Missed Notifications

I miss Beeminder notifications all the time. I don’t think it’s Beeminder’s fault. I programmed myself out of caring about notifications years ago. They essentially mean nothing, most are turned off, and they usually don’t even register when they do come through.

That said - anyone else in this boat? There’s like one notification I care about and I can’t even get myself to notice them when they happen.

A lot of times this means I have to tell support I added the data after the fact because I did do the thing but didn’t see the notifications. Other times it means I derail without warning. I’ve tried all kinds of things. The iOS notifications are so gentle. I don’t ever notice them. Sometimes the notifications come late too, which does seem like an iOS issue but certainly isn’t the root cause.

All in all I think getting lost in a flow state is the real issue and I want something that can actually interrupt that but only for beemergencies.

If anyone has a good solution outside of counting on my iPhone to notify me, please share. I also considered switching to android for the better notifications but it’s not worth switching all the other stuff. I have seriously considered an old fashioned style pager just for Beeminder texts but they aren’t too easy to come by and then I have to carry an extra thing around.

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So after I wrote this I thought there is no way I can be the only person with this problem and turned up the intensity on figuring out a solution.

Apparently there is an emergency bypass switch in contacts for text tone so you will get alerted with the tone of your choice for a known contact regardless of silent mode or focus status or anything else.

This will probably work. I’ll report back. Here’s where I found it:
https://www.reddit.com/r/shortcuts/s/M9IaN0zHtV

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I have the same problem of not noticing notifications, so I’ve had them off for a long time. Because I work online and a lot of my hobby time is spent online as well, it works for me to have Beeminder open in a browser tab, which is my trick.

I think if we implemented browser notifs, I might notice that. But notifications on my phone? Forget it. :laughing:

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I am still learning to use Beeminder although I can find myself in the same boat. Although, I can hear my notifications, I tend to tune them out. If you have lots of notifications (multiple Beeminder goals or other apps) then I think you can stop caring about notifications. Maybe reducing notifications to critical apps and critical goals in Beeminder would help make them more noticeable?

You could also try email notifications alongside the app. I have the Protonmail app on my phone so I get notifications on my phone via the email and the app. Having notifications on an email app can act as insurance for when the notifications in the app don’t go through. My only suggestion would be creating a filter where your notifications from bot@beeminder.com go into a separate folder so that you inbox does not get cluttered.

If you have multiple goals it may also be helpful to setup a universal deadline across all the goals (all goals due by 10pm). I am more likely to forget submitting a goal when I have multiple different deadlines.

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I’m on Android, not iOS. But I have custom notifications set up through telegram that trigger alarms that have to be manually dismissed via the AlertMe app. I use the Telegram widget to display my last alert on my home screen. And I use MacroDroid to trigger a popup on each alert, too.

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