One Goal To Rule Them All

I am going to try to combine most of my goals into a single Beeminder goal. I am going to do this using my streaks app to keep track of goal completion. Now one issue this poses is the fact I can easily delete a goal from the streaks app. However the way I am going to mitigate this by listing in this fourm what each of my goals is.

If I want to remove or add a goal I can however I must post to this thread that I plan to add or remove the goal from streaks and must wait a week till I do it (same for adjusting the amount of completions of a goal). Also I will set up this goal where I only enter this goal once a week. The reason for this is I tend to forget to put in my data when I do it daily. By only entering the data only once a week on a Sunday when I dont work I am much less likely to forget. One concern I do have with this method is the possibility that if I mess up on one goal in the streaks app in a week I wont be motivated to do the rest. But I decided to just go ahead and test it and see what happens. With that said here are my goals:

Meditate 10 Minutes: I must meditate for at least 10 minutes for at least 3 days out of the week.

Brush Teeth: I must brush my teeth everyday of the week.

Check YNAB: I must check YNAB at least 4 days of the week.

Bible Study: I must read a devotional or at least 10 verses of scripture at least 4 days of the week.

Drink Tea: I must drink some kind of tea at least 3 days of a given week.

10 Minutes Of Code: I must code at least 10 minutes at least 3 days of each week.

Journal: I must write an entry in any of my journals on Day One or an equivalent platform at least one day a week.

Streaks 6 Minutes Exercise: I must do a six minutes streaks exercise at least once a week. I am starting this one very low as I need to figure out where I am going to fit my exercise.

Clean Room: I must clean my room at least one day a week.

Enter Beemind data: I must enter my Beemind data each week. I added this one to make it where forgetting to enter data is a failure of the goal.

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If you fail to meet a single one of these goals weekly, you derail yourself for the weekly Beeminder goal?

That’s interesting. One of the main reasons Beeminder works for me is that it motivates me to log the data. It gives me that tick-off-the-checkbox feeling. That’s why I don’t use any automation in contrast to many power users here. (Well, also I have far less which makes it feasible to enter data manually.)

So, if I understand, correctly you still enter the data daily via your streaks app? Consequently, wouldn’t it make more sense to create an interface between Beeminder and the streaks app instead of syncing them manually once a week?

A simple frontend to Beeminder that shows all unticked once-per-day goals would be nice. I had an app like that once, but I didn’t use it because it didn’t charge me money when I forgot to tick something off. After a couple of days of not ticking things off, I lost motivation.

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The website and Android widgets show a check mark for any goal that has data entered that day. So you can do something sort of like this by making a widget for each daily goal on your Android home screen, or using the “tags” feature to display all daily goals on the website. Then you just see which ones are checked.

Yeah, I feel like automation kinda takes away from the reward of crossing things off the list.

So how does this single Beeminder goal work? Is it daily or weekly? Do you derail if you break even one streak for the day, or week?

The way it works is goes by doing it weekly if I completed all my goals for the week a mark one point. I feel it is important for me to explain a little better how the streaks app works.

You can set a goal that you would need to say complete 3 times a week. This means any day of the week so you could do it Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday or something like Monday, Saturday and Sunday and still meet the goal. This is why I made it weekly as by the end of the week I will know if I will meet my goal or not. For example if I have only done the check YNAB goal once that week and its on a Sunday I cant complete this goal by the end of the week as it needs to be completed four times and would not mark a point as it would not be possible to complete it.

The reason I am doing this is since I started work (and soon my last semester at school) it can be hard to get things done on specific days of the week. For example if I set a beeminder goal to do something 4 times a week it will require that I add a point at least every 2 days. Which can be problematic (though I also see how it could be used to help prevent procrastination) if I say have a 2 hour test on a specific day or my finance wants to go on a date and it is not planned. With the goal being just a certain amount of times a week on any day of the week it allows me a bit more flexibility. This was not a major problem when I first started Beeminder as I was just a full time online college student and didn’t have a job at the time.

Now as you said there could be a problem with motivation if I say know on a Thursday I have already failed to meet my goals for the week. One way I thought of the help make this issue less of a problem is maybe basing it off of percentage of completed goals. So for example maybe the goal would be to stay at or above a 95% completion rate. This would motivate me to continue completing goals even if I failed as I would want to be up to 95% by next check in period. What do you think about this idea?

@zedmango If this is possible I would mind doing it but I am not sure if I could. I use an iphone and I know iOS can be a bit more limiting as far as what you can do with it on an app level and os level. However I have been working on learning swift programming to learn to make iOS apps, so maybe one day but it will probably be a while until I am at that point. Far as I know the Streaks app does not have the ability to integrate with Beeminder or any external web apps or api’s.

I mean for me personally I find it satisfying marking tasks off my Streaks app, but I can see where you and @felixm are coming from.

This is honestly kind of a test it may go great or it may fail. But I decided to go ahead and try it anyway and just see what happens.

Below are a few pictures of the app I use.


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One solution to this is to give yourself a week of buffer when you start. In that week of buffer if you do it 4 times you’ll have another week of buffer at the end of that week, and so on.

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I had not thought about that. I think this is going to be me go to plan if I feel this plan is not working out. Thanks for the tip :slight_smile:

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So far this goal has worked perfectly but I am going to make one tweak. Starting a week from today the goal will be to keep the completion rate above 95% instead of completing all goals. This way if I know half way through the week I missed a goal I don’t give up and will press to try to get above 95%. I really enjoy the streaks app and only entering data into Beeminder once a week as I am not constantly stressing about if I put all my data in for the day in Beeminder. However as I have stated the backup plan is what Zedmano laid out. Attached is a screenshot showing my current state in streaks. Also as a note the Streaks app is set to have the start of the day at 4:00AM not 12:00AM.

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I am going to be altering my goals a bit to fit better with my priorities. As I stated before I can add or remove goals or change the amount of each goal but must make a week. With that said here are my goals that are set to take effect 01/25/21 until then the current goals stand. I am reducing some goals as school is starting back up, added some health goals. I am also going to set the completion rate to at least 90% if I am below this threshold at the end of the day of that week it is a derail (will probably take it back up to 95% once school ends this is my last semester of university YAY!):

Meditate 10 Minutes: I must meditate at least 3 days of the week, there is not specific time requirement as I find I tend to get distracted by the fact that there is a certain amount of time left. This way I can focus more on the moment and not care if I am meeting a time requirement.

Check YNAB: I must check YNAB at least 3 days of the week.

Bible Study: I must read a devotional or at least 10 verses of scripture at least 3 days of the week.

Drink Tea: I must drink some kind of tea at least 3 days of a given week.

10 Minutes Of Code: I must code at least 10 minutes at least 2 days of each week.

Journal: I must write an entry in any of my journals on Day One or an equivalent platform at least one day a week.

Streaks 6 Minutes Exercise or Close Apple Exercise Ring: I must do a six minutes streaks exercise at least three times a week or close my exercise ring on my apple watch.

Track Them Calories: I must track my calories at least five days a week and keep them under a specified number of calories. I haven’t set a specific amount of calories as I am currently trying to figure out the best amount. I will be testing it this week.

Visit People: I must visit people outside of my household at least once a week.

Enter Beemind data: I must enter my Beemind data each week. I added this one to make it where forgetting to enter data is a failure of the goal. To be clear even if I have a 90.0% completion rate if I do not do this task and I derail because of this it is a legit derail.

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On this one like the meditation one I am removing the exact time requirement.

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I’m really interested in contemplative spirituality as it is found in all different traditions and religions, so I wanted to ask if you’d be willing to share about how the meditation and bible study work together for you, or do you see them as different things?

I would say I treat them as separate things. When I meditate I try to clear my mind and focus on the current moment. This helps me a lot with my anxiety. I would say though if a meditate and then do my bible study I do tend to focus better as meditation helps me to clear my mind.

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This week I was a few short of my 95% completion. So I am glad this coming week there is a reduction in the amount. As with school and work my amount of free time decreases a lot. However I would say this system is going good over all.