I have seen quite Beeminder Journal’s already and I think that those are quite a good idea to make one review their one goals as well as showing other people of this community some of their strategies. So, I am doing this, also!
Personal introduction: My name is Marc, a college student living in Barcelona, studying Diet and Nutrition (senior year, already!), working at Starbucks, having a bunch of friends, playing music from time to time and in love with one of my favourite cities, Budapest. I am quite good at working and planning sometimes but one of my problems in life is too much overthinking and not enjoying life as much as I should (gotta not take everything that much seriously!).
Brief introduction of my goals:
/fruittrial: tracks the amount of fruit pieces I am eating every day, trying to have 2,5 a day. The one that is more difficult for me, but the one I also gotta do the most. Will last till the end of this month, and then we will see (that’s why it is a trial).
/mroutinetrial: tracks my small morning routine for the period of exams (trial period, also).
/youbetterstudy: tracks the amount of hours I study every day during the exam period. Average should be 3h a day. Has been quite good and gotta be, because after I failed in /study; I am betting a lot of money here. Luckily (and if all exams go well, it will end in about a week).
/blog: tracks the amount of blog posts I do in my personal blog. Also, will end in a few days.
/cvi: tracks the amount of tiny progress that I do in a personal project. It is the same concept for Beeminder’s UVIs, which I like.
/fpp: started yesterday, is tracking a personal project which I do not want to fail.
That’s pretty much all for now. I had heard about Beeminder (and even used) maybe a year ago or two, but now I feel that I am truly using it properly. I am willing to learn much more and have fun in the process.
I finished /blog today with only one derailment. Could have done better but I am happy how I handled and maybe I will start another one with similar purposes later.
Also, you can now access to my /cvi steps that I am taking. Extra-accountability
Hi everyone, exams are finally up and I think it is time for some update around my goals.
Goals in which I have succeded and now archived
/mroutinetrial: tracked my small morning routine for the period of exams (trial period, also). I will consider if I continue it.
/youbetterstudy: tracked the amount of hours I studied every day during the exam period. Average should be 3h a day. Even though I was not consistent, I achieved and pushed me to study some days I was quite lazy. I pledged 90$, so…
/blog: tracked the amount of blog posts I do in my personal blog. I started a new one (/blog2), for the months of summer.
Goals I am deleting
/cvi: tracks the amount of tiny progress that I do in a personal project. It is the same concept for Beeminder’s UVIs, which I like. Deleting due to lack of understanding to how amount of work is required for +1 to be considered.
/fpp: is tracking a personal project which I do not want to fail. I didn’t understand pessmistic pressumption (is this how it is called?) - will restart maybe after consideration.
Goals still on track
/fruittrial: tracks the amount of fruit pieces I am eating every day, trying to have 2,5 a day. It has charged me once and may do once more, depending on how my chart looks like after a non-legit derailment is fixed.
New goals
/estrial: personal project that happens weekly or every two weeks (trial mode)
/ustrial: personal project that happens weekly (trial mode)
/shabtrial: i will be trying to dedicate a day week in which I don’t work at all, like Shabbat, and completely rest. That should happen weekly (trial mode).
/movetrial: i will be trying to go to the gym or do movement practice at least 30min a day for two days a week
/fruittrial2: will start after /fruittrial ends
/blog2: another tracking of weekly blogging for around 3 months
/beejournal: personal project that happens weekly or every two weeks (trial mode) will be tracking a monthly update here for a trial period of 3 months
/mroutinetrial2: another mourning routine, for a trial period of 3 months
What works really well for us is to publicly tweet our improvements. The criterion is then simply “is it in the spirit of the original goal and is it enough that we’re not embarrassed to count it?”.
This sounds like important feedback for us! Also we’ve been talking about pessimistic presumptive reports lately. (Or see the glossary entry.) When you say “didn’t understand” do you mean the concept didn’t make sense, or something about the implementation?
The short version is that if you don’t enter datapoints on a do-less goal, we enter them for you. Large (pessimistic) ones that will quickly derail you if you stick your head in the sand.
Sound like a good idea! Might consider, though if I do it again, I would do as I did, with a Google Doc instead of tweets, as I don’t have Twitter
It was something about the implementation for me, because I didn’t understand what pessimistic presumptive mean (and I didn’t read properly on the options available to do so).
I won’t do this goal again, as it no longer I am 100% interested in it; but gotta say that support was helpful in making me understand the concept and solve the problem.
A key part of making that work was accepting the most trivial of improvements in the early days. A look through the Beeminder change log will reveal the depths we would sink to in the early days in order to claim a point…
Start with a very unambitious definition of “improvement”, so that effort isn’t an issue. Our bright line was that it had to be something we’d tweet about, so as we got better at doing them, the bar raised gradually all by itself.
UVI #1 was establishing the UVI mechanism. Before we had a dedicated blogging goal, blog posts counted. Trivial bug fixes counted. Fixing bugs in features that we’d just UVI’d also counted. You name it, if we could bring ourselves to tweet about it as user-visible and an improvement, it counted.
And that low, low bar for the daily UVI was established while there were about 2 full-time equivalent people working on Beeminder. If there are fewer of you, with less time available, then scale back your expectations accordingly. In most of my personal endeavours, even a weekly UVI would result in miraculous progress…
/fruittrial2: tracks the amount of fruit pieces I am eating every day, trying to have 2,5 a day. It has charged me twice. I have to find some way to improve this urgently, because I don’t want to be charged 30$, but also, because I NEED to do this habit.
/estrial: personal project that happens weekly or every two weeks (trial mode). Good.
/ustrial: personal project that happens weekly (trial mode). Good.
/shabtrial: i will be trying to dedicate a day week in which I don’t work at all, like Shabbat, and completely rest. That should happen weekly (trial mode). I haven’t followed this week, but good for the rest.
/movetrial: i will be trying to go to the gym or do movement practice at least 30min a day for two days a week. I have derailed once. Need some more consistency.
/blog2: another tracking of weekly blogging for around 3 months
/beejournal: personal project that happens weekly or every two weeks (trial mode) will be tracking a monthly update here for a trial period of 3 months
/mroutinetrial2: another mourning routine, for a trial period of 3 months. Derailed once.
New goals
/learnynab: I want to do all YNAB workshops before the end of summer, and I am going quite good in this goal. I LOVE YNAB!
Introducing /fwis
/fwis stands for Finish What I Start and it will track the amount of projects finished. This will help me close some projects that I have started as well as it will act as buffer when I am thinking of starting new ones (sometimes this is a way of procastination, as I am avoiding to work in the ones that I have already started).
Introducing /fwis-reading
On a related note, I do want to end a couple books that I do want to read (“Atomic Habits” and “This is Marketing”). This goal will be tracking those two books (for now).
Introducing /fwis-orzi
Another important project I need to finish, but I will keep the related information in private.
Deleting /beejournal
Although I will be keeping this BeeJournal I will be deleting the goal associated with it. I said I wanted to write once a month, around each month review, but I have changed my mind. I prefer adding goals and information to the BeeJournal as I feel it, even though I still think that doing regularly (as a way of putting some order) would be nice. Maybe every three or four months. In any case, I don’t want to track it.
It has been a long time since I have updated this, maybe I might do an update sometime, but for now I want to present my new goal: /noderail
Introducing /noderail
For a long time, and since the very beginning that I was in Beeminder, I have thought of the importance of not only commitments, but also of having rewards if you accomplish something.
I have thought of various ways to do so, but I have finally thought of the simplest one: allowing myself cumulative zero-regret free money to spend on anything that I want following the same pattern of price for derailment as Beeminder does (I explain).
/noderail will be tracking the amount of times that I do derail (it is set to derail itself if >1 derail/week, but this does not really matter, as I just want it to keep track of derailments). The longer I spend without derailing, the more money I can spend my money on rewards.
1 week no derail: 1€
2 weeks no derail: 5€ (total: 6€)
3 weeks no derail: 10€ (total:16€)
4 weeks no derail: 20€ (total: 36€)
5 weeks no derail: 40€ (total: 76€) → pledge cap
and so on…
That might feel like a lot of money, but, in any case, if I could spend a whole month doing all my “obligations” regarding to my projects and life, doing them properly and not derailing that would really be great (and 36€ is a price I am more than willing to pay to do so).
Uh, today was the day. After ending my exam period, today was time to update Beeminder. Exam period is a quite stressful period for me (and a lot of students), so during those days:
a) I forgot to enter data on things that I did
b) I did enter data on things that I did not do (because I had in mind that I would need to fix later)
I learned a few weeks/months after staring on Beeminder that this is not a good strategy, so before leaving on small trip I have decided to enter all the data that was left (result? 5 new derails! - bad? not at all! that is what commitment devices are about, because using Beeminder it is positive after all, and knowing that you can keep your own word is very very important!)
Strategy for next time? Keep the 7-day buffer rule. - I still prefer to enter the data later and derail than to having the time to study properly. In any case, if you derail, you cannot go without having any consequences. If not, why are you on Beeminder on the first place?
Summary on Beeminder Rules and Useful Tips (1/2020)
Preamble
At the time I am writing this, I have been a Beeminder forum member for about 9 months and have been more of an active type of Beeminder user than previously. I guess that there might be as much ways of using Beeminder as there are users, and multiple reasons and ways to use it. For me, one of the main functions in which Beeminder helps me is prevent overworking and doing too much. And to prevent overworking the system itself and all that it tracks, I have found useful to use different types of rules.
Rules here should not be made as a supra-imposition to oneself, and be seen as a bad thing, but instead, something that, even though might not always be helpful in the short term, might be useful (and worth it) in the long term.
Useful tips are not as mandatory as rules, but they always help me using Beeminder.
This summary on Beeminder rules pretends to summarize and explain my rules as in 19th of February of 2020, to help me keep them in a concrete place and maybe to serve as inspiration to some.
Rules
Rule 1: Treat the 7-day buffer as an Emergency Fund. Try to keep at, least a 7-day buffer on all your goals. In a simpler way, think about your actual number and take 7 from there. This has been treated previously. It reduces stress and it gives you buffer just in case anything might happen.
Do NOT add a new goal unless all your other goals are following this first rule. This strategy might not always be realistic but a helpful tool to stop me sometimes. If you are failing on your goals now, chances are that the things that are stopping you from achieving what you need to do will stop you again in the future.
Greater data on how you are doing is looking at the moving average, which should generally be over the yellow brick road. If each day that you are entering data you are doing it on the emergency day, there might be something wrong there, as too much strict system or not enough resources to make the goal happen, and eventually you will (probably) either fail or burnout. It would even be better if the moving average was above was over the thick yellow line.
Useful tips
Use codes on your goals. For example, for basic day-to-day Beeminders, like “clean the flat” or “night routine” you could use the code “b” from “basics”, so it would reflect “b-cleaning” or “b-nightroutine”. You could use “w” for work, or “hr” for “health-related”.
This might be very personal, but Beeminding goals, should generally not be used per se, but as a part of a broader project. For example, if you are thinking about joining the gym, it might be tempting to create a goal about it first , but I think that you should define the “project itself”: What is the goal? How are you going to do it? Which resources are you going to need, and so on. Then, when you have somewhat adjusted to reality, create the goal. You could even treat it as a reward if creating goals excites you. Now, I say should because sometimes, creating random goals with experimenting/random projects might be beneficial and might open a door to a project/goal that you maybe didn’t know it could happen and suddenly sparked. And I need that, because I am someone that tends to overplan…
Possible future introductions
As a possible addendum to rule 1, I am thinking that if you are constantly on a really high number, for example, moving average over the line above the thick yellow road (which should be as something common as being below 7 days) or >21 days, you should consider increasing the difficulty of your goal.
Introducing /fwis
Deleting /beejournal