In Munich this week, working with materials for my research at a library. Because the library works earlier in the day and I have to start early to use the maximum of my time here, this has given a significant boost to my goal that rewards time spent on my research project earlier in the day.
Have been using the new method for calculating the cumulative for the meta goal that I coded a week ago. It turned out it works suboptimally with the fact that ratchting is now moving the road up, so I had to turn off all the auto-ratcheting, but otherwise the new meta goal has been working great and does exactly what I want when I am on a such changed-routine spot like now. E.g. I dialed down my Lithuanian goal for the time of this trip, and now I know exactly how I am doing with regard to this temporary rate, instead of comparing my current progress to what will be expected of me in a couple of weeks.
goals_days_left_od (old meta goal) will be superseded by meta_days_ahead. With 8 years under the hood, that goal has also been really slow to load lately. Here’ what the graph looks like, all these years later:
My second week in Munich. I looked so much at books for my research (and during such a untypical part of the day) that the tagtime-based goal of mine that rewards working on the project earlier in the day says that I literally can do nothing for it until December 11. (Okay, that’s not only the gain buffer, that’s also a flat spot to cover a conference and a holiday after that.) But I definitely cannot “not look” or “not think” about my project until December, sigh.
Added some improvements to the code that populates the meta goal. More detail in the corresponding thread.
Derailments
gmail_all - this was quite a random one. Just forgot to look at the end of the day.
New goals
lit_anki_cards - to gently nudge me to create Anki cards for the new words that I encounter in Lithuanian - in class or while reading/listening to something. Because I have been known to just make notes and never return to them, which is a waste of time. ChatGPT helped me write a code that will be scraping the number of cards in a deck and post it through API. It even included holding my hand while I figured out the version conflicts with the add-on for Anki app. Okay, not literally holding my hand but very helpfully providing suggestions on what might be wrong.
Completed goals
none this week
Changes to goals
Since in a week and a half I am travelling to a conference, I will be adding flat spots across most goals for the days in the plane and at the conference, and then a reduced-rate spots for the couple weeks of a holiday after that. [I had a moment of derealization today when I suddenly imagined that it’s already this upcoming week that I am flying to the US instead of the week after that, and that I missed the moment to add the breaks. Wow.]
No, no ratcheting! Because it’s my goal for the “New Year Resolutions” thread, and I am not supposed to derail or add random easier spots, I sometimes accrue a bit of buffer to be able to take it easier later.
What I meant is that I regularly let a small amount of buffer accrue to be able to take it easier on some days after a more intensive span, or to dedicate a day to errands. (On average, the daily norm takes about 4 hours to achieve, less if starting earlier in the day, more if starting later. It’s literally impossible to do the daily rate if I start past 6 p.m., as it would take 7.5 hours if pings are coming at the average interval, without abnormal bursts. So, when some errands that depend on others’ working hours need to be done, it’s a day of consumed buffer.) The actual buffer that I gained because of the morning visits to the library is 7 days. It just looks funny because in 7 work days I am leaving for a conference and then vacation, for which I have upcoming flat spots, so all that accounted for, the “due in X days” is way into the future right now. The joke was that, because of my ongoing library visit and the preparations for the conference, I absolutely cannot just stop working on the project and just enjoy the accrued buffer as if it was a holiday, however much I am already longing for a respite.
I am actually glad that my new calculations for the meta goal let me see clearly how much of the true accrued buffer I have vs how much of the alleged buffer is because of the upcoming flat spot. Here, I see that I’m above the road by 7.87 daily amounts, or 7 full days, despite the fact that I would only derail in 30 days if I stopped doing anything right now. It reminds me that I only have 7 days at my disposal for other reasons why I might need a day off the goal.
Returned from the library research visit, which I can claim to be quite productive.
Preparing to travel again to a conference on Wednesday, so naturally most of these days are dedicated to errands and paperwork around both the previous and the upcoming trips. Good to have accrued some buffer on the “content” goals for my project - doesn’t feel as bad to not be able to spend enough time on it because of the focus on getting ready to the trip.
For this week at home, the normal rates have turned on for all of the goals, so I am now experiencing how my meta goal works with all the underlying goals in full force. I still like a lot how this all works together, the ability to see how I am doing with regard to the current rate despite upcoming flat spots for the conference/travelling/vacation.
Derailments
Meta goal derailed on the day when I was flying back. It was technically still at the $0 “sandbox” before that moment (for me to check that everything related to the code works as expected), but I upped the cap before that derailment, so now the cycles of regularly derailing it start for real.
New goals
None this week
Completed goals
none this week
Changes to goals
Changes are about to turn on for flat/shallow spots across the goals.
I have also revisited how I did re: the shallower spots that I set up for myself for the previous trip, and retrospectively dialed up some of the goals according to how much I was actually able to do, so that the leniency that was relevant for the time of the trip doesn’t propagate forward in the form of an unnecessary buffer. E.g. my time-based goal for studying Lithuanian is usually set up to 1 hour/day. I initially reduced it to 0.25 or 0.3 for the period, estimating based on how I cancelled half of the classes but was still planning to revise words in anki etc. Retrospectively, I see that I actually spent about 0.5 hour/day on the language study during those 2.5 weeks, so I dialed it up.
A super-brief update this week. Been to a conference where everything was so intensive that I didn’t even expect to have time to dispatch any beemergencies (and that was a correct expectation), so almost everything has been paused since Tuesday. Only things like taking vitamins were running at a normal rate, as well the time spent on work-related-stuff, which the conference clearly was. I am still travelling for a kind of vacation for the next week and a half, so now a slightly different set of goals is flattened/dialed down. I am really liking how my new concept of calculating the meta is managing to guide me around all the rate changes.
This week has been a vacation (tagging along my spouse who came to Florida for work-related stuff), plus I haven’t overcome the entirety of jet-lag yet, so I have been taking it easier for most of my goals. Everything work-related is noteworthily paused, such a relief.
The beginning of this week was still in the vacation mode in Florida, and now I am easing into the next several weeks that I will spend staying at friends’ places in Illinois, which is of course not the optimal situation for working on all the thing in my life in a routine mode. But having all those goals definitely helps not to abandon any idea of progress at all. Might dial down some though - for example, I realized too late that there’s hardly a way for my to do yoga where I am currently staying, so the goal will probably derail tonight.
I actually feel like looking at some books for my project again, which feels… fresh… Glad that even just two weeks off the project helped.
Derailments
Meta goal derailed yesterday - apparently, I wasn’t able to hit the ground running and immediately start on the full rates across all the goals. Tested out the Uncle button with that. That’s great!
New goals
None this week, but I should make a short-term “drafts” goal for the next period of time really soon.
Completed goals
none this week
Changes to goals
Dialing down all physical-activity-related goals until I am at the next place.
This week in Illinois felt pretty hectic - with errands and meetups with friends and colleagues, so it wasn’t easy to progress with the routines. I made some allowances to the meta goal “will catch up tomorrow” - and actually did, so that this doesn’t turn into a slippery slope for never catching up. (I only do this with the meta goal. Not with the actual content goals)
Derailments
yoga last weekend, like predicted in the previous post. Did something else derail in the meantime? it feels like it did, but I can’t remember what.
New goals
lit_classnotes_anki - this is basically another metric for the same action as lit_anki_cards already measures: writing out new words from class notes that I take or our instructor of Lithuanian sends us after class. But the old goal looks for the number of cards in anki, while for the new one, I made a list of all classes and now I am marking the ones I processed with a checkmark in Notion, so I have a running total. Hence, it’s an odometer goal that makes me process notes for one class every two days. (While having new classes added to list, as they happen twice a week.) Feels a bit like Achilles vs the tortoise race, but I will tweak the rate if I see the need. At least I started and made a dent in those class notes, which was very overwhelming when only the number of cards was measured, with an explicit list to work through.
I mentioned I should make a new goal for article drafts for the next more urgent paper - but still haven’t. I actually cannot conceptualize how to quantify it, because it’s not the need to write a specific word count (I already have quite a lot in that draft), nor the need to read a specific number of books/pages. Rather, it’s reading “around” in the secondary literature and adding some conceptualizations to the draft and polishing it stylistically. So, I guess I am back to just measuring the time input on the project for a while. But I found a language editor in the meantime, which was a big side quest I have been neglecting for a while.
For the most part, I also havent managed to do better than “time spent on project” in this kind of situation. You could also think about trying to make some kind of a plan and having a goal to work through a to-do list, but research is usually too nebulous to easily do that…
This is that time of the year when I repeatedly (i.e. every year) erroneously imagine that there is an unaccounted for abyss of time between Dec 20 and Jan 3, when I will be able to catch up on everything. Sad to say, but with all the staying-at-friends-homes, errands, meeting up with people, and helping my husband with his research project, I haven’t really been doing much for my own - while I really have to have a couple of big things ready “after holidays”. Goals-wise, I was mostly burning through the buffer I gained before for my project-related goals. I don’t know if the conclusion here is “good that I had this buffer to burn” or it would be better if beeminder’s idea of urgency for these goals was more aligned with the real-life idea of urgency.
Derailments
meta - because I am apparently unable to follow the entire load of all the goals when I don’t have time for my routines and am just catching up on the goals in the red between stuff
all of the TBR goals - there was a sale with one of the online bookstores with books that I will need for my project anyways, plus I am back in town where I have access to a good public library, plus splurged in some ARCs on Netgalley… well…
Because it’s my goal for the “New Year Resolutions” thread, and I am not supposed to derail or add random easier spots, I sometimes accrue a bit of buffer to be able to take it easier later.