My work and life schedule hectic and for some goals I can only know a day or two in advance that I will have the time to commit to them. But the problem is that I procrastinate and never do.
I want to create a goal a day or two in advance.
For example: Run 15k within the next 24 hours or 48 hours or get fined.
That is not a weekly goal. Just have a 15k run tomorrow or pay $. No mercy.
(right now I procrastinate even on the days that I do have time)
I want this goal to be tied to Strava so it is auto data and I canāt manually cheat and insert a data point.
I also want to make it a weasel proof so I am not allowed to delete or change the goal.
Both temper-proof autodata and weasel proofing are absolutely mandatory for me.
That is why I think BM is my only option.
I simply donāt see any other tool that combines all three of these :
Weasel proofing
Autodata
Paying a fine
So please help me out to somehow make BM work for such a goal there got to be a creative way Iād imagine that can accomplish such a goal somehow.
Iām not well-versed with BM but so far the issues Iāve noticed is that even setting a new goal to zero derailing and zero ratchet, BM wonāt let me set the end goal for 1 or 2 days only a week.
I donāt mind paying premium, creating a custom goal, spending a couple of minutes whenever creating the goal or whatever it takes to achieve that.
Beeminderās really not built for this kind of goal, as youāve noticed, but letās see what we can come up with. If you start off by setting the goal to a reaaaally gentle slope, I think you could use the graph editor (graph.beeminder.com) to then set the goal to a steep slope that ends tomorrow.
Can you give that a go? If you find it difficult, let me know and I can try it out myself and see if I can come up with a step-by-step, but always worth getting your feedback on how intuitive it is first!
Our friends at Boss as a Service could totally help with that, and will even sting you for non-performance via the Beeminder service if thatās what your lucid self wants.
We used to have an app that would do something similar, using our APIās charging end point, but I believe thatās now defunct/deprecated ā the app, not the charging API, so if youāre handy in that way you could hack something together yourself.
I spent a lot of time thinking about using BaaS.
Using Boss as a Service with Beeminder is really appealing to me.
But I came across two issues:
First, I still donāt understand how I would create such a goal that only BaaS could confirm as complete?
If I create a new goal in which I can also enter a data point that is definitely not weasel-proof as I want only the BaaS/another human to be able to authenticate the goal as done.
So assuming I have BaaS subscription how would I create such a goal in which only he/she can insert the data point? Help with that I am forever grateful
Second, BaaS homepage says they donāt accept clients. I have contacted BaaS several times, email and PM to @manasvinik but no response from anyone would love to use BaaS or any other similar service that would manually check something and enter the datapoint in Beeminder or fine me.
I imagine that they would be able to help figure out. Reading the website, they want some sort of anti-weasel proof for every task. No idea what that looks like in practice.
Did you try the magic skip-the-queue link for Beeminder users?
(Iāve linked to the blog post here, because weāre usually pretty good at updating them when the world changes. So if the magic link isnāt getting you anywhere, we could remove it from the post.)
Third, for my part, I donāt traditionally respond well to nagging and expectations, so I donāt know whether BaaS would make me more productive, or make me dig my heels in and do less. (Though maybe an impending charge would help. I havenāt been brave enough to find out.)
If you do manage to sign up, Iād be keen to learn how it works (or doesnāt) for you
I imagine that they would be able to help figure out. Reading the website, they want some sort of anti-weasel proof for every task. No idea what that looks like in practice.
I guess I didnāt explain well enough.
Yes! That is well understood that they require a proof.
That is in fact the reason I want to join them. So I fully understand that.
But that wasnāt my question.
I mean weasel-proofing the Beeminder goal in a way that ONLY BaaS could mark as complete.
That is that only they BaaS (or someone other than me) can enter a data point like ā1ā or ā0ā so that BM would charge me.
If the goal is not weasel-proofed at BM side OR if BaaS wonāt charge me an arm & leg for derailing and I canāt cheat the system by manually going into my BM goal and entering a datapoint than it wonāt work.
Really super simple:
Goal completed and proof shown to BaaS = No Problem
No proof to BaaS = Charge me without any way for me to edit the goal or enter a datapoint myself
Did you try the magic skip-the-queue link for Beeminder users?
My bad, it didnāt work for me yesterday but working now, maybe Iāve used the wrong link previously but great. The magic link works! I signed up, awesome thanks! Registering right now
Third, for my part, I donāt traditionally respond well to nagging and expectations, so I donāt know whether BaaS would make me more productive, or make me dig my heels in and do less. (Though maybe an impending charge would help. I havenāt been brave enough to find out.)
Iām like you. I donāt need their service for nagging me.
Nagging wonāt work, not even human nagging.
The only thing that would work is paying a large fine.
So I need their service just for authenticating that I did what I was supposed to do and if not, than either fine me directly somehow, or work in conjunction with a BM goal so BM would charge me for derailing.
This isnāt really possible, but you can make it difficult for yourself to add data ā for instance, by going to the āsettingsā tab of the goal and switching it to be an IFTTT/Zapier goal. That will turn it into an autodata goal without any autodata connected.
This seemed to work recently for another user I spoke to, since it means you canāt add data via the web or mobile interfaces.
I tried going to the graph and to be honest I got confused about what you mean by a really gentle slope and also when I tried to move the bar to make the goal ending sooner than a week from now there was error on the graph.
Letā say that I want to be committed to burn 500 calories tomorrow
Is this what I need to do?
Create a daily burning 500 calories goal with Strava as autodata.
Set ratchet to 0 and respite to 0
Go to graph.beeminder.com and try to move the line so that the deadline will be tomorrow.
Make the goal weasler proof so canāt be edited or deleted.
I keep getting an error on the graph.
The point of making the deadline tomorrow is that I wonāt procrastinate to multiple days or so
Finish setting that up, and go to graph.beeminder.com, and open that goal in the interface. Then I set things up like this, so the end-date is tomorrow and the goal total is 500 calories:
I can submit that graph without an error, then, because itās making the goal harder, not easier.
Like I mentioned, Beeminder really isnāt intended to do this (so much so that Iām trying to help you out here as a fellow user, not as Beeminderās support czar, off the clock ā this is not something support can spend time helping you out with). Itās useful to know that this is what you really really want to be able to do, so thanks for sharing the feedbackā¦ but itās not something I anticipate changing anytime soon!
Thank you so much Nicky
The only thing I missed was the trick in making the goal harder by beginning by making it easier so that I can then play with the deadline.
I totally understand Beeminder wasnāt built for that, but what you suggested is a very creative way to achieve that and I think that would work!
I canāt thank you enough. I knew that with BM being super flexible it would be able to achieve somehow so that is why I kept asking
Really appreciate the help.
By the way, is there any way to make a template out of this goal? perhaps a custom goal?
Oops, I have tested this out further today and discovered that this wonāt work if you weaselproof the goal as well. I couldāve sworn someone had tested it out and told me it looked fine, but perhaps theyād missed the weaselproofing step or I misunderstood.
So just to clarify, weaselproofing the graph when youāve done this will prevent BaaS from adding data. It will still work fine if you want to make it difficult for yourself to add data without weaselproofing the goal as well, but doing both will cause problems.
(If anyone made a mistake because of this, let us know ā since it was my bad, weāre happy to remove either the weaselproofing or the autodata source right away!)
Thanks Nicky but as a master procrastinator, just making is slightly difficult may not cut it.
For important goals I want to make the stakes high with a very large pledge. Something I would absolutely cannot afford to derail on. If itās a $300 or so, I can tempted to procrastinate if I am allowed to mess with the data.
I wanted to create a catch all do less goal.
And that whenever I do not do a task, BaaS using the API would enter 1 as the data point.
Very simple.
The only issue is that it has to be an auto data (I think?) it order to prevent me form entering the data.
If they use an API isnāt it similar to other auto data ntegrations kind of?
They donāt use the API, Iām afraid, and there isnāt a way around the issue I described in my most recent post (at least at present).
If what I suggested doesnāt work for you, then Iām stumped, I admit! In the end, Beeminder does rely on you being honest, or at least in you not wanting to mess up the incentives for yourself. If you really canāt stop yourself from lying, it may be that Beeminder just isnāt a great fit. We do have a list of competitors if you want to explore that!
By the way surprised that BaaS donāt use the API because thatās was @manasvinik wrote me
We enter the data through Beeminderās API
But Nicky, now that I come to think of it isnāt the Do Less goal I wrote about weasel-proofed even though the data is entered manually?
Because if itās a Do Less goal, letās say do X 0 times and it is weasel-proof, and suppose I do not show BaaS evidence for the goal, they will enter a data point of 1. And this means (or I may be wrong) that once itās 1, while the goal had a 0 allowance, I canāt pretty much do anything about it no?
Wouldnāt as I described a Do Lee goal solve this easily?
Perhaps for some users or types of goals they do use the API ā I wouldnāt necessarily know about it, if so. Iām only aware that they definitely use another method for at least some goals. (Since youāre asking for us to protect you from weaselling, Iām trying not to explain too much about it, so you donāt feel tempted to find ways around it!)
Itās true that if the goal is weaselproofed, you wonāt be able to delete or edit data added by BaaS. If you think thatās enough to stop you tampering with it, then that should be enough! Again, Iām not going to go too deeply into whether I can think of a way to exploit that, because I donāt want to help you cheat.
Beeminder should do this. I searched for one-off goals and came here. You could also call them 0-1 goals. Either you did the thing or you did not. Itās just for a specific task on a specific day.
For example, I wanted to clean for 1 hour tomorrow. Itās not something I want to do every day, just tomorrow. If I donāt do it, I pay Beeminder. This alone will make me do it.
there got to be a creative way Iād imagine that can accomplish such a goal somehow.
would love to use BaaS or any other similar service that would manually check something and enter the datapoint in Beeminder or fine me.
More details on our post