadlines will have severe penalties if those
deadlines are missed (or postponed too close to their end-date, since I have
a chronic habit of using socialmancy to avoid work).

I’ll write more later (I think Daniel and Bethany want me to do a guest blog
post), but right now I actually have a hard work deadline that needs to be
attended to. If you’re curious at poking around my code (which is still very
much an alpha work-in-progress) you can find it at:

https://github.com/pfenwick/remember-the-beeminder

Cheerio,

Paul

On Saturday, July 28, 2012 4:16:17 PM UTC-7, Daniel Reeves wrote:

I could benefit a lot from a low-overhead way to create temporary but
highly binding ad hoc beeminder goals for things that need to happen
“soon” or “asap” or even “eventually”.
I want to retain as much flexibility as possible but commit to at
least keeping it from getting swapped out, so to speak, of my brain’s
short-term memory.
So like a near-zero-cognitive-overhead way to be like “ok, self, i’m
on the hook to average at least 5 minutes a day on X until it’s done”.

This could be anything from “get the API published” to “book a
scandinavian ice-skating tour”. Anything that’s important but that has
no built in deadline.

Does that sound like something others would have value for?


http://dreev.es – search://“Daniel Reeves”
Follow the Yellow Brick Road – http://beeminder.com


http://dreev.es – search://“Daniel Reeves”
Follow the Yellow Brick Road – http://beeminder.com

Hmm, I think I like that better than my “getrdone” list. After a while, it
didn’t really guide me. I’d just see what I had done from the list when it
was an emergency day or close to it and record it, but the endlessly
procrastinated tasks still weren’t happening, only ones that had a
deadline. But with this, the previous day when you swear it’ll be easy to
do x y or z, you lock yourself in to that task. I’ve tried similar things
like only writing down the 3 most important tasks for the next day. But no
system to force them done.

On Sunday, August 12, 2012, Daniel Reeves wrote:

I’m excited to try Paul Fenwick’s scheme below, but in the meantime
Bethany and I are trying something dirt simple that may capture enough
of the spirit of this to be valuable.

The idea is to pick one task that you Must Do the next day. You have
to write down the task the night before and it counts if you actually
do it the next day. You then commit to some number of such tasks per
week.

How to do that with Beeminder (the idea is to use the previous day’s
datapoint comment to commit to the next day’s task):

  1. Create a Do More goal like mustdo – d – beeminder
  2. Add an initial datapoint like
    ^ 0 “tmw: file tps report”
    which commits you to filing your tps report tomorrow.
  3. The next day, if you filed your tps report, enter a new datapoint,
    along with a new task, like
    ^ 1 “tmw: take over the world”
    or if you didn’t file your tps report then
    ^ 0 “tmw: take over the world”
    or if you didn’t file your tps report but still need to (before you
    can take over the world) then like
    ^ 0 “tmw: ditto”
  4. Dial up your road to commit to however many tasks per week you want
    to commit to. (I’m starting with 3.5/week – one every other day.)
  5. Rule: always enter your datapoint with a caret. You have to finish
    the day’s task – and specify tomorrow’s – by midnight.

If you want to get ambitious you can enter compound tasks (“file tps
report and clip toenails”) and still make the datapoints binary.

My datapoint yesterday read “tmw: describe this system on akratics
anonymous” so after I hit send I’ll give myself a 1 for today and pick
a task for tomorrow!

On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 6:07 PM, Paul Fenwick <paul.j.fenwick@gmail.com<javascript:;>>
wrote:

Daniel’s just told me I need to join AA for a discussion going on here,
and
I suspect this is it. :slight_smile:

So, in a nutshell, I’ve linked my TODO trakcer (RememberTheMilk) to
Beeminder. I get points for completing tasks (joining AA just scored me
one
point), with things like work tasks, and ‘hard’ tasks being worth much
more.
(Points are configurable by list and/or tag). Of course, Beeminder lets
me
set how many points I score each week before I start losing money. :slight_smile:

I also have the problem of some tasks never getting done, so I have a few
ideas on how to encourage me:

  • Dynamic point values. Tasks are worth more points the longer they
    stick
    around, so eventually I’ll be encouraged to stop procrastinating and do
    the
    task I’ve been putting off.
  • As above, but tasks are worth less points the longer they stick
    around.
    This is dangerous, because eventually it becomes easier to scrap a task
    than
    complete it.
  • Staleness penalties. Tasks start generating negative points if they
    stick
    around too long, even if they don’t have a due date. Some lists (eg,
    “Ideas”) are excluded.
  • Quests. Each day, my system randomly picks a task (weighted by
    staleness)
    and puts a bounty on it if completed within a given timeframe. If I
    complete that, I may get another quest, etc.

Since I’m essentially using Getting Things Done, any task I have recorded
should be something I can execute (it’s a “next step”), so I’m
unlikely to
get a 24-hour bounty on “eliminate stupidity from the Internet”.

I’m looking at probably using a combination of staleness penalties (which
will encourage me to move on old tasks in general) and quests (which are
attractive alternatives to being productive).

Of course, tasks with actual deadlines will have severe penalties if
those
deadlines are missed (or postponed too close to their end-date, since I
have
a chronic habit of using socialmancy to avoid work).

I’ll write more later (I think Daniel and Bethany want me to do a guest
blog
post), but right now I actually have a hard work deadline that needs to
be
attended to. If you’re curious at poking around my code (which is still
very
much an alpha work-in-progress) you can find it at:

https://github.com/pfenwick/remember-the-beeminder

Cheerio,

Paul

On Saturday, July 28, 2012 4:16:17 PM UTC-7, Daniel Reeves wrote:

I could benefit a lot from a low-overhead way to create temporary but
highly binding ad hoc beeminder goals for things that need to happen
“soon” or “asap” or even “eventually”.
I want to retain as much flexibility as possible but commit to at
least keeping it from getting swapped out, so to speak, of my brain’s
short-term memory.
So like a near-zero-cognitive-overhead way to be like “ok, self, i’m
on the hook to average at least 5 minutes a day on X until it’s done”.

This could be anything from “get the API published” to “book a
scandinavian ice-skating tour”. Anything that’s important but that has
no built in deadline.

Does that sound like something others would have value for?


http://dreev.es – search://“Daniel Reeves”
Follow the Yellow Brick Road – http://beeminder.com


http://dreev.es – search://“Daniel Reeves”
Follow the Yellow Brick Road – http://beeminder.com


Sent from my iPhone http://beeminder.com

Yeah, this may be the key to the power of the One Must-Do Task!
And if it works it may mean that a one-week akrasia horizon is overkill.

On Mon, Aug 13, 2012 at 9:15 AM, Melanie Reeves Wicklow
melzafish@gmail.com wrote:

Hmm, I think I like that better than my “getrdone” list. After a while, it
didn’t really guide me. I’d just see what I had done from the list when it
was an emergency day or close to it and record it, but the endlessly
procrastinated tasks still weren’t happening, only ones that had a deadline.
But with this, the previous day when you swear it’ll be easy to do x y or z,
you lock yourself in to that task. I’ve tried similar things like only
writing down the 3 most important tasks for the next day. But no system to
force them done.

On Sunday, August 12, 2012, Daniel Reeves wrote:

I’m excited to try Paul Fenwick’s scheme below, but in the meantime
Bethany and I are trying something dirt simple that may capture enough
of the spirit of this to be valuable.

The idea is to pick one task that you Must Do the next day. You have
to write down the task the night before and it counts if you actually
do it the next day. You then commit to some number of such tasks per
week.

How to do that with Beeminder (the idea is to use the previous day’s
datapoint comment to commit to the next day’s task):

  1. Create a Do More goal like mustdo – d – beeminder
  2. Add an initial datapoint like
    ^ 0 “tmw: file tps report”
    which commits you to filing your tps report tomorrow.
  3. The next day, if you filed your tps report, enter a new datapoint,
    along with a new task, like
    ^ 1 “tmw: take over the world”
    or if you didn’t file your tps report then
    ^ 0 “tmw: take over the world”
    or if you didn’t file your tps report but still need to (before you
    can take over the world) then like
    ^ 0 “tmw: ditto”
  4. Dial up your road to commit to however many tasks per week you want
    to commit to. (I’m starting with 3.5/week – one every other day.)
  5. Rule: always enter your datapoint with a caret. You have to finish
    the day’s task – and specify tomorrow’s – by midnight.

If you want to get ambitious you can enter compound tasks (“file tps
report and clip toenails”) and still make the datapoints binary.

My datapoint yesterday read “tmw: describe this system on akratics
anonymous” so after I hit send I’ll give myself a 1 for today and pick
a task for tomorrow!

On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 6:07 PM, Paul Fenwick paul.j.fenwick@gmail.com
wrote:

Daniel’s just told me I need to join AA for a discussion going on here,
and
I suspect this is it. :slight_smile:

So, in a nutshell, I’ve linked my TODO trakcer (RememberTheMilk) to
Beeminder. I get points for completing tasks (joining AA just scored me
one
point), with things like work tasks, and ‘hard’ tasks being worth much
more.
(Points are configurable by list and/or tag). Of course, Beeminder lets
me
set how many points I score each week before I start losing money. :slight_smile:

I also have the problem of some tasks never getting done, so I have a
few
ideas on how to encourage me:

  • Dynamic point values. Tasks are worth more points the longer they
    stick
    around, so eventually I’ll be encouraged to stop procrastinating and do
    the
    task I’ve been putting off.
  • As above, but tasks are worth less points the longer they stick
    around.
    This is dangerous, because eventually it becomes easier to scrap a task
    than
    complete it.
  • Staleness penalties. Tasks start generating negative points if they
    stick
    around too long, even if they don’t have a due date. Some lists (eg,
    “Ideas”) are excluded.
  • Quests. Each day, my system randomly picks a task (weighted by
    staleness)
    and puts a bounty on it if completed within a given timeframe. If I
    complete that, I may get another quest, etc.

Since I’m essentially using Getting Things Done, any task I have
recorded
should be something I can execute (it’s a “next step”), so I’m
unlikely to
get a 24-hour bounty on “eliminate stupidity from the Internet”.

I’m looking at probably using a combination of staleness penalties
(which
will encourage me to move on old tasks in general) and quests (which are
attractive alternatives to being productive).

Of course, tasks with actual deadlines will have severe penalties if
those
deadlines are missed (or postponed too close to their end-date, since I
have
a chronic habit of using socialmancy to avoid work).

I’ll write more later (I think Daniel and Bethany want me to do a guest
blog
post), but right now I actually have a hard work deadline that needs to
be
attended to. If you’re curious at poking around my code (which is still
very
much an alpha work-in-progress) you can find it at:

https://github.com/pfenwick/remember-the-beeminder

Cheerio,

Paul

On Saturday, July 28, 2012 4:16:17 PM UTC-7, Daniel Reeves wrote:

I could benefit a lot from a low-overhead way to create temporary but
highly binding ad hoc beeminder goals for things that need to happen
“soon” or “asap” or even “eventually”.
I want to retain as much flexibility as possible but commit to at
least keeping it from getting swapped out, so to speak, of my brain’s
short-term memory.
So like a near-zero-cognitive-overhead way to be like “ok, self, i’m
on the hook to average at least 5 minutes a day on X until it’s done”.

This could be anything from “get the API published” to “book a
scandinavian ice-skating tour”. Anything that’s important but that has
no built in deadline.

Does that sound like something others would have value for?


http://dreev.es – search://“Daniel Reeves”
Follow the Yellow Brick Road – http://beeminder.com


http://dreev.es – search://“Daniel Reeves”
Follow the Yellow Brick Road – http://beeminder.com


Sent from my iPhone http://beeminder.com


http://dreev.es – search://“Daniel Reeves”
Follow the Yellow Brick Road – http://beeminder.com

It probably is overkill for all but weight loss or similar goals. Weight
loss might even be fine with 3-4 days.

On Monday, August 13, 2012, Daniel Reeves wrote:

Yeah, this may be the key to the power of the One Must-Do Task!
And if it works it may mean that a one-week akrasia horizon is overkill.

On Mon, Aug 13, 2012 at 9:15 AM, Melanie Reeves Wicklow
melzafish@gmail.com wrote:

Hmm, I think I like that better than my “getrdone” list. After a while,
it
didn’t really guide me. I’d just see what I had done from the list when
it
was an emergency day or close to it and record it, but the endlessly
procrastinated tasks still weren’t happening, only ones that had a
deadline.
But with this, the previous day when you swear it’ll be easy to do x y
or z,
you lock yourself in to that task. I’ve tried similar things like only
writing down the 3 most important tasks for the next day. But no system
to
force them done.

On Sunday, August 12, 2012, Daniel Reeves wrote:

I’m excited to try Paul Fenwick’s scheme below, but in the meantime
Bethany and I are trying something dirt simple that may capture enough
of the spirit of this to be valuable.

The idea is to pick one task that you Must Do the next day. You have
to write down the task the night before and it counts if you actually
do it the next day. You then commit to some number of such tasks per
week.

How to do that with Beeminder (the idea is to use the previous day’s
datapoint comment to commit to the next day’s task):

  1. Create a Do More goal like mustdo – d – beeminder
  2. Add an initial datapoint like
    ^ 0 “tmw: file tps report”
    which commits you to filing your tps report tomorrow.
  3. The next day, if you filed your tps report, enter a new datapoint,
    along with a new task, like
    ^ 1 “tmw: take over the world”
    or if you didn’t file your tps report then
    ^ 0 “tmw: take over the world”
    or if you didn’t file your tps report but still need to (before you
    can take over the world) then like
    ^ 0 “tmw: ditto”
  4. Dial up your road to commit to however many tasks per week you want
    to commit to. (I’m starting with 3.5/week – one every other day.)
  5. Rule: always enter your datapoint with a caret. You have to finish
    the day’s task – and specify tomorrow’s – by midnight.

If you want to get ambitious you can enter compound tasks (“file tps
report and clip toenails”) and still make the datapoints binary.

My datapoint yesterday read “tmw: describe this system on akratics
anonymous” so after I hit send I’ll give myself a 1 for today and pick
a task for tomorrow!

On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 6:07 PM, Paul Fenwick <paul.j.fenwick@gmail.com

wrote:

Daniel’s just told me I need to join AA for a discussion going on
here,
and
I suspect this is it. :slight_smile:

So, in a nutshell, I’ve linked my TODO trakcer (RememberTheMilk) to
Beeminder. I get points for completing tasks (joining AA just scored
me
one
point), with things like work tasks, and ‘hard’ tasks being worth much
more.
(Points are configurable by list and/or tag). Of course, Beeminder
lets
me
set how many points I score each week before I start losing money. :slight_smile:

I also have the problem of some tasks never getting done, so I have a
few
ideas on how to encourage me:

  • Dynamic point values. Tasks are worth more points the longer they
    stick
    around, so eventually I’ll be encouraged to stop procrastinating and
    do
    the
    task I’ve been putting off.
  • As above, but tasks are worth less points the longer they stick
    around.
    This is dangerous, because eventually it becomes easier to scrap a
    task
    than
    complete it.
  • Staleness penalties. Tasks start generating negative points if they
    stick
    around too long, even if they don’t have a due date. Some lists (eg,


Sent from my iPhone http://beeminder.com

The akrasia horizon is asymmetric. It’s a useful enforced delay before
dialling down a road, but can be a frustrating delay when I’m keen to dial
up the difficulty straight away. (It can be a frustrating delay on the way
down, too, but that’s the whole point!)

The Road Dial and the Akrasia Horizon | Beeminder Blog suggests that some of us will resist
dialling it down because we’ll be convinced that we’ll have our act
together by the time a week passes. For me, the ‘only another week’ energy
burst only kicks in once I’ve adjusted the road and can see the future
slope change. During the week, I might discover that it’s sustainable and
want to maintain my (still current) slope.

It’s useful to have the option of a delay for slope increases, because
sometimes I want it steeper today, or maybe I’m in the mood to force the
pace from tomorrow, or the beginning of next month, or whatever. ‘Right
now’ isn’t always the best option.

I also have some goals that warrant a “hip-hugging” road; one that
encourages a minimum level of effort each week, and doesn’t let me build up
too much of a safety buffer. If I want to do X at least twice a week, the
fact that I managed it 5 times this week doesn’t change my desire to do
another 2 next week. These goals are characterised by a weekly rate and an
arbitrary end date, but not a goal total.

In terms of baskets of tasks, I might give the Reeves Must-Do method a
try-out. I have 3 other mechanisms active right now.

First is tracking the number of cycles I do on my task list, using Mark
Forster’s “final version” to process the list. This sounds spiritually
akin to Paul’s use of RTM, without points-per-task.

Second is a bundle of 3 aspirationaly-daily activities; doing any one gives
me a point, and I can get ahead or catch up by doing one of each. By
bundling these into a single goal, I escape the problems inherent in
beeminding a once-per-day–7-days-per-week activity. (Obviously, setting a
slope of 21 per week would negate that solution; my current slope is 10.5,
and I anticipate growing it to at most 17.5.)

Third is general time-tracking; must spend at least X hours per week on
this focus area. As much as I hate using time as a proxy for progress,
it’s relatively easy to measure, and is semi-automated using TagTime.

Philip
twitter.com/PhilipHellyer

On 14 August 2012 06:38, Melanie Reeves Wicklow melzafish@gmail.com wrote:

It probably is overkill for all but weight loss or similar goals. Weight
loss might even be fine with 3-4 days.

On Monday, August 13, 2012, Daniel Reeves wrote:

Yeah, this may be the key to the power of the One Must-Do Task!
And if it works it may mean that a one-week akrasia horizon is overkill.

On Mon, Aug 13, 2012 at 9:15 AM, Melanie Reeves Wicklow
melzafish@gmail.com wrote:

Hmm, I think I like that better than my “getrdone” list. After a
while, it
didn’t really guide me. I’d just see what I had done from the list
when it
was an emergency day or close to it and record it, but the endlessly
procrastinated tasks still weren’t happening, only ones that had a
deadline.
But with this, the previous day when you swear it’ll be easy to do x y
or z,
you lock yourself in to that task. I’ve tried similar things like only
writing down the 3 most important tasks for the next day. But no
system to
force them done.

On Sunday, August 12, 2012, Daniel Reeves wrote:

I’m excited to try Paul Fenwick’s scheme below, but in the meantime
Bethany and I are trying something dirt simple that may capture enough
of the spirit of this to be valuable.

The idea is to pick one task that you Must Do the next day. You have
to write down the task the night before and it counts if you actually
do it the next day. You then commit to some number of such tasks per
week.

How to do that with Beeminder (the idea is to use the previous day’s
datapoint comment to commit to the next day’s task):

  1. Create a Do More goal like mustdo – d – beeminder
  2. Add an initial datapoint like
    ^ 0 “tmw: file tps report”
    which commits you to filing your tps report tomorrow.
  3. The next day, if you filed your tps report, enter a new datapoint,
    along with a new task, like
    ^ 1 “tmw: take over the world”
    or if you didn’t file your tps report then
    ^ 0 “tmw: take over the world”
    or if you didn’t file your tps report but still need to (before you
    can take over the world) then like
    ^ 0 “tmw: ditto”
  4. Dial up your road to commit to however many tasks per week you want
    to commit to. (I’m starting with 3.5/week – one every other day.)
  5. Rule: always enter your datapoint with a caret. You have to finish
    the day’s task – and specify tomorrow’s – by midnight.

If you want to get ambitious you can enter compound tasks (“file tps
report and clip toenails”) and still make the datapoints binary.

My datapoint yesterday read “tmw: describe this system on akratics
anonymous” so after I hit send I’ll give myself a 1 for today and pick
a task for tomorrow!

On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 6:07 PM, Paul Fenwick <
paul.j.fenwick@gmail.com>
wrote:

Daniel’s just told me I need to join AA for a discussion going on
here,
and
I suspect this is it. :slight_smile:

So, in a nutshell, I’ve linked my TODO trakcer (RememberTheMilk) to
Beeminder. I get points for completing tasks (joining AA just
scored me
one
point), with things like work tasks, and ‘hard’ tasks being worth
much
more.
(Points are configurable by list and/or tag). Of course, Beeminder
lets
me
set how many points I score each week before I start losing money. :slight_smile:

I also have the problem of some tasks never getting done, so I have a
few
ideas on how to encourage me:

  • Dynamic point values. Tasks are worth more points the longer they
    stick
    around, so eventually I’ll be encouraged to stop procrastinating and
    do
    the
    task I’ve been putting off.
  • As above, but tasks are worth less points the longer they stick
    around.
    This is dangerous, because eventually it becomes easier to scrap a
    task
    than
    complete it.
  • Staleness penalties. Tasks start generating negative points if they
    stick
    around too long, even if they don’t have a due date. Some lists (eg,


Sent from my iPhone http://beeminder.com

Thanks Philip,

great ideas. I hope they will get adopted into beeminder.

Alex

The akrasia horizon is asymmetric. It’s a useful enforced delay
before dialling down a road, but can be a frustrating delay when I’m
keen to dial up the difficulty straight away. (It can be a
frustrating delay on the way down, too, but that’s the whole point!)

http://blog.beeminder.com/dial/suggests that some of us will resist
dialling it down because we’ll be convinced that we’ll have our act
together by the time a week passes. For me, the ‘only another week’
energy burst only kicks in once I’ve adjusted the road and can see
the future slope change. During the week, I might discover that
it’s sustainable and want to maintain my (still current) slope.

It’s useful to have the option of a delay for slope increases,
because sometimes I want it steeper today, or maybe I’m in the mood
to force the pace from tomorrow, or the beginning of next month, or
whatever. ‘Right now’ isn’t always the best option.

I also have some goals that warrant a “hip-hugging” road; one that
encourages a minimum level of effort each week, and doesn’t let me
build up too much of a safety buffer. If I want to do X at least
twice a week, the fact that I managed it 5 times this week doesn’t
change my desire to do another 2 next week. These goals are
characterised by a weekly rate and an arbitrary end date, but not a goal total.

In terms of baskets of tasks, I might give the Reeves Must-Do
method a try-out. I have 3 other mechanisms active right now.

First is tracking the number of cycles I do on my task list, using
Mark Forster’s “final version” to process the list. This sounds
spiritually akin to Paul’s use of RTM, without points-per-task.

Second is a bundle of 3 aspirationaly-daily activities; doing any
one gives me a point, and I can get ahead or catch up by doing one
of each. By bundling these into a single goal, I escape the
problems inherent in beeminding a once-per-day–7-days-per-week
activity. (Obviously, setting a slope of 21 per week would negate
that solution; my current slope is 10.5, and I anticipate growing it to at most 17.5.)

Third is general time-tracking; must spend at least X hours per
week on this focus area. As much as I hate using time as a proxy
for progress, it’s relatively easy to measure, and is semi-automated using TagTime.

Philip
twitter.com/PhilipHellyer

On 14 August 2012 06:38, Melanie Reeves Wicklow melzafish@gmail.comwrote:

It probably is overkill for all but weight loss or similar goals.
Weight loss might even be fine with 3-4 days.

On Monday, August 13, 2012, Daniel Reeves wrote:

Yeah, this may be the key to the power of the One Must-Do Task!
And if it works it may mean that a one-week akrasia horizon is overkill.

On Mon, Aug 13, 2012 at 9:15 AM, Melanie Reeves Wicklow
melzafish@gmail.com wrote:

Hmm, I think I like that better than my “getrdone” list. After a while, it
didn’t really guide me. I’d just see what I had done from the list when it
was an emergency day or close to it and record it, but the endlessly
procrastinated tasks still weren’t happening, only ones that had a deadline.
But with this, the previous day when you swear it’ll be easy to do x y or z,
you lock yourself in to that task. I’ve tried similar things like only
writing down the 3 most important tasks for the next day. But no system to
force them done.

On Sunday, August 12, 2012, Daniel Reeves wrote:

I’m excited to try Paul Fenwick’s scheme below, but in the meantime
Bethany and I are trying something dirt simple that may capture enough
of the spirit of this to be valuable.

The idea is to pick one task that you Must Do the next day. You have
to write down the task the night before and it counts if you actually
do it the next day. You then commit to some number of such tasks per
week.

How to do that with Beeminder (the idea is to use the previous day’s
datapoint comment to commit to the next day’s task):

  1. Create a Do More goal like mustdo – d – beeminder
  2. Add an initial datapoint like
    ^ 0 “tmw: file tps report”
    which commits you to filing your tps report tomorrow.
  3. The next day, if you filed your tps report, enter a new datapoint,
    along with a new task, like
    ^ 1 “tmw: take over the world”
    or if you didn’t file your tps report then
    ^ 0 “tmw: take over the world”
    or if you didn’t file your tps report but still need to (before you
    can take over the world) then like
    ^ 0 “tmw: ditto”
  4. Dial up your road to commit to however many tasks per week you want
    to commit to. (I’m starting with 3.5/week – one every other day.)
  5. Rule: always enter your datapoint with a caret. You have to finish
    the day’s task – and specify tomorrow’s – by midnight.

If you want to get ambitious you can enter compound tasks (“file tps
report and clip toenails”) and still make the datapoints binary.

My datapoint yesterday read “tmw: describe this system on akratics
anonymous” so after I hit send I’ll give myself a 1 for today and pick
a task for tomorrow!

On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 6:07 PM, Paul Fenwick paul.j.fenwick@gmail.com
wrote:

Daniel’s just told me I need to join AA for a discussion going on here,
and
I suspect this is it. :slight_smile:

So, in a nutshell, I’ve linked my TODO trakcer (RememberTheMilk) to
Beeminder. I get points for completing tasks (joining AA just scored me
one
point), with things like work tasks, and ‘hard’ tasks being worth much
more.
(Points are configurable by list and/or tag). Of course, Beeminder lets
me
set how many points I score each week before I start losing money. :slight_smile:

I also have the problem of some tasks never getting done, so I have a
few
ideas on how to encourage me:

  • Dynamic point values. Tasks are worth more points the longer they
    stick
    around, so eventually I’ll be encouraged to stop procrastinating and do
    the
    task I’ve been putting off.
  • As above, but tasks are worth less points the longer they stick
    around.
    This is dangerous, because eventually it becomes easier to scrap a task
    than
    complete it.
  • Staleness penalties. Tasks start generating negative points if they
    stick
    around too long, even if they don’t have a due date. Some lists (eg,

I’d really like a way to program in rises/drops in the road in the future. IE – I’m going to burning man this week, stop tracking my goals.
I’ve currently stopped using beeminder right now due to this or another easy way to pause goals :confused:

-Jolly

From: akratics@googlegroups.com [mailto:akratics@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Philip Hellyer
Sent: Tuesday, August 14, 2012 5:13 AM
To: akratics@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: low-friction ad-hoc beeminding

The akrasia horizon is asymmetric. It’s a useful enforced delay before dialling down a road, but can be a frustrating delay when I’m keen to dial up the difficulty straight away. (It can be a frustrating delay on the way down, too, but that’s the whole point!)

The Road Dial and the Akrasia Horizon | Beeminder Blog suggests that some of us will resist dialling it down because we’ll be convinced that we’ll have our act together by the time a week passes. For me, the ‘only another week’ energy burst only kicks in once I’ve adjusted the road and can see the future slope change. During the week, I might discover that it’s sustainable and want to maintain my (still current) slope.

It’s useful to have the option of a delay for slope increases, because sometimes I want it steeper today, or maybe I’m in the mood to force the pace from tomorrow, or the beginning of next month, or whatever. ‘Right now’ isn’t always the best option.

I also have some goals that warrant a “hip-hugging” road; one that encourages a minimum level of effort each week, and doesn’t let me build up too much of a safety buffer. If I want to do X at least twice a week, the fact that I managed it 5 times this week doesn’t change my desire to do another 2 next week. These goals are characterised by a weekly rate and an arbitrary end date, but not a goal total.

In terms of baskets of tasks, I might give the Reeves Must-Do method a try-out. I have 3 other mechanisms active right now.

First is tracking the number of cycles I do on my task list, using Mark Forster’s “final version” to process the list. This sounds spiritually akin to Paul’s use of RTM, without points-per-task.

Second is a bundle of 3 aspirationaly-daily activities; doing any one gives me a point, and I can get ahead or catch up by doing one of each. By bundling these into a single goal, I escape the problems inherent in beeminding a once-per-day–7-days-per-week activity. (Obviously, setting a slope of 21 per week would negate that solution; my current slope is 10.5, and I anticipate growing it to at most 17.5.)

Third is general time-tracking; must spend at least X hours per week on this focus area. As much as I hate using time as a proxy for progress, it’s relatively easy to measure, and is semi-automated using TagTime.

Philip
twitter.com/PhilipHellyerhttp://twitter.com/PhilipHellyer

On 14 August 2012 06:38, Melanie Reeves Wicklow <melzafish@gmail.commailto:melzafish@gmail.com> wrote:
It probably is overkill for all but weight loss or similar goals. Weight loss might even be fine with 3-4 days.

On Monday, August 13, 2012, Daniel Reeves wrote:
Yeah, this may be the key to the power of the One Must-Do Task!
And if it works it may mean that a one-week akrasia horizon is overkill.

On Mon, Aug 13, 2012 at 9:15 AM, Melanie Reeves Wicklow
<melzafish@gmail.commailto:melzafish@gmail.com> wrote:

Hmm, I think I like that better than my “getrdone” list. After a while, it
didn’t really guide me. I’d just see what I had done from the list when it
was an emergency day or close to it and record it, but the endlessly
procrastinated tasks still weren’t happening, only ones that had a deadline.
But with this, the previous day when you swear it’ll be easy to do x y or z,
you lock yourself in to that task. I’ve tried similar things like only
writing down the 3 most important tasks for the next day. But no system to
force them done.

On Sunday, August 12, 2012, Daniel Reeves wrote:

I’m excited to try Paul Fenwick’s scheme below, but in the meantime
Bethany and I are trying something dirt simple that may capture enough
of the spirit of this to be valuable.

The idea is to pick one task that you Must Do the next day. You have
to write down the task the night before and it counts if you actually
do it the next day. You then commit to some number of such tasks per
week.

How to do that with Beeminder (the idea is to use the previous day’s
datapoint comment to commit to the next day’s task):

  1. Create a Do More goal like mustdo – d – beeminderhttp://beeminder.com/d/mustdo
  2. Add an initial datapoint like
    ^ 0 “tmw: file tps report”
    which commits you to filing your tps report tomorrow.
  3. The next day, if you filed your tps report, enter a new datapoint,
    along with a new task, like
    ^ 1 “tmw: take over the world”
    or if you didn’t file your tps report then
    ^ 0 “tmw: take over the world”
    or if you didn’t file your tps report but still need to (before you
    can take over the world) then like
    ^ 0 “tmw: ditto”
  4. Dial up your road to commit to however many tasks per week you want
    to commit to. (I’m starting with 3.5/week – one every other day.)
  5. Rule: always enter your datapoint with a caret. You have to finish
    the day’s task – and specify tomorrow’s – by midnight.

If you want to get ambitious you can enter compound tasks (“file tps
report and clip toenails”) and still make the datapoints binary.

My datapoint yesterday read “tmw: describe this system on akratics
anonymous” so after I hit send I’ll give myself a 1 for today and pick
a task for tomorrow!

On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 6:07 PM, Paul Fenwick <paul.j.fenwick@gmail.commailto:paul.j.fenwick@gmail.com>
wrote:

Daniel’s just told me I need to join AA for a discussion going on here,
and
I suspect this is it. :slight_smile:

So, in a nutshell, I’ve linked my TODO trakcer (RememberTheMilk) to
Beeminder. I get points for completing tasks (joining AA just scored me
one
point), with things like work tasks, and ‘hard’ tasks being worth much
more.
(Points are configurable by list and/or tag). Of course, Beeminder lets
me
set how many points I score each week before I start losing money. :slight_smile:

I also have the problem of some tasks never getting done, so I have a
few
ideas on how to encourage me:

  • Dynamic point values. Tasks are worth more points the longer they
    stick
    around, so eventually I’ll be encouraged to stop procrastinating and do
    the
    task I’ve been putting off.
  • As above, but tasks are worth less points the longer they stick
    around.
    This is dangerous, because eventually it becomes easier to scrap a task
    than
    complete it.
  • Staleness penalties. Tasks start generating negative points if they
    stick
    around too long, even if they don’t have a due date. Some lists (eg,


Sent from my iPhone http://beeminder.com

I think the key phrase there is “in the future”. I’d also like to be able
to tell Beeminder that I’m going on holiday and to pause my roads for a
given date range. But it would defeat the purpose and benefit of Beeminder
for me if I could pause the road immediately on a stressful day.

To manage this right now, I put a reminder in my calendar a week ahead of
the event. I’ll put an equivalent reminder to dial it back up a week
before the break’s end, but that’s less urgent. Not ideal, not
particularly onerous.

Philip

On 14 August 2012 14:37, Apneet Jolly jolly@ajollylife.com wrote:

I’d really like a way to program in rises/drops in the road in the
future. IE – I’m going to burning man this week, stop tracking my goals.*


I’ve currently stopped using beeminder right now due to this or another
easy way to pause goals :/****


-Jolly****


From: akratics@googlegroups.com [mailto:akratics@googlegroups.com] On
Behalf Of Philip Hellyer
Sent: Tuesday, August 14, 2012 5:13 AM
To: akratics@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: low-friction ad-hoc beeminding
**


The akrasia horizon is asymmetric. It’s a useful enforced delay before
dialling down a road, but can be a frustrating delay when I’m keen to dial
up the difficulty straight away. (It can be a frustrating delay on the way
down, too, but that’s the whole point!)****


The Road Dial and the Akrasia Horizon | Beeminder Blog suggests that some of us will resist
dialling it down because we’ll be convinced that we’ll have our act
together by the time a week passes. For me, the ‘only another week’ energy
burst only kicks in once I’ve adjusted the road and can see the future
slope change. During the week, I might discover that it’s sustainable and
want to maintain my (still current) slope.****


It’s useful to have the option of a delay for slope increases, because
sometimes I want it steeper today, or maybe I’m in the mood to force the
pace from tomorrow, or the beginning of next month, or whatever. ‘Right
now’ isn’t always the best option.****



I also have some goals that warrant a “hip-hugging” road; one that
encourages a minimum level of effort each week, and doesn’t let me build up
too much of a safety buffer. If I want to do X at least twice a week, the
fact that I managed it 5 times this week doesn’t change my desire to do
another 2 next week. These goals are characterised by a weekly rate and an
arbitrary end date, but not a goal total.****



In terms of baskets of tasks, I might give the Reeves Must-Do method a
try-out. I have 3 other mechanisms active right now.****


First is tracking the number of cycles I do on my task list, using Mark
Forster’s “final version” to process the list. This sounds spiritually
akin to Paul’s use of RTM, without points-per-task. ****


Second is a bundle of 3 aspirationaly-daily activities; doing any one
gives me a point, and I can get ahead or catch up by doing one of each. By
bundling these into a single goal, I escape the problems inherent in
beeminding a once-per-day–7-days-per-week activity. (Obviously, setting a
slope of 21 per week would negate that solution; my current slope is 10.5,
and I anticipate growing it to at most 17.5.)****


Third is general time-tracking; must spend at least X hours per week on
this focus area. As much as I hate using time as a proxy for progress,
it’s relatively easy to measure, and is semi-automated using TagTime.****



Philip****

twitter.com/PhilipHellyer****


On 14 August 2012 06:38, Melanie Reeves Wicklow melzafish@gmail.com
wrote:****

It probably is overkill for all but weight loss or similar goals. Weight
loss might even be fine with 3-4 days.****

On Monday, August 13, 2012, Daniel Reeves wrote:****

Yeah, this may be the key to the power of the One Must-Do Task!
And if it works it may mean that a one-week akrasia horizon is overkill.

On Mon, Aug 13, 2012 at 9:15 AM, Melanie Reeves Wicklow
melzafish@gmail.com wrote:

Hmm, I think I like that better than my “getrdone” list. After a while,
it
didn’t really guide me. I’d just see what I had done from the list when
it
was an emergency day or close to it and record it, but the endlessly
procrastinated tasks still weren’t happening, only ones that had a
deadline.
But with this, the previous day when you swear it’ll be easy to do x y
or z,
you lock yourself in to that task. I’ve tried similar things like only
writing down the 3 most important tasks for the next day. But no system
to
force them done.

On Sunday, August 12, 2012, Daniel Reeves wrote:

I’m excited to try Paul Fenwick’s scheme below, but in the meantime
Bethany and I are trying something dirt simple that may capture enough
of the spirit of this to be valuable.

The idea is to pick one task that you Must Do the next day. You have
to write down the task the night before and it counts if you actually
do it the next day. You then commit to some number of such tasks per
week.

How to do that with Beeminder (the idea is to use the previous day’s
datapoint comment to commit to the next day’s task):

  1. Create a Do More goal like mustdo – d – beeminder
  2. Add an initial datapoint like
    ^ 0 “tmw: file tps report”
    which commits you to filing your tps report tomorrow.
  3. The next day, if you filed your tps report, enter a new datapoint,
    along with a new task, like
    ^ 1 “tmw: take over the world”
    or if you didn’t file your tps report then
    ^ 0 “tmw: take over the world”
    or if you didn’t file your tps report but still need to (before you
    can take over the world) then like
    ^ 0 “tmw: ditto”
  4. Dial up your road to commit to however many tasks per week you want
    to commit to. (I’m starting with 3.5/week – one every other day.)
  5. Rule: always enter your datapoint with a caret. You have to finish
    the day’s task – and specify tomorrow’s – by midnight.

If you want to get ambitious you can enter compound tasks (“file tps
report and clip toenails”) and still make the datapoints binary.

My datapoint yesterday read “tmw: describe this system on akratics
anonymous” so after I hit send I’ll give myself a 1 for today and pick
a task for tomorrow!

On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 6:07 PM, Paul Fenwick <paul.j.fenwick@gmail.com

wrote:

Daniel’s just told me I need to join AA for a discussion going on
here,
and
I suspect this is it. :slight_smile:

So, in a nutshell, I’ve linked my TODO trakcer (RememberTheMilk) to
Beeminder. I get points for completing tasks (joining AA just scored
me
one
point), with things like work tasks, and ‘hard’ tasks being worth much
more.
(Points are configurable by list and/or tag). Of course, Beeminder
lets
me
set how many points I score each week before I start losing money. :slight_smile:

I also have the problem of some tasks never getting done, so I have a
few
ideas on how to encourage me:

  • Dynamic point values. Tasks are worth more points the longer they
    stick
    around, so eventually I’ll be encouraged to stop procrastinating and
    do
    the
    task I’ve been putting off.
  • As above, but tasks are worth less points the longer they stick
    around.
    This is dangerous, because eventually it becomes easier to scrap a
    task
    than
    complete it.
  • Staleness penalties. Tasks start generating negative points if they
    stick
    around too long, even if they don’t have a due date. Some lists (eg,



Sent from my iPhone http://beeminder.com****


great ideas. I hope they will get adopted into beeminder.

they all are now on our list! (or already were – Philip hit on a
couple of the biggies from uservoice.beeminder.com )

thanks everyone; loving this discussion!


http://dreev.es – search://“Daniel Reeves”
Follow the Yellow Brick Road – http://beeminder.com

That relies on me rememebering to turn it back on….and also assumes im within internet range ect and not supremely busy.
(I recently defaulted on a LOT of goals by having the time to do the goals…but not log it into beeminder….and then later derailing entirely)
-Jolly

From: akratics@googlegroups.com [mailto:akratics@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Philip Hellyer
Sent: Tuesday, August 14, 2012 12:50 PM
To: akratics@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: low-friction ad-hoc beeminding

I think the key phrase there is “in the future”. I’d also like to be able to tell Beeminder that I’m going on holiday and to pause my roads for a given date range. But it would defeat the purpose and benefit of Beeminder for me if I could pause the road immediately on a stressful day.

To manage this right now, I put a reminder in my calendar a week ahead of the event. I’ll put an equivalent reminder to dial it back up a week before the break’s end, but that’s less urgent. Not ideal, not particularly onerous.

Philip

On 14 August 2012 14:37, Apneet Jolly <jolly@ajollylife.commailto:jolly@ajollylife.com> wrote:
I’d really like a way to program in rises/drops in the road in the future. IE – I’m going to burning man this week, stop tracking my goals.
I’ve currently stopped using beeminder right now due to this or another easy way to pause goals :confused:

-Jolly

From: akratics@googlegroups.commailto:akratics@googlegroups.com [mailto:akratics@googlegroups.commailto:akratics@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Philip Hellyer
Sent: Tuesday, August 14, 2012 5:13 AM
To: akratics@googlegroups.commailto:akratics@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: low-friction ad-hoc beeminding

The akrasia horizon is asymmetric. It’s a useful enforced delay before dialling down a road, but can be a frustrating delay when I’m keen to dial up the difficulty straight away. (It can be a frustrating delay on the way down, too, but that’s the whole point!)

The Road Dial and the Akrasia Horizon | Beeminder Blog suggests that some of us will resist dialling it down because we’ll be convinced that we’ll have our act together by the time a week passes. For me, the ‘only another week’ energy burst only kicks in once I’ve adjusted the road and can see the future slope change. During the week, I might discover that it’s sustainable and want to maintain my (still current) slope.

It’s useful to have the option of a delay for slope increases, because sometimes I want it steeper today, or maybe I’m in the mood to force the pace from tomorrow, or the beginning of next month, or whatever. ‘Right now’ isn’t always the best option.

I also have some goals that warrant a “hip-hugging” road; one that encourages a minimum level of effort each week, and doesn’t let me build up too much of a safety buffer. If I want to do X at least twice a week, the fact that I managed it 5 times this week doesn’t change my desire to do another 2 next week. These goals are characterised by a weekly rate and an arbitrary end date, but not a goal total.

In terms of baskets of tasks, I might give the Reeves Must-Do method a try-out. I have 3 other mechanisms active right now.

First is tracking the number of cycles I do on my task list, using Mark Forster’s “final version” to process the list. This sounds spiritually akin to Paul’s use of RTM, without points-per-task.

Second is a bundle of 3 aspirationaly-daily activities; doing any one gives me a point, and I can get ahead or catch up by doing one of each. By bundling these into a single goal, I escape the problems inherent in beeminding a once-per-day–7-days-per-week activity. (Obviously, setting a slope of 21 per week would negate that solution; my current slope is 10.5, and I anticipate growing it to at most 17.5.)

Third is general time-tracking; must spend at least X hours per week on this focus area. As much as I hate using time as a proxy for progress, it’s relatively easy to measure, and is semi-automated using TagTime.

Philip
twitter.com/PhilipHellyerhttp://twitter.com/PhilipHellyer

On 14 August 2012 06:38, Melanie Reeves Wicklow <melzafish@gmail.commailto:melzafish@gmail.com> wrote:
It probably is overkill for all but weight loss or similar goals. Weight loss might even be fine with 3-4 days.

On Monday, August 13, 2012, Daniel Reeves wrote:
Yeah, this may be the key to the power of the One Must-Do Task!
And if it works it may mean that a one-week akrasia horizon is overkill.

On Mon, Aug 13, 2012 at 9:15 AM, Melanie Reeves Wicklow
<melzafish@gmail.commailto:melzafish@gmail.com> wrote:

Hmm, I think I like that better than my “getrdone” list. After a while, it
didn’t really guide me. I’d just see what I had done from the list when it
was an emergency day or close to it and record it, but the endlessly
procrastinated tasks still weren’t happening, only ones that had a deadline.
But with this, the previous day when you swear it’ll be easy to do x y or z,
you lock yourself in to that task. I’ve tried similar things like only
writing down the 3 most important tasks for the next day. But no system to
force them done.

On Sunday, August 12, 2012, Daniel Reeves wrote:

I’m excited to try Paul Fenwick’s scheme below, but in the meantime
Bethany and I are trying something dirt simple that may capture enough
of the spirit of this to be valuable.

The idea is to pick one task that you Must Do the next day. You have
to write down the task the night before and it counts if you actually
do it the next day. You then commit to some number of such tasks per
week.

How to do that with Beeminder (the idea is to use the previous day’s
datapoint comment to commit to the next day’s task):

  1. Create a Do More goal like mustdo – d – beeminderhttp://beeminder.com/d/mustdo
  2. Add an initial datapoint like
    ^ 0 “tmw: file tps report”
    which commits you to filing your tps report tomorrow.
  3. The next day, if you filed your tps report, enter a new datapoint,
    along with a new task, like
    ^ 1 “tmw: take over the world”
    or if you didn’t file your tps report then
    ^ 0 “tmw: take over the world”
    or if you didn’t file your tps report but still need to (before you
    can take over the world) then like
    ^ 0 “tmw: ditto”
  4. Dial up your road to commit to however many tasks per week you want
    to commit to. (I’m starting with 3.5/week – one every other day.)
  5. Rule: always enter your datapoint with a caret. You have to finish
    the day’s task – and specify tomorrow’s – by midnight.

If you want to get ambitious you can enter compound tasks (“file tps
report and clip toenails”) and still make the datapoints binary.

My datapoint yesterday read “tmw: describe this system on akratics
anonymous” so after I hit send I’ll give myself a 1 for today and pick
a task for tomorrow!

On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 6:07 PM, Paul Fenwick <paul.j.fenwick@gmail.commailto:paul.j.fenwick@gmail.com>
wrote:

Daniel’s just told me I need to join AA for a discussion going on here,
and
I suspect this is it. :slight_smile:

So, in a nutshell, I’ve linked my TODO trakcer (RememberTheMilk) to
Beeminder. I get points for completing tasks (joining AA just scored me
one
point), with things like work tasks, and ‘hard’ tasks being worth much
more.
(Points are configurable by list and/or tag). Of course, Beeminder lets
me
set how many points I score each week before I start losing money. :slight_smile:

I also have the problem of some tasks never getting done, so I have a
few
ideas on how to encourage me:

  • Dynamic point values. Tasks are worth more points the longer they
    stick
    around, so eventually I’ll be encouraged to stop procrastinating and do
    the
    task I’ve been putting off.
  • As above, but tasks are worth less points the longer they stick
    around.
    This is dangerous, because eventually it becomes easier to scrap a task
    than
    complete it.
  • Staleness penalties. Tasks start generating negative points if they
    stick
    around too long, even if they don’t have a due date. Some lists (eg,


Sent from my iPhone http://beeminder.com

For those reading along I thought I’d re-emphasize that we never count
a derailment as legit if you did the work but just didn’t enter the
data in time.
If that happens just enter the retroactive data (even though the graph
is frozen) and then reply to the legitimacy check email to say that it
was just a matter of not getting the data in on time.

So, Jolly, I’m nervous that Beeminder did you wrong with your
derailments. Unless your “then later derailing entirely” means that
they turned out to be legit.
It sounds like the solution for you will be to automate the data
entry. Let’s keep talking about this!

On Tue, Aug 14, 2012 at 4:37 PM, Apneet Jolly jolly@ajollylife.com wrote:

That relies on me rememebering to turn it back on….and also assumes im
within internet range ect and not supremely busy.

(I recently defaulted on a LOT of goals by having the time to do the
goals…but not log it into beeminder….and then later derailing entirely)

-Jolly

From: akratics@googlegroups.com [mailto:akratics@googlegroups.com] On Behalf
Of Philip Hellyer
Sent: Tuesday, August 14, 2012 12:50 PM

To: akratics@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: low-friction ad-hoc beeminding

I think the key phrase there is “in the future”. I’d also like to be able
to tell Beeminder that I’m going on holiday and to pause my roads for a
given date range. But it would defeat the purpose and benefit of Beeminder
for me if I could pause the road immediately on a stressful day.

To manage this right now, I put a reminder in my calendar a week ahead of
the event. I’ll put an equivalent reminder to dial it back up a week before
the break’s end, but that’s less urgent. Not ideal, not particularly
onerous.

Philip

On 14 August 2012 14:37, Apneet Jolly jolly@ajollylife.com wrote:

I’d really like a way to program in rises/drops in the road in the future.
IE – I’m going to burning man this week, stop tracking my goals.

I’ve currently stopped using beeminder right now due to this or another easy
way to pause goals :confused:

-Jolly

From: akratics@googlegroups.com [mailto:akratics@googlegroups.com] On Behalf
Of Philip Hellyer
Sent: Tuesday, August 14, 2012 5:13 AM
To: akratics@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: low-friction ad-hoc beeminding

The akrasia horizon is asymmetric. It’s a useful enforced delay before
dialling down a road, but can be a frustrating delay when I’m keen to dial
up the difficulty straight away. (It can be a frustrating delay on the way
down, too, but that’s the whole point!)

The Road Dial and the Akrasia Horizon | Beeminder Blog suggests that some of us will resist
dialling it down because we’ll be convinced that we’ll have our act together
by the time a week passes. For me, the ‘only another week’ energy burst
only kicks in once I’ve adjusted the road and can see the future slope
change. During the week, I might discover that it’s sustainable and want to
maintain my (still current) slope.

It’s useful to have the option of a delay for slope increases, because
sometimes I want it steeper today, or maybe I’m in the mood to force the
pace from tomorrow, or the beginning of next month, or whatever. ‘Right
now’ isn’t always the best option.

I also have some goals that warrant a “hip-hugging” road; one that
encourages a minimum level of effort each week, and doesn’t let me build up
too much of a safety buffer. If I want to do X at least twice a week, the
fact that I managed it 5 times this week doesn’t change my desire to do
another 2 next week. These goals are characterised by a weekly rate and an
arbitrary end date, but not a goal total.

In terms of baskets of tasks, I might give the Reeves Must-Do method a
try-out. I have 3 other mechanisms active right now.

First is tracking the number of cycles I do on my task list, using Mark
Forster’s “final version” to process the list. This sounds spiritually akin
to Paul’s use of RTM, without points-per-task.

Second is a bundle of 3 aspirationaly-daily activities; doing any one gives
me a point, and I can get ahead or catch up by doing one of each. By
bundling these into a single goal, I escape the problems inherent in
beeminding a once-per-day–7-days-per-week activity. (Obviously, setting a
slope of 21 per week would negate that solution; my current slope is 10.5,
and I anticipate growing it to at most 17.5.)

Third is general time-tracking; must spend at least X hours per week on this
focus area. As much as I hate using time as a proxy for progress, it’s
relatively easy to measure, and is semi-automated using TagTime.

Philip

twitter.com/PhilipHellyer

On 14 August 2012 06:38, Melanie Reeves Wicklow melzafish@gmail.com wrote:

It probably is overkill for all but weight loss or similar goals. Weight
loss might even be fine with 3-4 days.

On Monday, August 13, 2012, Daniel Reeves wrote:

Yeah, this may be the key to the power of the One Must-Do Task!
And if it works it may mean that a one-week akrasia horizon is overkill.

On Mon, Aug 13, 2012 at 9:15 AM, Melanie Reeves Wicklow
melzafish@gmail.com wrote:

Hmm, I think I like that better than my “getrdone” list. After a while,
it
didn’t really guide me. I’d just see what I had done from the list when
it
was an emergency day or close to it and record it, but the endlessly
procrastinated tasks still weren’t happening, only ones that had a
deadline.
But with this, the previous day when you swear it’ll be easy to do x y or
z,
you lock yourself in to that task. I’ve tried similar things like only
writing down the 3 most important tasks for the next day. But no system
to
force them done.

On Sunday, August 12, 2012, Daniel Reeves wrote:

I’m excited to try Paul Fenwick’s scheme below, but in the meantime
Bethany and I are trying something dirt simple that may capture enough
of the spirit of this to be valuable.

The idea is to pick one task that you Must Do the next day. You have
to write down the task the night before and it counts if you actually
do it the next day. You then commit to some number of such tasks per
week.

How to do that with Beeminder (the idea is to use the previous day’s
datapoint comment to commit to the next day’s task):

  1. Create a Do More goal like mustdo – d – beeminder
  2. Add an initial datapoint like
    ^ 0 “tmw: file tps report”
    which commits you to filing your tps report tomorrow.
  3. The next day, if you filed your tps report, enter a new datapoint,
    along with a new task, like
    ^ 1 “tmw: take over the world”
    or if you didn’t file your tps report then
    ^ 0 “tmw: take over the world”
    or if you didn’t file your tps report but still need to (before you
    can take over the world) then like
    ^ 0 “tmw: ditto”
  4. Dial up your road to commit to however many tasks per week you want
    to commit to. (I’m starting with 3.5/week – one every other day.)
  5. Rule: always enter your datapoint with a caret. You have to finish
    the day’s task – and specify tomorrow’s – by midnight.

If you want to get ambitious you can enter compound tasks (“file tps
report and clip toenails”) and still make the datapoints binary.

My datapoint yesterday read “tmw: describe this system on akratics
anonymous” so after I hit send I’ll give myself a 1 for today and pick
a task for tomorrow!

On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 6:07 PM, Paul Fenwick paul.j.fenwick@gmail.com
wrote:

Daniel’s just told me I need to join AA for a discussion going on here,
and
I suspect this is it. :slight_smile:

So, in a nutshell, I’ve linked my TODO trakcer (RememberTheMilk) to
Beeminder. I get points for completing tasks (joining AA just scored
me
one
point), with things like work tasks, and ‘hard’ tasks being worth much
more.
(Points are configurable by list and/or tag). Of course, Beeminder
lets
me
set how many points I score each week before I start losing money. :slight_smile:

I also have the problem of some tasks never getting done, so I have a
few
ideas on how to encourage me:

  • Dynamic point values. Tasks are worth more points the longer they
    stick
    around, so eventually I’ll be encouraged to stop procrastinating and do
    the
    task I’ve been putting off.
  • As above, but tasks are worth less points the longer they stick
    around.
    This is dangerous, because eventually it becomes easier to scrap a task
    than
    complete it.
  • Staleness penalties. Tasks start generating negative points if they
    stick
    around too long, even if they don’t have a due date. Some lists (eg,


Sent from my iPhone http://beeminder.com


http://dreev.es – search://“Daniel Reeves”
Follow the Yellow Brick Road – http://beeminder.com

I would deeply love the ability to set changes in the future as well;
Burning Man is a great example of something where I’m likely to forget
to flatten a road a week beforehand, or re-enable it afterwards.

As for submitting data-points, I’ve found both the android app and the
API to be supremely useful. Being able to type at my command-line:

$ bmndr floss 1

Is much easier than navigating to the website. Since Daniel and
Bethany have told me that they don’t mind me showing off code that
uses the new API, I can tell you that it’s as easy as (in Perl):

my ($user, $auth_token, $datapoint, $comment);  # You'll need to

fill these in. :slight_smile:

my $mech = WWW::Mechanize( autocheck => 1 )

$mech->post(
    "http://beeminder.com/api/v1/users/$user/goals/$goal/datapoints.json?auth_token=$auth_token",
    {
        timestamp => time(),
        value => $datapoint,
        comment => $comment
    }
);

The code I actually use for submission is at: bmndr code · GitHub

Cheerio,

Paul

On Tue, Aug 14, 2012 at 4:37 PM, Apneet Jolly jolly@ajollylife.com wrote:

That relies on me rememebering to turn it back on….and also assumes im
within internet range ect and not supremely busy.

(I recently defaulted on a LOT of goals by having the time to do the
goals…but not log it into beeminder….and then later derailing entirely)

-Jolly

From: akratics@googlegroups.com [mailto:akratics@googlegroups.com] On Behalf
Of Philip Hellyer
Sent: Tuesday, August 14, 2012 12:50 PM

To: akratics@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: low-friction ad-hoc beeminding

I think the key phrase there is “in the future”. I’d also like to be able
to tell Beeminder that I’m going on holiday and to pause my roads for a
given date range. But it would defeat the purpose and benefit of Beeminder
for me if I could pause the road immediately on a stressful day.

To manage this right now, I put a reminder in my calendar a week ahead of
the event. I’ll put an equivalent reminder to dial it back up a week before
the break’s end, but that’s less urgent. Not ideal, not particularly
onerous.

Philip

On 14 August 2012 14:37, Apneet Jolly jolly@ajollylife.com wrote:

I’d really like a way to program in rises/drops in the road in the future.
IE – I’m going to burning man this week, stop tracking my goals.

I’ve currently stopped using beeminder right now due to this or another easy
way to pause goals :confused:

-Jolly

From: akratics@googlegroups.com [mailto:akratics@googlegroups.com] On Behalf
Of Philip Hellyer
Sent: Tuesday, August 14, 2012 5:13 AM
To: akratics@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: low-friction ad-hoc beeminding

The akrasia horizon is asymmetric. It’s a useful enforced delay before
dialling down a road, but can be a frustrating delay when I’m keen to dial
up the difficulty straight away. (It can be a frustrating delay on the way
down, too, but that’s the whole point!)

The Road Dial and the Akrasia Horizon | Beeminder Blog suggests that some of us will resist
dialling it down because we’ll be convinced that we’ll have our act together
by the time a week passes. For me, the ‘only another week’ energy burst
only kicks in once I’ve adjusted the road and can see the future slope
change. During the week, I might discover that it’s sustainable and want to
maintain my (still current) slope.

It’s useful to have the option of a delay for slope increases, because
sometimes I want it steeper today, or maybe I’m in the mood to force the
pace from tomorrow, or the beginning of next month, or whatever. ‘Right
now’ isn’t always the best option.

I also have some goals that warrant a “hip-hugging” road; one that
encourages a minimum level of effort each week, and doesn’t let me build up
too much of a safety buffer. If I want to do X at least twice a week, the
fact that I managed it 5 times this week doesn’t change my desire to do
another 2 next week. These goals are characterised by a weekly rate and an
arbitrary end date, but not a goal total.

In terms of baskets of tasks, I might give the Reeves Must-Do method a
try-out. I have 3 other mechanisms active right now.

First is tracking the number of cycles I do on my task list, using Mark
Forster’s “final version” to process the list. This sounds spiritually akin
to Paul’s use of RTM, without points-per-task.

Second is a bundle of 3 aspirationaly-daily activities; doing any one gives
me a point, and I can get ahead or catch up by doing one of each. By
bundling these into a single goal, I escape the problems inherent in
beeminding a once-per-day–7-days-per-week activity. (Obviously, setting a
slope of 21 per week would negate that solution; my current slope is 10.5,
and I anticipate growing it to at most 17.5.)

Third is general time-tracking; must spend at least X hours per week on this
focus area. As much as I hate using time as a proxy for progress, it’s
relatively easy to measure, and is semi-automated using TagTime.

Philip

twitter.com/PhilipHellyer

On 14 August 2012 06:38, Melanie Reeves Wicklow melzafish@gmail.com wrote:

It probably is overkill for all but weight loss or similar goals. Weight
loss might even be fine with 3-4 days.

On Monday, August 13, 2012, Daniel Reeves wrote:

Yeah, this may be the key to the power of the One Must-Do Task!
And if it works it may mean that a one-week akrasia horizon is overkill.

On Mon, Aug 13, 2012 at 9:15 AM, Melanie Reeves Wicklow
melzafish@gmail.com wrote:

Hmm, I think I like that better than my “getrdone” list. After a while,
it
didn’t really guide me. I’d just see what I had done from the list when
it
was an emergency day or close to it and record it, but the endlessly
procrastinated tasks still weren’t happening, only ones that had a
deadline.
But with this, the previous day when you swear it’ll be easy to do x y or
z,
you lock yourself in to that task. I’ve tried similar things like only
writing down the 3 most important tasks for the next day. But no system
to
force them done.

On Sunday, August 12, 2012, Daniel Reeves wrote:

I’m excited to try Paul Fenwick’s scheme below, but in the meantime
Bethany and I are trying something dirt simple that may capture enough
of the spirit of this to be valuable.

The idea is to pick one task that you Must Do the next day. You have
to write down the task the night before and it counts if you actually
do it the next day. You then commit to some number of such tasks per
week.

How to do that with Beeminder (the idea is to use the previous day’s
datapoint comment to commit to the next day’s task):

  1. Create a Do More goal like mustdo – d – beeminder
  2. Add an initial datapoint like
    ^ 0 “tmw: file tps report”
    which commits you to filing your tps report tomorrow.
  3. The next day, if you filed your tps report, enter a new datapoint,
    along with a new task, like
    ^ 1 “tmw: take over the world”
    or if you didn’t file your tps report then
    ^ 0 “tmw: take over the world”
    or if you didn’t file your tps report but still need to (before you
    can take over the world) then like
    ^ 0 “tmw: ditto”
  4. Dial up your road to commit to however many tasks per week you want
    to commit to. (I’m starting with 3.5/week – one every other day.)
  5. Rule: always enter your datapoint with a caret. You have to finish
    the day’s task – and specify tomorrow’s – by midnight.

If you want to get ambitious you can enter compound tasks (“file tps
report and clip toenails”) and still make the datapoints binary.

My datapoint yesterday read “tmw: describe this system on akratics
anonymous” so after I hit send I’ll give myself a 1 for today and pick
a task for tomorrow!

On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 6:07 PM, Paul Fenwick paul.j.fenwick@gmail.com
wrote:

Daniel’s just told me I need to join AA for a discussion going on here,
and
I suspect this is it. :slight_smile:

So, in a nutshell, I’ve linked my TODO trakcer (RememberTheMilk) to
Beeminder. I get points for completing tasks (joining AA just scored
me
one
point), with things like work tasks, and ‘hard’ tasks being worth much
more.
(Points are configurable by list and/or tag). Of course, Beeminder
lets
me
set how many points I score each week before I start losing money. :slight_smile:

I also have the problem of some tasks never getting done, so I have a
few
ideas on how to encourage me:

  • Dynamic point values. Tasks are worth more points the longer they
    stick
    around, so eventually I’ll be encouraged to stop procrastinating and do
    the
    task I’ve been putting off.
  • As above, but tasks are worth less points the longer they stick
    around.
    This is dangerous, because eventually it becomes easier to scrap a task
    than
    complete it.
  • Staleness penalties. Tasks start generating negative points if they
    stick
    around too long, even if they don’t have a due date. Some lists (eg,


Sent from my iPhone http://beeminder.com

this is super sexy.

I agree about navigating to the website, but replying to bot emails
feels like similarly low overhead to me, and the email serves as a
reminder to actually do the flossing (or whatever).
In gmail:
[enter][r]^ 1[tab][space]

7 keystrokes! :slight_smile:

On Tue, Aug 14, 2012 at 10:55 PM, Paul Fenwick paul.j.fenwick@gmail.com wrote:

I would deeply love the ability to set changes in the future as well;
Burning Man is a great example of something where I’m likely to forget
to flatten a road a week beforehand, or re-enable it afterwards.

As for submitting data-points, I’ve found both the android app and the
API to be supremely useful. Being able to type at my command-line:

$ bmndr floss 1

Is much easier than navigating to the website. Since Daniel and
Bethany have told me that they don’t mind me showing off code that
uses the new API, I can tell you that it’s as easy as (in Perl):

my ($user, $auth_token, $datapoint, $comment);  # You'll need to

fill these in. :slight_smile:

my $mech = WWW::Mechanize( autocheck => 1 )

$mech->post(
    "http://beeminder.com/api/v1/users/$user/goals/$goal/datapoints.json?auth_token=$auth_token",
    {
        timestamp => time(),
        value => $datapoint,
        comment => $comment
    }
);

The code I actually use for submission is at: bmndr code · GitHub

Cheerio,

Paul

On Tue, Aug 14, 2012 at 4:37 PM, Apneet Jolly jolly@ajollylife.com wrote:

That relies on me rememebering to turn it back on….and also assumes im
within internet range ect and not supremely busy.

(I recently defaulted on a LOT of goals by having the time to do the
goals…but not log it into beeminder….and then later derailing entirely)

-Jolly

From: akratics@googlegroups.com [mailto:akratics@googlegroups.com] On Behalf
Of Philip Hellyer
Sent: Tuesday, August 14, 2012 12:50 PM

To: akratics@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: low-friction ad-hoc beeminding

I think the key phrase there is “in the future”. I’d also like to be able
to tell Beeminder that I’m going on holiday and to pause my roads for a
given date range. But it would defeat the purpose and benefit of Beeminder
for me if I could pause the road immediately on a stressful day.

To manage this right now, I put a reminder in my calendar a week ahead of
the event. I’ll put an equivalent reminder to dial it back up a week before
the break’s end, but that’s less urgent. Not ideal, not particularly
onerous.

Philip

On 14 August 2012 14:37, Apneet Jolly jolly@ajollylife.com wrote:

I’d really like a way to program in rises/drops in the road in the future.
IE – I’m going to burning man this week, stop tracking my goals.

I’ve currently stopped using beeminder right now due to this or another easy
way to pause goals :confused:

-Jolly

From: akratics@googlegroups.com [mailto:akratics@googlegroups.com] On Behalf
Of Philip Hellyer
Sent: Tuesday, August 14, 2012 5:13 AM
To: akratics@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: low-friction ad-hoc beeminding

The akrasia horizon is asymmetric. It’s a useful enforced delay before
dialling down a road, but can be a frustrating delay when I’m keen to dial
up the difficulty straight away. (It can be a frustrating delay on the way
down, too, but that’s the whole point!)

The Road Dial and the Akrasia Horizon | Beeminder Blog suggests that some of us will resist
dialling it down because we’ll be convinced that we’ll have our act together
by the time a week passes. For me, the ‘only another week’ energy burst
only kicks in once I’ve adjusted the road and can see the future slope
change. During the week, I might discover that it’s sustainable and want to
maintain my (still current) slope.

It’s useful to have the option of a delay for slope increases, because
sometimes I want it steeper today, or maybe I’m in the mood to force the
pace from tomorrow, or the beginning of next month, or whatever. ‘Right
now’ isn’t always the best option.

I also have some goals that warrant a “hip-hugging” road; one that
encourages a minimum level of effort each week, and doesn’t let me build up
too much of a safety buffer. If I want to do X at least twice a week, the
fact that I managed it 5 times this week doesn’t change my desire to do
another 2 next week. These goals are characterised by a weekly rate and an
arbitrary end date, but not a goal total.

In terms of baskets of tasks, I might give the Reeves Must-Do method a
try-out. I have 3 other mechanisms active right now.

First is tracking the number of cycles I do on my task list, using Mark
Forster’s “final version” to process the list. This sounds spiritually akin
to Paul’s use of RTM, without points-per-task.

Second is a bundle of 3 aspirationaly-daily activities; doing any one gives
me a point, and I can get ahead or catch up by doing one of each. By
bundling these into a single goal, I escape the problems inherent in
beeminding a once-per-day–7-days-per-week activity. (Obviously, setting a
slope of 21 per week would negate that solution; my current slope is 10.5,
and I anticipate growing it to at most 17.5.)

Third is general time-tracking; must spend at least X hours per week on this
focus area. As much as I hate using time as a proxy for progress, it’s
relatively easy to measure, and is semi-automated using TagTime.

Philip

twitter.com/PhilipHellyer

On 14 August 2012 06:38, Melanie Reeves Wicklow melzafish@gmail.com wrote:

It probably is overkill for all but weight loss or similar goals. Weight
loss might even be fine with 3-4 days.

On Monday, August 13, 2012, Daniel Reeves wrote:

Yeah, this may be the key to the power of the One Must-Do Task!
And if it works it may mean that a one-week akrasia horizon is overkill.

On Mon, Aug 13, 2012 at 9:15 AM, Melanie Reeves Wicklow
melzafish@gmail.com wrote:

Hmm, I think I like that better than my “getrdone” list. After a while,
it
didn’t really guide me. I’d just see what I had done from the list when
it
was an emergency day or close to it and record it, but the endlessly
procrastinated tasks still weren’t happening, only ones that had a
deadline.
But with this, the previous day when you swear it’ll be easy to do x y or
z,
you lock yourself in to that task. I’ve tried similar things like only
writing down the 3 most important tasks for the next day. But no system
to
force them done.

On Sunday, August 12, 2012, Daniel Reeves wrote:

I’m excited to try Paul Fenwick’s scheme below, but in the meantime
Bethany and I are trying something dirt simple that may capture enough
of the spirit of this to be valuable.

The idea is to pick one task that you Must Do the next day. You have
to write down the task the night before and it counts if you actually
do it the next day. You then commit to some number of such tasks per
week.

How to do that with Beeminder (the idea is to use the previous day’s
datapoint comment to commit to the next day’s task):

  1. Create a Do More goal like mustdo – d – beeminder
  2. Add an initial datapoint like
    ^ 0 “tmw: file tps report”
    which commits you to filing your tps report tomorrow.
  3. The next day, if you filed your tps report, enter a new datapoint,
    along with a new task, like
    ^ 1 “tmw: take over the world”
    or if you didn’t file your tps report then
    ^ 0 “tmw: take over the world”
    or if you didn’t file your tps report but still need to (before you
    can take over the world) then like
    ^ 0 “tmw: ditto”
  4. Dial up your road to commit to however many tasks per week you want
    to commit to. (I’m starting with 3.5/week – one every other day.)
  5. Rule: always enter your datapoint with a caret. You have to finish
    the day’s task – and specify tomorrow’s – by midnight.

If you want to get ambitious you can enter compound tasks (“file tps
report and clip toenails”) and still make the datapoints binary.

My datapoint yesterday read “tmw: describe this system on akratics
anonymous” so after I hit send I’ll give myself a 1 for today and pick
a task for tomorrow!

On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 6:07 PM, Paul Fenwick paul.j.fenwick@gmail.com
wrote:

Daniel’s just told me I need to join AA for a discussion going on here,
and
I suspect this is it. :slight_smile:

So, in a nutshell, I’ve linked my TODO trakcer (RememberTheMilk) to
Beeminder. I get points for completing tasks (joining AA just scored
me
one
point), with things like work tasks, and ‘hard’ tasks being worth much
more.
(Points are configurable by list and/or tag). Of course, Beeminder
lets
me
set how many points I score each week before I start losing money. :slight_smile:

I also have the problem of some tasks never getting done, so I have a
few
ideas on how to encourage me:

  • Dynamic point values. Tasks are worth more points the longer they
    stick
    around, so eventually I’ll be encouraged to stop procrastinating and do
    the
    task I’ve been putting off.
  • As above, but tasks are worth less points the longer they stick
    around.
    This is dangerous, because eventually it becomes easier to scrap a task
    than
    complete it.
  • Staleness penalties. Tasks start generating negative points if they
    stick
    around too long, even if they don’t have a due date. Some lists (eg,


Sent from my iPhone http://beeminder.com


http://dreev.es – search://“Daniel Reeves”
Follow the Yellow Brick Road – http://beeminder.com

It would be super cool to be able to set regular periodic changes as well.
One of the super helpful things for me about time management techniques
like pomodoro is that there are built-in breaks, and these are
psychologically extremely valuable, knowing that as long as you start now
you get to take a break x minutes down the line. It would be rad to build
that into a nice metarhythm with beeminder, minutes inside days inside
weeks! Like this whole “5 days on 2 days off” thing I’ve heard so many
rumors about.

It’s true that I can always build up a backlog to simulate this, but if I
really need beeminder, then I’m probably not going to end up with a
backlog, so that’s no good, psychologically or otherwise.

i

On Tue, Aug 14, 2012 at 11:16 PM, Daniel Reeves dreeves@beeminder.comwrote:

this is super sexy.

I agree about navigating to the website, but replying to bot emails
feels like similarly low overhead to me, and the email serves as a
reminder to actually do the flossing (or whatever).
In gmail:
[enter][r]^ 1[tab][space]

7 keystrokes! :slight_smile:

On Tue, Aug 14, 2012 at 10:55 PM, Paul Fenwick paul.j.fenwick@gmail.com
wrote:

I would deeply love the ability to set changes in the future as well;
Burning Man is a great example of something where I’m likely to forget
to flatten a road a week beforehand, or re-enable it afterwards.

As for submitting data-points, I’ve found both the android app and the
API to be supremely useful. Being able to type at my command-line:

$ bmndr floss 1

Is much easier than navigating to the website. Since Daniel and
Bethany have told me that they don’t mind me showing off code that
uses the new API, I can tell you that it’s as easy as (in Perl):

my ($user, $auth_token, $datapoint, $comment);  # You'll need to

fill these in. :slight_smile:

my $mech = WWW::Mechanize( autocheck => 1 )

$mech->post(
    "

http://beeminder.com/api/v1/users/$user/goals/$goal/datapoints.json?auth_token=$auth_token
",

    {
        timestamp => time(),
        value => $datapoint,
        comment => $comment
    }
);

The code I actually use for submission is at:
bmndr code · GitHub

Cheerio,

Paul

On Tue, Aug 14, 2012 at 4:37 PM, Apneet Jolly jolly@ajollylife.com
wrote:

That relies on me rememebering to turn it back on….and also assumes im
within internet range ect and not supremely busy.

(I recently defaulted on a LOT of goals by having the time to do the
goals…but not log it into beeminder….and then later derailing entirely)

-Jolly

From: akratics@googlegroups.com [mailto:akratics@googlegroups.com] On
Behalf
Of Philip Hellyer
Sent: Tuesday, August 14, 2012 12:50 PM

To: akratics@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: low-friction ad-hoc beeminding

I think the key phrase there is “in the future”. I’d also like to be
able
to tell Beeminder that I’m going on holiday and to pause my roads for a
given date range. But it would defeat the purpose and benefit of
Beeminder
for me if I could pause the road immediately on a stressful day.

To manage this right now, I put a reminder in my calendar a week ahead
of
the event. I’ll put an equivalent reminder to dial it back up a week
before
the break’s end, but that’s less urgent. Not ideal, not particularly
onerous.

Philip

On 14 August 2012 14:37, Apneet Jolly jolly@ajollylife.com wrote:

I’d really like a way to program in rises/drops in the road in the
future.
IE – I’m going to burning man this week, stop tracking my goals.

I’ve currently stopped using beeminder right now due to this or another
easy
way to pause goals :confused:

-Jolly

From: akratics@googlegroups.com [mailto:akratics@googlegroups.com] On
Behalf
Of Philip Hellyer
Sent: Tuesday, August 14, 2012 5:13 AM
To: akratics@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: low-friction ad-hoc beeminding

The akrasia horizon is asymmetric. It’s a useful enforced delay before
dialling down a road, but can be a frustrating delay when I’m keen to
dial
up the difficulty straight away. (It can be a frustrating delay on the
way
down, too, but that’s the whole point!)

The Road Dial and the Akrasia Horizon | Beeminder Blog suggests that some of us will resist
dialling it down because we’ll be convinced that we’ll have our act
together
by the time a week passes. For me, the ‘only another week’ energy burst
only kicks in once I’ve adjusted the road and can see the future slope
change. During the week, I might discover that it’s sustainable and
want to
maintain my (still current) slope.

It’s useful to have the option of a delay for slope increases, because
sometimes I want it steeper today, or maybe I’m in the mood to force the
pace from tomorrow, or the beginning of next month, or whatever. ‘Right
now’ isn’t always the best option.

I also have some goals that warrant a “hip-hugging” road; one that
encourages a minimum level of effort each week, and doesn’t let me
build up
too much of a safety buffer. If I want to do X at least twice a week,
the
fact that I managed it 5 times this week doesn’t change my desire to do
another 2 next week. These goals are characterised by a weekly rate
and an
arbitrary end date, but not a goal total.

In terms of baskets of tasks, I might give the Reeves Must-Do method a
try-out. I have 3 other mechanisms active right now.

First is tracking the number of cycles I do on my task list, using Mark
Forster’s “final version” to process the list. This sounds spiritually
akin
to Paul’s use of RTM, without points-per-task.

Second is a bundle of 3 aspirationaly-daily activities; doing any one
gives
me a point, and I can get ahead or catch up by doing one of each. By
bundling these into a single goal, I escape the problems inherent in
beeminding a once-per-day–7-days-per-week activity. (Obviously,
setting a
slope of 21 per week would negate that solution; my current slope is
10.5,
and I anticipate growing it to at most 17.5.)

Third is general time-tracking; must spend at least X hours per week on
this
focus area. As much as I hate using time as a proxy for progress, it’s
relatively easy to measure, and is semi-automated using TagTime.

Philip

twitter.com/PhilipHellyer

On 14 August 2012 06:38, Melanie Reeves Wicklow melzafish@gmail.com
wrote:

It probably is overkill for all but weight loss or similar goals.
Weight
loss might even be fine with 3-4 days.

On Monday, August 13, 2012, Daniel Reeves wrote:

Yeah, this may be the key to the power of the One Must-Do Task!
And if it works it may mean that a one-week akrasia horizon is overkill.

On Mon, Aug 13, 2012 at 9:15 AM, Melanie Reeves Wicklow
melzafish@gmail.com wrote:

Hmm, I think I like that better than my “getrdone” list. After a
while,
it
didn’t really guide me. I’d just see what I had done from the list
when
it
was an emergency day or close to it and record it, but the endlessly
procrastinated tasks still weren’t happening, only ones that had a
deadline.
But with this, the previous day when you swear it’ll be easy to do x y
or
z,
you lock yourself in to that task. I’ve tried similar things like only
writing down the 3 most important tasks for the next day. But no
system
to
force them done.

On Sunday, August 12, 2012, Daniel Reeves wrote:

I’m excited to try Paul Fenwick’s scheme below, but in the meantime
Bethany and I are trying something dirt simple that may capture enough
of the spirit of this to be valuable.

The idea is to pick one task that you Must Do the next day. You have
to write down the task the night before and it counts if you actually
do it the next day. You then commit to some number of such tasks per
week.

How to do that with Beeminder (the idea is to use the previous day’s
datapoint comment to commit to the next day’s task):

  1. Create a Do More goal like mustdo – d – beeminder
  2. Add an initial datapoint like
    ^ 0 “tmw: file tps report”
    which commits you to filing your tps report tomorrow.
  3. The next day, if you filed your tps report, enter a new datapoint,
    along with a new task, like
    ^ 1 “tmw: take over the world”
    or if you didn’t file your tps report then
    ^ 0 “tmw: take over the world”
    or if you didn’t file your tps report but still need to (before you
    can take over the world) then like
    ^ 0 “tmw: ditto”
  4. Dial up your road to commit to however many tasks per week you want
    to commit to. (I’m starting with 3.5/week – one every other day.)
  5. Rule: always enter your datapoint with a caret. You have to finish
    the day’s task – and specify tomorrow’s – by midnight.

If you want to get ambitious you can enter compound tasks (“file tps
report and clip toenails”) and still make the datapoints binary.

My datapoint yesterday read “tmw: describe this system on akratics
anonymous” so after I hit send I’ll give myself a 1 for today and pick
a task for tomorrow!

On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 6:07 PM, Paul Fenwick <
paul.j.fenwick@gmail.com>
wrote:

Daniel’s just told me I need to join AA for a discussion going on
here,
and
I suspect this is it. :slight_smile:

So, in a nutshell, I’ve linked my TODO trakcer (RememberTheMilk) to
Beeminder. I get points for completing tasks (joining AA just
scored
me
one
point), with things like work tasks, and ‘hard’ tasks being worth
much
more.
(Points are configurable by list and/or tag). Of course, Beeminder
lets
me
set how many points I score each week before I start losing money.
:slight_smile:

I also have the problem of some tasks never getting done, so I have
a
few
ideas on how to encourage me:

  • Dynamic point values. Tasks are worth more points the longer they
    stick
    around, so eventually I’ll be encouraged to stop procrastinating
    and do
    the
    task I’ve been putting off.
  • As above, but tasks are worth less points the longer they stick
    around.
    This is dangerous, because eventually it becomes easier to scrap a
    task
    than
    complete it.
  • Staleness penalties. Tasks start generating negative points if
    they
    stick
    around too long, even if they don’t have a due date. Some lists (eg,


Sent from my iPhone http://beeminder.com


http://dreev.es – search://“Daniel Reeves”
Follow the Yellow Brick Road – http://beeminder.com


Isaac Schankler, composer | www.isaacschankler.com

Yeah, that’s my problem with the whole “build up a backlog so you don’t have to enter in data as you complete tasks” answer - if I had that willpower, I wouldn’t be using beeminder :stuck_out_tongue:

From: akratics@googlegroups.com [mailto:akratics@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Isaac Schankler
Sent: Wednesday, August 15, 2012 6:55 AM
To: akratics@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: low-friction ad-hoc beeminding

It would be super cool to be able to set regular periodic changes as well. One of the super helpful things for me about time management techniques like pomodoro is that there are built-in breaks, and these are psychologically extremely valuable, knowing that as long as you start now you get to take a break x minutes down the line. It would be rad to build that into a nice metarhythm with beeminder, minutes inside days inside weeks! Like this whole “5 days on 2 days off” thing I’ve heard so many rumors about.

It’s true that I can always build up a backlog to simulate this, but if I really need beeminder, then I’m probably not going to end up with a backlog, so that’s no good, psychologically or otherwise.

i
On Tue, Aug 14, 2012 at 11:16 PM, Daniel Reeves <dreeves@beeminder.commailto:dreeves@beeminder.com> wrote:
this is super sexy.

I agree about navigating to the website, but replying to bot emails
feels like similarly low overhead to me, and the email serves as a
reminder to actually do the flossing (or whatever).
In gmail:
[enter][r]^ 1[tab][space]

7 keystrokes! :slight_smile:

On Tue, Aug 14, 2012 at 10:55 PM, Paul Fenwick <paul.j.fenwick@gmail.commailto:paul.j.fenwick@gmail.com> wrote:

I would deeply love the ability to set changes in the future as well;
Burning Man is a great example of something where I’m likely to forget
to flatten a road a week beforehand, or re-enable it afterwards.

As for submitting data-points, I’ve found both the android app and the
API to be supremely useful. Being able to type at my command-line:

$ bmndr floss 1

Is much easier than navigating to the website. Since Daniel and
Bethany have told me that they don’t mind me showing off code that
uses the new API, I can tell you that it’s as easy as (in Perl):

my ($user, $auth_token, $datapoint, $comment);  # You'll need to

fill these in. :slight_smile:

my $mech = WWW::Mechanize( autocheck => 1 )

$mech->post(
    "http://beeminder.com/api/v1/users/$user/goals/$goal/datapoints.json?auth_token=$auth_token",
    {
        timestamp => time(),
        value => $datapoint,
        comment => $comment
    }
);

The code I actually use for submission is at: bmndr code · GitHub

Cheerio,

Paul

On Tue, Aug 14, 2012 at 4:37 PM, Apneet Jolly <jolly@ajollylife.commailto:jolly@ajollylife.com> wrote:

That relies on me rememebering to turn it back on…and also assumes im
within internet range ect and not supremely busy.

(I recently defaulted on a LOT of goals by having the time to do the
goals…but not log it into beeminder…and then later derailing entirely)

-Jolly

From: akratics@googlegroups.commailto:akratics@googlegroups.com [mailto:akratics@googlegroups.commailto:akratics@googlegroups.com] On Behalf
Of Philip Hellyer
Sent: Tuesday, August 14, 2012 12:50 PM

To: akratics@googlegroups.commailto:akratics@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: low-friction ad-hoc beeminding

I think the key phrase there is “in the future”. I’d also like to be able
to tell Beeminder that I’m going on holiday and to pause my roads for a
given date range. But it would defeat the purpose and benefit of Beeminder
for me if I could pause the road immediately on a stressful day.

To manage this right now, I put a reminder in my calendar a week ahead of
the event. I’ll put an equivalent reminder to dial it back up a week before
the break’s end, but that’s less urgent. Not ideal, not particularly
onerous.

Philip

On 14 August 2012 14:37, Apneet Jolly <jolly@ajollylife.commailto:jolly@ajollylife.com> wrote:

I’d really like a way to program in rises/drops in the road in the future.
IE - I’m going to burning man this week, stop tracking my goals.

I’ve currently stopped using beeminder right now due to this or another easy
way to pause goals :confused:

-Jolly

From: akratics@googlegroups.commailto:akratics@googlegroups.com [mailto:akratics@googlegroups.commailto:akratics@googlegroups.com] On Behalf
Of Philip Hellyer
Sent: Tuesday, August 14, 2012 5:13 AM
To: akratics@googlegroups.commailto:akratics@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: low-friction ad-hoc beeminding

The akrasia horizon is asymmetric. It’s a useful enforced delay before
dialling down a road, but can be a frustrating delay when I’m keen to dial
up the difficulty straight away. (It can be a frustrating delay on the way
down, too, but that’s the whole point!)

The Road Dial and the Akrasia Horizon | Beeminder Blog suggests that some of us will resist
dialling it down because we’ll be convinced that we’ll have our act together
by the time a week passes. For me, the ‘only another week’ energy burst
only kicks in once I’ve adjusted the road and can see the future slope
change. During the week, I might discover that it’s sustainable and want to
maintain my (still current) slope.

It’s useful to have the option of a delay for slope increases, because
sometimes I want it steeper today, or maybe I’m in the mood to force the
pace from tomorrow, or the beginning of next month, or whatever. ‘Right
now’ isn’t always the best option.

I also have some goals that warrant a “hip-hugging” road; one that
encourages a minimum level of effort each week, and doesn’t let me build up
too much of a safety buffer. If I want to do X at least twice a week, the
fact that I managed it 5 times this week doesn’t change my desire to do
another 2 next week. These goals are characterised by a weekly rate and an
arbitrary end date, but not a goal total.

In terms of baskets of tasks, I might give the Reeves Must-Do method a
try-out. I have 3 other mechanisms active right now.

First is tracking the number of cycles I do on my task list, using Mark
Forster’s “final version” to process the list. This sounds spiritually akin
to Paul’s use of RTM, without points-per-task.

Second is a bundle of 3 aspirationaly-daily activities; doing any one gives
me a point, and I can get ahead or catch up by doing one of each. By
bundling these into a single goal, I escape the problems inherent in
beeminding a once-per-day-7-days-per-week activity. (Obviously, setting a
slope of 21 per week would negate that solution; my current slope is 10.5,
and I anticipate growing it to at most 17.5.)

Third is general time-tracking; must spend at least X hours per week on this
focus area. As much as I hate using time as a proxy for progress, it’s
relatively easy to measure, and is semi-automated using TagTime.

Philip

twitter.com/PhilipHellyerhttp://twitter.com/PhilipHellyer

On 14 August 2012 06:38, Melanie Reeves Wicklow <melzafish@gmail.commailto:melzafish@gmail.com> wrote:

It probably is overkill for all but weight loss or similar goals. Weight
loss might even be fine with 3-4 days.

On Monday, August 13, 2012, Daniel Reeves wrote:

Yeah, this may be the key to the power of the One Must-Do Task!
And if it works it may mean that a one-week akrasia horizon is overkill.

On Mon, Aug 13, 2012 at 9:15 AM, Melanie Reeves Wicklow
<melzafish@gmail.commailto:melzafish@gmail.com> wrote:

Hmm, I think I like that better than my “getrdone” list. After a while,
it
didn’t really guide me. I’d just see what I had done from the list when
it
was an emergency day or close to it and record it, but the endlessly
procrastinated tasks still weren’t happening, only ones that had a
deadline.
But with this, the previous day when you swear it’ll be easy to do x y or
z,
you lock yourself in to that task. I’ve tried similar things like only
writing down the 3 most important tasks for the next day. But no system
to
force them done.

On Sunday, August 12, 2012, Daniel Reeves wrote:

I’m excited to try Paul Fenwick’s scheme below, but in the meantime
Bethany and I are trying something dirt simple that may capture enough
of the spirit of this to be valuable.

The idea is to pick one task that you Must Do the next day. You have
to write down the task the night before and it counts if you actually
do it the next day. You then commit to some number of such tasks per
week.

How to do that with Beeminder (the idea is to use the previous day’s
datapoint comment to commit to the next day’s task):

  1. Create a Do More goal like mustdo – d – beeminderhttp://beeminder.com/d/mustdo
  2. Add an initial datapoint like
    ^ 0 “tmw: file tps report”
    which commits you to filing your tps report tomorrow.
  3. The next day, if you filed your tps report, enter a new datapoint,
    along with a new task, like
    ^ 1 “tmw: take over the world”
    or if you didn’t file your tps report then
    ^ 0 “tmw: take over the world”
    or if you didn’t file your tps report but still need to (before you
    can take over the world) then like
    ^ 0 “tmw: ditto”
  4. Dial up your road to commit to however many tasks per week you want
    to commit to. (I’m starting with 3.5/week – one every other day.)
  5. Rule: always enter your datapoint with a caret. You have to finish
    the day’s task – and specify tomorrow’s – by midnight.

If you want to get ambitious you can enter compound tasks (“file tps
report and clip toenails”) and still make the datapoints binary.

My datapoint yesterday read “tmw: describe this system on akratics
anonymous” so after I hit send I’ll give myself a 1 for today and pick
a task for tomorrow!

On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 6:07 PM, Paul Fenwick <paul.j.fenwick@gmail.commailto:paul.j.fenwick@gmail.com>
wrote:

Daniel’s just told me I need to join AA for a discussion going on here,
and
I suspect this is it. :slight_smile:

So, in a nutshell, I’ve linked my TODO trakcer (RememberTheMilk) to
Beeminder. I get points for completing tasks (joining AA just scored
me
one
point), with things like work tasks, and ‘hard’ tasks being worth much
more.
(Points are configurable by list and/or tag). Of course, Beeminder
lets
me
set how many points I score each week before I start losing money. :slight_smile:

I also have the problem of some tasks never getting done, so I have a
few
ideas on how to encourage me:

  • Dynamic point values. Tasks are worth more points the longer they
    stick
    around, so eventually I’ll be encouraged to stop procrastinating and do
    the
    task I’ve been putting off.
  • As above, but tasks are worth less points the longer they stick
    around.
    This is dangerous, because eventually it becomes easier to scrap a task
    than
    complete it.
  • Staleness penalties. Tasks start generating negative points if they
    stick
    around too long, even if they don’t have a due date. Some lists (eg,


Sent from my iPhone http://beeminder.com


http://dreev.es – search://“Daniel Reeves”
Follow the Yellow Brick Road – http://beeminder.com


Isaac Schankler, composer | www.isaacschankler.comhttp://www.isaacschankler.com/