# Nifty trick for "days I did this other goal" goals
**URL:** https://forum.beeminder.com/t/nifty-trick-for-days-i-did-this-other-goal-goals/1175
**Category:** Akrasia
**Created:** [September 21, 2015, 7:08pm UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/nifty-trick-for-days-i-did-this-other-goal-goals/1175 "2015-09-21T19:08:56Z")
**Posts on this page:** 15
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@adamwolf](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/adamwolf)
#### Post date: [September 21, 2015, 7:08pm UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/nifty-trick-for-days-i-did-this-other-goal-goals/1175/1 "2015-09-21T19:08:56Z")
I find that a few of my goals come in multiples.
A good example is weight loss. I have a weight\_loss goal, which is about as bog-standard as a goal comes on Beeminder. Twice, on my weight loss goal, I hit a good milestone, went out to eat, was scared of weighing in the next day, and then ended up waiting 2 weeks to weigh in, eating up my safety margin from my last “good” datapoint. Ugh.
I realized I needed a “weighed in days” goal. This goal counts the number of days I weigh in. I was able to quite easily rig this up with IFTTT and custom goals (requires a premium plan…)
I made a new IFTTT recipe. If a datapoint is added to weight\_loss, add a datapoint of 1 to weigh\_days. Then, go into weigh\_days, turn it into a custom goal, and set the aggregation to “binary”. This means that no matter how many times I weigh in in one day, the day will have a value of 1 if I add data, and a value of 0 if I do not–and it’s all completely automatic!
I’ve been doing this for over a month now, and it’s really helped me out.
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### Author:  [@olimay](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/olimay)
#### Post date: [September 22, 2015, 9:34pm UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/nifty-trick-for-days-i-did-this-other-goal-goals/1175/2 "2015-09-22T21:34:00Z")
Oh, neat! I didn’t know about the binary type goal until I read this post. (I’m sure it’s mentioned somewhere else, just haven’t run into it.)
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### Author:  [@insti](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/insti)
#### Post date: [September 23, 2015, 6:57am UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/nifty-trick-for-days-i-did-this-other-goal-goals/1175/3 "2015-09-23T06:57:02Z")
There is a forum post which documents all the [different aggregation types](http://forum.beeminder.com/t/documentation-of-aggregation-methods-would-be-nice/549/4?u=insti).
I do agree that it’s hard to casually come across.
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### Author:  [@olimay](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/olimay)
#### Post date: [September 24, 2015, 12:39am UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/nifty-trick-for-days-i-did-this-other-goal-goals/1175/4 "2015-09-24T00:39:56Z")
Thanks. Maybe it’s time to put together a Beeminder Power Users reference post that can be wikified, similar to the Newbees guide that’s here on the forums. Should I get this started?
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### Author:  [@gudamor](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/gudamor)
#### Post date: [September 24, 2015, 1:10am UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/nifty-trick-for-days-i-did-this-other-goal-goals/1175/5 "2015-09-24T01:10:45Z")
Here’s an example of an issue that can occur if you do not have the aggregation set to Binary: [https://www.beeminder.com/gudamor/goals/wake](https://www.beeminder.com/gudamor/goals/wake)
The above goal uses a similar IFTTT recipe, but on the 22nd when I derailed on my Weight goal there was a ‘recommitted’ data point created. This caused IFTTT trigger again, so that day ‘weigh-ins’ increased by 2 even though I only weighed myself once.
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### Author:  [@adamwolf](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/adamwolf)
#### Post date: [September 24, 2015, 1:26am UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/nifty-trick-for-days-i-did-this-other-goal-goals/1175/6 "2015-09-24T01:26:30Z")
Another issue with not using binary with the “recipe” is that you can weigh
yourself a bunch of times one day and not have to weigh in for a while!
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### Author:  [@gudamor](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/gudamor)
#### Post date: [September 24, 2015, 1:46am UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/nifty-trick-for-days-i-did-this-other-goal-goals/1175/7 "2015-09-24T01:46:37Z")
I’ve so far avoided that one by not thinking about it 😃
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### Author:  [@chelsea](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/chelsea)
#### Post date: [September 24, 2015, 4:00am UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/nifty-trick-for-days-i-did-this-other-goal-goals/1175/8 "2015-09-24T04:00:31Z")
beeminder paradox:
there are 500 different settings and 99% of new users are hopelessly overwhelmed/annoyed and quit
the 1% who persist and understand the madness find more clever loopholes and ask for new settings to close them
(no negativity meant here - just something i’ve noticed that amuses me that this post reminded me of 🙂 )
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### Author:  [@olimay](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/olimay)
#### Post date: [September 25, 2015, 12:56am UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/nifty-trick-for-days-i-did-this-other-goal-goals/1175/9 "2015-09-25T00:56:07Z")
“Nonzero data point added for this goal” (or the scarier “Data point in range”) sounds like a good someday addition to IFTTT triggers, especially when Beeminding logging for other Beeminder goals. The recommitted data point still messes up non-binary datapoint counts. And I bet there are some other use cases.
(Not sure if Beeminder is at the max number of trigger types already, though–there are six right now and they’re all pretty useful.)
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### Author:  [@philip](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/philip)
#### Post date: [September 25, 2015, 10:32am UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/nifty-trick-for-days-i-did-this-other-goal-goals/1175/10 "2015-09-25T10:32:16Z")
> [@olimay](#):
>
> “Nonzero data point added for this goal”
Note that mirroring the actual datapoint value into a **binary** goal would have the effect of dealing appropriately with zero datapoints. Not useful for counting the total number of non-zero datapoints added, of course, but should work for “days I did this other goal”
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### Author:  [@philip](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/philip)
#### Post date: [September 26, 2015, 12:55pm UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/nifty-trick-for-days-i-did-this-other-goal-goals/1175/11 "2015-09-26T12:55:16Z")
2 posts were split to a new topic: [Feature Request: single datasource, multiple goals](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/feature-request-single-datasource-multiple-goals/1189)
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### Author:  [@spookane](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/spookane)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2015, 2:25am UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/nifty-trick-for-days-i-did-this-other-goal-goals/1175/12 "2015-09-27T02:25:41Z")
Doesn’t “pessimistic presumption” sort of prevent this? I don’t know if you can turn it on for weight loss goals, but for do less goals, if you turn on pessimistic presumptions, then a dummy pessimistic data point gets added if you don’t add any data point that day.
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### Author:  [@adamwolf](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/adamwolf)
#### Post date: [October 9, 2015, 5:32pm UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/nifty-trick-for-days-i-did-this-other-goal-goals/1175/13 "2015-10-09T17:32:23Z")
@spookane I have only ever needed this on “do more” goals.
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### Author:  [@dreev](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/dreev)
#### Post date: [October 17, 2015, 8:41pm UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/nifty-trick-for-days-i-did-this-other-goal-goals/1175/14 "2015-10-17T20:41:26Z")
> [@olimay](#):
>
> Thanks. Maybe it’s time to put together a Beeminder Power Users reference post that can be wikified, similar to the Newbees guide that’s here on the forums. Should I get this started?
@olimay, you will be our new best friend if you do this! It may also serve as a nice guide for us as “things to improve so they don’t need to be explained in a power users’ guide”. (:
(Also laughing out loud at @chelsea’s Beeminder paradox. The best of both worlds is possible and we will get there! Cf [Rearranging settings](http://forum.beeminder.com/t/rearranging-settings/330) )
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### Author:  [@adamwolf](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/adamwolf)
#### Post date: [January 8, 2016, 1:33am UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/nifty-trick-for-days-i-did-this-other-goal-goals/1175/15 "2016-01-08T01:33:45Z")
If you are doing this today, use the nonzero aggregation.