This is a pretty new goal. It’s there to prompt me to reach out to current or potential TaskRatchet users for interviews. (If that describes you, go ahead and PM me and let’s talk!)
New Goals
irl-evenings: Created 2019-05-23. My counselor has been working with me to improve the quality of my sleep. Recently she discovered that I read newsletters on my phone while in bed. So, now I have a goal for staying off my phone an hour before bed.
tr-emails: Created 2019-05-21. This goal is somewhat ill-defined, but it’s supposed to keep me consistent with sending out summary emails to TaskRatchet alpha users. It’s good enough for now.
Derails
su-time: 2019-05-23. I didn’t sleep that well on my trip last weekend, and I had a bad night after returning, too. So I was super fatigued. And overwhelmed by the TaskRatchet alpha. Derailing on this goal felt like a big relief.
Scheduled for Archive
bed: Now that I have another goal for avoiding screens in the evening, and I’m trying to leave my phone outside my bedroom, having to use this goal is a pain. Usually when I stay up way too late, it’s because I’m zoning out on a screen, anyway, so hopefully the no-screens an hour before bed goal will be sufficient.
bic: This goal became pretty pointless given how aggressive my work time goals have become. I may need it again the future, but for now it’s being archived.
Overkill Top 5
walk: 8. I’ve been trying out walking in the morning and the evening, as well as taking micro walks during the day when I become fatigued. All that ends up creating a lot of extra buffer on this goal. I’m kind of ok with that for now.
tr-time: 8. The alpha has meant I’m spending waaay more time on TaskRatchet than I was previously. Hopefully it’ll calm down in the coming weeks. In the meantime, I’ve retroratcheted.
slick: 8. I guess I’m ahead on this one because I gave myself a break on my trip and still dressed up anyway. And easy goals just naturally get more overkills because… they’re easy.
deflate: 6. Another easy goal that I’m consistent on, so it ends up getting a lot of overkills. I’m not sure I’m totally happy with how many overkills these easy goals rack up, but I’m not sure how to calculate the metric so they don’t.
systems-upgrade: 4. I have been doing a fair amount of upgrades. This feels deserved.
A skeleton of this summary was generated using a Python script and then carefully filled in by hand.
I gave two weeks notice to my day job so I can focus exclusively on contracting & TaskRatchet without burning out, which I was already well on my way to doing. I’ve been working with a great client who has a lot of work for me. If that work dries up before TaskRatchet can support us (which it probably will), I’ll go back to a normal job.
Such a large life change means it’s time to reprioritize my Beeminder goals. I’ve already scheduled several goals for archive, and more needs to be done in that direction.
Inspired by @shanaqui’s idea, I’ve created a global fineprint page and linked to it in all my goals’ fineprints. The fact that it’s hosted on GitHub has the added benefit of revision history, which means Beeminder support could theoretically check if I changed the rules to get away with something.
Now that I’m on track to be my own boss in the very near future, I’d really like to take another go at applying Cal Newport’s deep work principles. I’m thinking that will mean working to define exactly the work I do that provides value, breaking that work down as far as possible, and then doing my best to find ways to do that work in concentrated, focused blocks of time without distraction.
This goal requires that I upgrade my productivity systems, currently at a rate of one upgrade per weekday. Such upgrades could be building new Beeminder integrations, adding a new Beeminder goal, unsubscribing from a newsletter, installing a new productivity app, rearranging my office space—any change that promises to increase my productivity on an ongoing basis, no matter how small the increase in productivity may be.
New Goals
timeboxing: Created 2019-05-29. I find that my days go much better when I use Cal Newport-style timeblocking to plan my day. This goal is for the purpose of making sure I continue using the technique.
Derails
mueller: 2019-06-01. I didn’t realize until too late that this goal was going to come due on Saturday, so I let it derail.
worktime: 2019-05-30. This goal fell prey to the mayhem that was early stages of burnout + quitting my job.
bm-journal: 2019-06-02. I didn’t realize until too late that this goal was going to come due on Saturday, so I let it derail.
av-wp6-time: 2019-05-29. This goal fell prey to the mayhem that was early stages of burnout + quitting my job.
Scheduled for Archive
mueller: This one has already been archived because I derailed before the scheduled date. I still plan to finish listening to this book, but it’s fallen below the level where I feel the need to force myself to accomplish it, at least until things have calmed down on the work front.
su-time: I’m quitting this job, so the time goal is scheduled for archive.
pyminder-commits: I still want to make this a thing, but it’s not a priority in the near-term.
resume: This GitHub repository was more of an “About Me” page combined with a portfolio than it was a resume. And it was so open-ended as to not be very useful. I’ve scheduled this for archive and created a resume using a different service which constrained what I could create much more usefully.
tr-emails: The alpha is paused, so Beeminder support gave me a flat section and I’ve scheduled the goal for archive.
Overkill Top 5
irl-evenings: 12. It’s an easy goal, and I’ve automated data entry in such a way that I need to also up the commitment on the goal, which I haven’t done yet.
walk: 10. It’s an easy goal, and I’ve been walking twice a day instead of once.
dirty-plates: 6. Easy goal, and that’s ok.
tr-time: 4. The alpha met I did way more than required on this goal.
av-wp6-time: 2. This goal is doing just what it needs to, so these overkills don’t worry me.
A skeleton of this summary was generated using a Python script and then carefully filled in by hand.
I derailed on my journal goal a while back, so haven’t posted here for a couple weeks. That means there will be some things that this update misses.
For instance, I’ve been experimenting with new ways of managing entertainment time. I archived my /entertainment goal and replaced it with several YouTube goals. I found that I could partially automate them using Tasker. It’s still a work in progress…
I’ve officially quit my day job and am now working exclusively on contracting and TaskRatchet.
This goal ensures I send regular updates to my main contracting client. Beeminder has been key in helping me build trust with this client.
Overkill Top 5
Overkills occur when I do more (or less in the case of a do-less goal) than needed to keep up with a goal. A high number of overkills indicates that I’m building up buffer very quickly, and may indicate that a goal is too easy.
walk: 14
mobile-youtube: 8
youtube-infotainment: 6
tr-time: 4
dirty-plates: 4
A skeleton of this summary was generated using a Python script and then carefully filled in by hand.
My TaskWarrior system has succumbed to the same fate as previous todo systems—irrelevancy. @martyhmentioned AutoFocus recently, and I’ve decided to give it a shot and see if it works for me. I have a notebook and I’ve already started using the system. Wondering if anyone here who uses it also beeminds it? If so, how?
msda-time: Created 2019-06-30. I’ve volunteered to manage the website for the church I attend. This goal will make sure I actually follow through and consistently put in the time.
Scheduled for Archive
frogs: This goal has gotten more annoying than it’s worth. I may use a goal like this again in the future, but it’ll need some re-thinking.
tw-changes: I’ve scheduled this one for archive in anticipation of AutoFocus replacing my current TaskWarrior setup.
Overkill Top 5
Overkills occur when I do more (or less in the case of a do-less goal) than needed to keep up with a goal. A high number of overkills indicates that I’m building up buffer very quickly, and may indicate that a goal is too easy.
walk: 12
dirty-plates: 8
mobile-youtube: 6
pills: 4
ynab: 2
A skeleton of this summary was generated using a Python script and then carefully filled in by hand.
I find that as a todo list grows, it starts taking more and more effort to keep the tasks in that system relevant as my life situation changes. And the more irrelevant the system becomes, the less I’m inclined to spend the energy keeping it relevant, so a cycle forms. This graph roughly represents my current system’s slide into irrelevancy:
(Concretely, that’s a cumulative graph of the number of TaskWarrior urgency units completed.)
Getting Things Done addresses the issue by basically saying, “Yeah, it takes effort. Buckle down and do your weekly reviews and you’ll be fine.” I’ve done that in the past, but I don’t really feel like making my todo system as central a part of my life right now as GTD requires.
In the past, I’ve used a Moleskine day planner to create a purposefully leaky todo list, where I only focus on today’s list, and add tasks to today or a future date as it makes sense, letting today’s incomplete tasks pass into obscurity. That worked quite well for me for quite a while, and I still may revisit the system.
I’m hoping that AutoFocus will strike a happy medium, where it’s not particularly “leaky” like my day planner system was, but it may also require less effort to keep the system relevant. We’ll see how it goes.
It’s a tracking goal, keeps track of how many steps I take. It’s interesting for looking at trends.
New Goals
todo-time: Created 2019-07-10. I’ve switched to using autofocus instead of TaskWarrior, but I’ve pretty much been ignoring it. The hope is that this goal will help me put some time into using autofocus on a regular basis.
av-wp7-time: Created 2019-07-09. A new work contract.
av-ui2-time: Created 2019-07-09. A new work contract.
Derails
deflate: 2019-07-06. I had a busy Saturday, and some Beeminder goals kind of went out the window. I called non-legit since I’ve reserved that right for derails that happen on Saturday. The fact that I derailed on this goal was actually indicative of me having a very social day, which I don’t get many of given my career, so that’s super healthy.
These goals were an attempt to automate YouTube tracking. But the automation wasn’t working consistently, so, after some reflection, I decided I needed to step away from YouTube again. So I’m archiving these goals, and have unarchived my no-youtube goal.
The decision came after I ranked my current sources of information consumption on several metrics that are meaningful to me:
Concordant: After using the service, do I feel like I’ve come closer to my ideal self?
Satiating: Do I become satiated over time? Is it easy to stop at the appropriate time?
Exhaustive: Does it encourage deep dives on a topic?
Slow: Is the content long-form? Does it require sustained attention over time?
Insightful: Do I come away with new thoughts and ideas?
Unplugged: Does the medium get me away from a screen?
Linear: Does the medium encourage completing a long course of information?
Predictable: Does the medium avoid a chaotic and highly-variable reward schedule?
Fenced: Does it provide natural stopping points?
My quite-subjective analysis ranked YouTube extremely low among all the alternatives I have. Which really makes me sad, because I love the breadth of interesting material on the platform. But it just can’t compete with the alternatives I have.
(YouTube Wrapper is a hypothetical site I might build that would pull in videos from select channels. So it would be a subset of YouTube.)
Overkill Top 5
Overkills occur when I do more (or less in the case of a do-less goal) than needed to keep up with a goal. A high number of overkills indicates that I’m building up buffer very quickly, and may indicate that a goal is too easy.
walk: 8
pills: 6
dirty-plates: 6
tr-time: 4
A skeleton of this summary was generated using a Python script and then carefully filled in by hand.
I prefer your well written weekly summaries
In fact they are the only journal here that I read thoroughly. The others… I tend to just skim.
Not that the other journals aren’t interesting – but there is beauty in brevity and they tend to lose themselves in technicalities. And that’s coming from me
Again those technicalities are in themselves interesting – that’s how I learned about Flowstate for instance. But some of them invite suspicion that they are serving the purpose of procrastinating more than doing the actual work. In which’s light even quantifying qualities of other means of procrastination seem productive. Hi @narthur
AutoFocus: When I first made the switch, I was having trouble ignoring it. I made a simple todo-time goal to prevent that, and, even though I’m not putting a lot of time into the system, it’s making sure I don’t let it die.
Solitude walks: I’m starting to think that the secret to getting the benefit out of these is to decide what I’m going to think about before starting the walk, and then applying my mind to that topic. That shouldn’t be any great shock since that’s exactly how Cal Newport describes his approach, and he’s the inspiration for the practice.
This goal requires that I review all my goals at least once per week. This gives me the opportunity to adjust slopes and other settings, as well as to schedule in breaks for things coming up on my calendar. I don’t think beeminding would be sustainable without this goal.
New Goals
workout: Created 2019-07-26. My rebounder broke yesterday, so I contacted support and asked them to delete the goal right away so I could replace it with a workout goal (thanks @shanaqui!). This new goal requires that I do a 7-minute workout daily. I’m hoping the change has health and weight benefits, beyond just being something to replace /tramp.
Scheduled for Archive
tramp: As explained, my rebounder broke, so @shanaqui helped me archive this one immediately, to be replaced by workout.
tw-urgency: This is the last surviving TaskWarrior goal, and it’s time for it to go to bed, too. I think AutoFocus will be my solution for the near future.
Overkill Top 5
Overkills occur when I do more (or less in the case of a do-less goal) than needed to keep up with a goal. A high number of overkills indicates that I’m building up buffer very quickly, and may indicate that a goal is too easy.
walk: 8
msda-time: 4
worktime: 4
pills: 4
tr-time: 2
A skeleton of this summary was generated using a Python script and then carefully filled in by hand.
@zedmango AutoFocus is, at base, just a notebook. It’s pretty easy for me to just stop picking it up. My todo-list time goal is making sure I put time into the system.
My strategy is to maintain, at all times, a single, clear problem primed and ready for cogitation. I then set aside specific times for this deep thinking in my schedule outside work. I use many (though not all) of my commutes for this purpose. I also leverage long weekend dog walks and the mental lull that accompanies time-consuming house work (Cal Newport in Deep Habits: Think Hard Outside The Office).
I’m sure I could improve my process, but for me this basically means using my morning walks to think about problems I’m currently facing in different areas of my life. One day this might mean thinking through how to approach a problem on a programming project; on another day, how to get past a roadblock in our finances.
I’ve been doing this long enough to be able to say with some confidence that I’m consistently deriving value from this practice:
I find creative solutions to difficult problems.
I feel more relaxed knowing I have time to think through hard problems.
This goal is mostly a tracking goal at this point, since I have solitude-walk and deflate which also track walks. Walking regularly is important to me since my work is sedentary.
New Goals
tr-email-zero: Created 2019-08-06. Recently I failed to keep up with TaskRatchet emails for several days. This goal is designed to make sure this won’t happen again.
chart-updates: Created 2019-07-31. My wife and I keep a couple of paper graphs on key financial goals and metrics. I haven’t been that good at keeping these updated since we got married, so this should help.
plates: Created 2019-07-29. This is an experiment in weight control. Every time I get more food, I enter a datapoint. It hasn’t been restrictive so far, but I may adjust the rate to see if it’s an effective lever for losing weight.
finance-upgrades: Created 2019-07-29. /systems-upgrade has been so successful, I’m trying the same approach to my finances. Every time I do something that has the potential to improve our financial situation going forward, I add a +1 to this goal.
Derails
av-wp7-time & tr-time: 2019-08-05. I derailed on both these work time goals due to my fatigue hitting me hard after a busy weekend.
Scheduled for Archive
dirty-plates: If /plates proves effective, this goal won’t be needed anymore, so I’m going ahead and archiving it for now.
Overkill Top 5
Overkills occur when I do more (or less in the case of a do-less goal) than needed to keep up with a goal. A high number of overkills indicates that I’m building up buffer very quickly, and may indicate that a goal is too easy.
walk: 10
plates: 10
pills: 10
finance-upgrades: 6
dirty-plates: 6
A skeleton of this summary was generated using a Python script and then carefully filled in by hand.
Short update today, without all the fancy stats, sorry. We bought a Windows machine for general use, so the Mac is only for work now, and I haven’t gotten all my scripts set up on the new machine.
Beeminder has been keeping me going even in the face of significant fatigue, which is a good thing. I am addressing the fatigue outside of Beeminder, as I believe it’s a health issue. My doctor had me get quite a bit of tests done last week, waiting on results.
I derailed on my retainer goal because I simply failed to notice the beemergency before I went to bed–really not ok. Derailing this way adds no value to my life. I have an idea as to how to prevent this from happening in the future. Will be sharing more about that soon, if things go according to plan.
Derailed on one of my contract work time goals due to a lot of fatigue and some sleep loss.
I’ve revised my global fine print so that derails that occur due to clients becoming unexpectedly unavailable are not considered legitimate.
I’m also adjusting how I handle “undecidable tasks,” problems that require creative solutions that I’ve been using my morning walks to think through. I’ve switched from storing the list in Google Keep to Workflowy, which seems a lot more flexible, since it allows me to easily create as many nested layers as I need while reviewing. I’ve also switched from requiring that I spend a certain amount of time reviewing the list to just requiring that I do a certain number of reviews per week. Having to set timers and sitting there staring at a list when I didn’t have anything more to do with it was getting annoying enough that I was starting to resent the whole thing.
It’s looking like I’ve found a goal that gives me leverage on my weight–limit the number of plates I fill per day. We’ve already switched to using small plates at home, so right now that usually means 5 small plates per day. I don’t compensate when we’re out, so if we’re somewhere with larger plates, I’m allowed to eat more. I’m happy with it that way.
I derailed multiple times on this recently, just because I didn’t notice it was in the red before going to bed. I’m trying to be more proactive about putting my retainer in even when the goal isn’t in the red.
New Goals
attentions: Created 2019-09-06. This is an experiment in requiring that I do something special or out of the ordinary for my wife on a regular basis. Planning to be spontaneous.
Derails
slick: 2019-09-05. I had a slow morning, was really dragging, and didn’t get myself into gear in time to prevent this one from derailing. Oops.
Overkill Top 5
Overkills occur when I do more (or less in the case of a do-less goal) than needed to keep up with a goal. A high number of overkills indicates that I’m building up buffer very quickly, and may indicate that a goal is too easy.
no-youtube: 0
vivo-steps: 0
vivo-sleep: 0
weight: 0
purifier-filter: 0
A skeleton of this summary was generated using a Python script and then carefully filled in by hand.
I’m currently reworking a lot of goals to start prioritizing my health in a more meaningful way, and take the advice I’ve received from my doctor re: fatigue. That has meant taking a carving knife to existing goals to give room for the changes to take place, and then slowly adding new goals to support the new behaviors I’m trying to introduce.
upgrades: Created 2019-09-16. This goal will be replacing all the separate upgrades goals I currently have. I’m not sure this will be as effective as having a goal for each type of upgrade (productivity, community, finance, etc), but combining them into one is part of making room for health behaviors.
Derails
tr-time: 2019-09-17. Not much to say about this one. I derailed.
Scheduled for Archive
Scheduling all these goals for archive was hard to do, since almost all of them make my life demonstrably better. But there’s only so much you can fit into one life, and I needed the space to make significant changes.
Related, I think if I had the ability to specify weekly days off, like weekends off but for all the days of the week, my “beeminder bandwidth” would be higher. Because I’m pretty sure fielding 5-minute beemurgencies every weekday takes a lot more mental bandwidth and creates a lot more stress than would having to do the same behavior for 30 minutes every Sunday. (I know, I could just get ahead on my own, but I’m an edge skater. Hence, why I use Beeminder.)
chart-updates
finance-upgrades
todo-time
ynab
reflect
undecidable-reviews
deflate
fam
solitude-walk
shred-zero
community-upgrades
retainer
systems-upgrade
walk
mobile-screentime
A skeleton of this summary was generated using a Python script and then carefully filled in by hand.
Re: the script. Woah. The f string interpolation sugar is sweeet. A lot of keystrokes are going to be saved. Thanks! Can I ask why you manually seed before random.choice? It looks like python seeds it with either /dev/urandom or time anyway.
I do that because I want it to select the same goal during a given day even if I run the script multiple times, like if I need to fix a bug or something. I guess it’s a personal preference to know there’s One Right Selection per day…
