I would like to set up a goal for a daily habit that is non-cumulative , and I’m looking for the best way to configure it.
For example, if my goal is to “do something once per day” and I miss Monday, I want that to register as a derailment for Monday. Critically, I do not want the task to accumulate. Tuesday’s target should remain “once,” not become “twice” to make up for the missed day.
Essentially, each day needs to be an independent, pass/fail event without carrying over any deficit from the day before.
Could you please advise on the correct goal type and settings to achieve this? Is this a “Do Less” goal, or is there another setup you would recommend for this use case?
The first half of that is already how Beeminder works out of the box. You never have to catch up after derailing (you do have to pay, of course). For the second part, the short answer is auto-ratchet, but we’d also maybe like to convince you that you don’t actually want that.
Just to make sure I’m clear what you’re saying @dreev… it sounds like even if I missed a daily activity, and will be at or below the red line (forever?) I only pay for days I miss, not days outside the yellow brick road. Is that right? (Can’t post an image for some reason, or I’d show my graph)
I have to say, I don’t find the arguments in that blog post super compelling for goals that take the form being discussed here, where you’re trying to build a habit by doing something regularly. For example, if I was learning something via spaced repetition, the cadence is more important than the total hours of practice. If I miss a session, I don’t get “back on track” by practicing twice as long at my next session. Now if I was tracking total weekly (or average daily) effort that would be different.
FWIW (assuming my interpretation above is correct), I think this is just a shortcoming of the visualization, not the way the pay outs work. Strava has a nice calendar view where you can see a circle any day that you did an activity, and if your calendar is full, you know you did something every day.
There’s no catching back up with Beeminder – after a derailment the future of red line moves to reflect current reality. On a do-more goal, the line usually drops slightly to start up again at the current total. You’ll see this happen if you miss another day on your daily_activity goal.
As you’ll discover, committing do doing something strictly every single day is a challenging goal, because life happens. Most people find a balance by setting a slope of around 6 days per week, or using the weekends off feature (which doesn’t stop data entry for weekends, just flattens the slope).
Kind of like Strava, you get a dot on your Beeminder graph every time you enter something that day, so over time you’ll see a satisfyingly unbroken staircase of dots.
If there’s something you do want to catch back up on, there are a number of forum threads about managing a backlog of work. But the biggest thing is to keep current with the ongoing commitment, not to worry about the past.
You make a good point about tracking effort - many people beemind the same real world goal from multiple perspectives – e.g. both number of days per week and hours spent. If you’re getting one of those from Strava, maybe beemind something different.