Non-incremental weekly goals

Newbee
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This must’ve been discussed before, but my searches are not finding it, so I’d appreciate input from those who know more.

The issue is that even if you set up a weekly or monthly goal, Beeminder still thinks in daily increments, which life doesn’t always care to follow.

Example: a “Do Less” goal where you want to spend no more than $100 per week on food. Monday night you have a special dinner planned where you spend $75. That derails you right there, even though you’re still within with your weekly goal (presuming this is a new goal, or one where you don’t want to use accumulated buffer from previous weeks).

Another example: A “Do More” sales goal of $1000 per week. What if you make two $750 sales, but not until the last two days of the week? Would Beeminder not already have derailed you by mid-week?

I’m not seeing how Beeminder’s expectation of “being on track every single day” can work for true weekly goals, since by their nature some goals are accomplished non-incrementally. Of course, a person could “lie” and divide the data up over several days (for the dinner example above, recording $25 over three days), but that sort of defeats the point.

Can’t imagine I’m the only one to have encountered this. How have you made it work?

Thanks!

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You need to keep yourself further ahead of your road[1] and/or make the road “steppy” rather than linear[2].

[1] Unfortunately Beeminder makes it very hard to implement this in a useful way.
[2] You can do this with the road editor or by using “take a break”.

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Great question! We talk about that in “Chunky Time”.

I think the short answer is to just check the box for the initial week of safety buffer when you create the goal. Does that make sense?

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I made a related post a while back: A few different questions.

It might be a bunch of stuff you already know, but it speaks to the Beeminder philosophy / why it is built the way it is.

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