I did this a few months ago and I was surprised that what they mean by servings in those recommendations is a way lower amount than I assumed. I also thought that my regular level is way under, but I was surprised. E.g. most apples (your example) are closer to 1.5-2.5 servings. Of course I am not encouraging you to count everything by weight - it gets overwhelming very quickly, but I just wanted to share this because I also entered a similar goal with a similar initial understanding of my baseline.
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Let’s see…
April: /morningreading
I managed to keep up with this quite well once I managed to remember this was the plan (which didn’t always work on a groggy morning), but I don’t know how much it helped. I want to spend a bit more time with the goal and try to be a bit more mindful.
One benefit is that it did help me knock out my Serial Reader goal very early each day so that didn’t hang around. On the other hand, on days when I was raring to go, I had to stop and read first. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not.
May: /bedtime
Quite the classic use-case, I know! I’ve been bad about consistently going to bed, since I’m currently staying with my parents and sister, so everyone here (including myself) is a nightowl by nature. I’m not trying to get to bed at midnight or anything, but pulling it back to make sure I’m lying down in bed (even if I then read for a bit) by 1am is the plan.
It’s set to a rate of 5/week, to give wiggle room, and reports the following day so there’s no problem with forgetting to add the data because I’m in bed.
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April: puzzling
This one was enjoyable, but I set it to end at the end of the month because jigsaw puzzles are something that are really easy for me to get hyperabsorbed in, which can be pleasant and enjoyable, but after a month of glutting on it, I need a break (and so do my shoulders).
May: gradcards
Faire wants to send Graduation cards out to people, a lot of whom I will need to track down addresses for. And then actually addressing envelopes, and buying postage, and all that. I guess for starters. Also this is not solely my responsibility, so I’ve settled in on a group goal, shared with danny, where the metric is “cells in the spreadsheet”. We’ve got a google sheet of the folks we want to send cards to, with columns for name, address, addressed, sent, and “asked” (because we’re gonna have to reach out to get a bunch of the addresses, since we don’t already have a habit of sending xmas cards or somesuch).
So I set up one specific cell that counts the number of filled in cells in the range, and then there’s an IFTTT applet that sends a datapoint whenever that cell is updated.
This is something that is time-relevant and highly specific to things that I need to get done, so hopefully it will feel a little more.. aligned? than my last couple goals, which were both fun, but also arguably somewhat negative in the end result (e.g. staying up till 4am reading Exciting Novel because beeminder told me to start reading at 11pm).
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So, I’ve been feeling lately like often I get too absorbed in reading the news, talking on discord, or something like that while I’m eating breakfast or commuting, and then have trouble transitioning to work. So I thought for May I’d try to make a goal which enforces a habit of not doing anything other than work & essential routines early in the day.
The basic idea: a goal to get X points / week, where a point is awarded for each hour after 6 AM I go without doing anything non-essential that isn’t work (or responding to whatsapp—I’m not just going to ignore my family). So for example, checking discord, or the news, or reading a novel, or doing anki—any of the above would stop the timer for the day.
Ideally, then, while I’m on the bus to work I’ll just think about what I’m going to do that day, rather than getting sucked into some nonsense.
On weekends, same idea applies but replace “work” with “my to-do list in Things + beeminder goals”.
I haven’t made the goal yet because I want to wait a couple more days to see if I can think of a good name. 
Right now I have something like morning_focus but this sounds lame and doesn’t really capture the idea.
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Did someone say “think of a good name”? This is my favorite thing.
Out of curiosity, I tried the AI built in to the forum now:
I guess “focusfirst” is fine. More brainstorming from me and my usual bots:
focusfirstfocuspocusAMnesia(forgetting about everything but work in the A.M.)prefrontalsunscreenbusstopbusmode(by analogy to airplane mode)precrastinatedewdiligence(if “dew” evokes “morning”, not sure)cerebusjumpstart
PS: My May goal is gradcards, as a group goal with @bee.
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EDIT: oh no, goals aren’t case sensitive so it displays all lowercase?
I have two thoughts for June:
- My bedtime goal didn’t quite do as much as I hoped. I shower at night before bed; maybe a goal to shower before a certain time would help more, since that’s usually what delays me on the way to bed?
- A goal to stand on one leg while brushing my teeth (and swap after a minute). It’d be practice holding my balance, and it’d push the two activities together so I do spend a full two minutes on brushing my teeth and I do my balance practice exercise.
Possibly I’ll do one in June and one in July, but I haven’t decided yet… Better decide soon, I guess!
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I’d archived most of my Beeminder goals, but June feels like a good time to hop back on the wagon.
Starting with a walking goal to build up my activity again.
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May goal update: When I started this, I specifically said the Rider Waite Smith deck was not my favorite. I have gained a new appreciation for it. The artwork in it has so much more symbolism than I originally realized. It is a classic for a reason, and I was wrong not to appreciate it more. I am going to wind down this Beeminder goal for the time being because of manual entry, but I am adding Tarot Anki on my list of things to do instead of doom scrolling.
And now for June: I also have playing piano on my list of things to do instead of doom scrolling, but I’m really sporadic about it. I’m ok with this to a certain degree because piano is one of those things that any time I try to take it too seriously, it just stops being fun. But, I would like to be more consistent about at least doing it, even if I’m not pushing myself. So, 10 minutes a day, on average. I have pulled out sheet music for songs I enjoy, and I’ve already set the goal to ignore that last week on June since I’ll be out of town.
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Okay, decision time!
May: /bedtime
This one didn’t work out as hoped, unfortunately. I did try to get to bed on time, but I don’t think it’s a lever I can pull right now.
June: /showerbyten
This one’s another attempt at the same thing, this time using the proxy of showering by 10pm, since I shower before bed and it’s one of the things that holds me back from getting to bed on time. I’ve set a rate of 5/week to begin with, which allows for goofs here and there.
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January 
February 
March April 
For May, I was tracking pomodoros (24/3) spent on specifically writing two papers that are due soon, so as to avoid procrastinating within time spent on project by reading around more and more instead of writing. This worked much better than the previous take where I tracked word count in the draft. I am probably doing pomodoros wrong (I usually work several at a time, regardless of the breaks, and get myself new tea even during the active pomo - found it hard to refocus back again if I actually make the scheduled breaks) but this works for what I need to get done, so what else do I want. I will continue with this goal until the second of these two papers is done (due July 1) but in June I will have some breaks because of additional work-related events.
I am pretty overwhelmed with all the deadlines and events at the moment, so I really don’t want to introduce anything major right now. So, for June, I am choosing the goal tbr_storygraph_pages that I started a few days ago that tracks the number of pages I read daily from Storygraph. That’s a surprisingly late addition to all my TBR-related goals, most of which are whittle-down type (so if I have finished a book and checked out a new one, it looks like nothing has been accomplished - hopefully, this new goal will help against that feeling).
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Ok, so May was a complete trashfire of a month; I ended up totally attempting to ignore reality and instead spent basically all my free time in escapist reading. In my defense, have you seen reality? But beeminder remained my bulwark of bare minimum, and kept me from dropping any really important balls on the floor. Shockingly, between my bedtime goal, and my urgency score goal, I actually only derailed on a single goal the whole month, despite my utter lack of motivation.
That being said, I am going to try a new goal for June. I’m going to have to be handling the meals for the next few weeks, because my spouse (who normally cooks) will be recovering from surgery. Currently my strategy for handling dinner when I have to is to look in the fridge around 6pm and see what can easily be reheated in the toaster oven; I’d like to engage a little more foresight for the next month. This doesn’t mean full weekly meal planning, just thinking about what dinner will be before it’s actually dinner time.
(I have a long opening flat period because I’m going to be out of town for a long weekend less than a week from now)
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Update: my piano goal is working wonderfully. I’m playing more often, for longer periods, and actually working on specific songs instead of just playing whatever my hands pick up first. I’ve been working on progressively harder versions of/selections from the Flower Duet, Green Sleeves, and New World Symphony. I’m having fun with it and my husband commented the other day that he enjoys hearing me play and knowing that I’m having fun, which is heartwarming.
I put an end date of this goal for the end of this week since I’m traveling at the end of June and beginning of July. I think I’m going to start it back up though since it is a nice push.
I’m not sure yet about a July goal. Whatever it is, I’ll be starting it late since, like I said, travel. It might be good to Beemind stretching since I’m not doing that as much as I’d like, but that would again, be manual entry. I could also stand to have a do less goal to push myself off Facebook and reddit since I feel like I’m on those two a bit too much. I’ll decide and set it up soon.
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June: /showerbyten
This goal… worked better than setting a bedtime, but not by much.
I think the problem is that I don’t really want to go to bed at a set time, I want to have more flexibility, and also I just don’t enjoy it. So I think this might have to wait until I want to change things here, rather than just feeling like I should.
I let the goal end.
July: /checkfeeds
I got Readwise Reader as my replacement for Pocket, in part because it can also follow RSS feeds. I’ve kept up with it well so far without a goal, but it only takes one busy day to ruin that, so I think I’ll have a goal for it – if nothing else, to remind me to add checking Reader to my to-do list for the day.
It has a 1/day rate, but weekends off.
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January February March April
May - now this goal, initially set to go for two months, is finished, and I consider it a success. More detailed impressions in my journaling thread.
June - it was fun and nice to try out this additional metric for tracking my reading progress. At no time was I anywhere close to the YBR, so the goal did not really nudge me to do anything - but it is satisfying to see that I am actually reading 50 pages/day on average and even more, even in a month when reading was so much not my focus as in this one. The yellow lines help see that I am ahead of the rate. Will keep for a while.
For July, I will try to reuse the success strategy of the May goal, creating a new one where I will have to work for a specific number of pomos a day just on a list of specific tasks within my project (in addition to other ways I track the total time on project). The list will include four papers that need to be pushed each to a next stage in the nearest future, from just sending in an updated abstract for the edited collection proposal (a couple of hours of work), to looking through a language editor’s corrections and submitting a manuscript (a couple of days of work), to revising a manuscript based on reviews (a few days’ to a couple of weeks’ amount of work - haven’t seen the reviews yet, just was told they arrived), to writing one from scratch for a conference in early October.
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June - walking
I managed to derail on this very modestly sloped goal.
Since I started working again, it’s helpfully encouraging me to go for short walks outside.
I’m keeping the goal as it’s very low friction and being outside everyday helps me be happier.
July - sports-run-sessions
After years of beeminding my running and becoming a runner in the process. I decided to give up the Apple Watch/Strava/Beeminder tracking and… my identity discarded the running aspect of me very quickly 
I ran this evening after a long while and immediately set up the goal, too.
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Ok, I’m back from my in-laws, and now for my belated July goal. I’m going to be focusing on calories burned. Thankfully, this can draw data automatically from my fitbit.
I’ve noticed that when I don’t have a big dance show on the horizon, I can get a bit lackadaisical with my workouts. And, lately I’ve had the added obstacle of the racquetball courts at the YMCA not always being available since they sometimes need them for summer programming. So, now is a good time to have a little extra push to get myself moving.
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