Scarabaea's beeminder journal

Life
21

General impressions

  • 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.

Derailments

  • none this week

New goals

  • none this week

Completed goals

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Changes to goals

  • no new ones
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22

That is an intense graph. Thanks for sharing!

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23

General impressions

  • 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.]
24

Sounds like you should ratchet the tagtime work goal!

25

No, no ratcheting! :sweat_smile: 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.

26

Oh, I meant to make it harder!

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27

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.
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28

General impressions

  • 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.
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29

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.

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30

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.

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31

General impressions

  • 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.
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32

General impressions

  • 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.

Completed goals

  • none this week

Changes to goals

  • none upcoming
33

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…

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34

General impressions

  • 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…

New goals

  • none this week

Completed goals

  • none this week

Changes to goals

  • none upcoming
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35

General impressions

  • I was finally able to put in some time into my research project this week, now that the library is closed for the holidays and people we wanted to see have also left for holidays. Yay, work time! /s
  • I decided it’s time to revise some of my (productivity / goal organization) systems, not because they are suboptimal per se and need being replaced with better ones but because it’s a standard tendency for them to become stale. So, I have been experimenting with Intend as the potential organization system of choice for the next period. Some of the changes to the goal below are due to that.

Derailments

  • none, if my memory, supported by the list of recent payments, is to be trusted.

New goals

  • morning_setup has been superseded with teeth_by_noon and to-dos-dones for the two aspects measured with that goal separately now. to-dos-dones expects +1 when intentions are submitted in Intend, and the percentage of completed ones, with 1.8 on the average. Will probably make it weekends-off at some point.

Completed goals

  • none this week

Changes to goals

  • Breaks across all goals that are due soon enough for the trip back to Europe between next Sunday and Wednesday.
  • UPD (since it’s still Sunday, will add here rather than leave for next update): I’m finally done archiving my book reviews from Goodreads in a blog, which was monitored by the goal bookblog_wordpress. This goal will now progress to gently nudging me to post reviews for any future finished books. This means 1) a much gentler slope - 1/week, to start with, but with autoratcheting; 2) since it’s not the point of this goal to nudge me to finish books, I will be adding a break if the goal is due within 7-9 days but I don’t have finished but yet unreviewed books. In the previous iteration of this goal, I posted “+1” in such case, but because it’s an auto-data goal now, looking at the number of posts, I will be adding flat spots in the same situation.
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36

Happy New Year!

General impressions

  • Last week was my last week spent with friends in Illinois, so preparing to go back to Europe. The trip was supposed to take between Monday and Wednesday this week (which is already long enough) - I expected to be at home by moment I am writing this, but here I am, stranded in Chicago, waiting for a rebooked flight. The single goal that wasn’t put on a flat spot for this trip (or had enough buffer by itself) derailed yesterday, because I was running around the airport instead of working on the goal on the plane.

Derailments

New goals

  • birding_2025 - started this new goal on Jan 1, as it will be easier to keep track of the number of checklists in eBird like that. The idea is to post checklists with observations more regularly, instead of just intensive bouts on vacations to “exotic” places. Tried different ways to automate it, but none worked. (Apparently, they are not making available personal stats through API, just for the locations and species, and scraping is prevented by a sign-in wall.)

Completed goals

  • none this week

Changes to goals

37

General impressions

  • So, I finally got home from the US and I am now in a zombie mode because of the jet lag. Have a couple of big deadlines around the corner, so need to fake some intellectual activity anyway.

Derailments

  • none since the last update

New goals

  • 5-a-day - we had an interesting discussion with the friends we stayed with and then separately with my spouse, based on which we decided we want to eat more fresh veggies daily. I decided to start with the WHO guidelines on 5 servings of fresh fruit and vegetables a day. I contemplated having such a goal for a while, but I always found it very confusing what counts as a serving. Well, enters ChatGPT, whom I can just tell narratively what I ate and it counts the servings. Surprise: servings are unexpectedly small! I am easily making 6-7 a day even when I don’t make a separate big salad. (Or ChatGPT’s interpretations of the guidelines is off. Advice appreciated.)

Completed goals

  • none this week

Changes to goals

  • none since the last update
38

I’m not sure if you’re in this discord server to chat or not, but either way I’m sure @mel or @mad could offer some advice on the veggie thing!

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39

General impressions

  • Still somewhat jet-lagged, which severely affects my work-more-in-the-mornings goal.
  • Finalized and submitted two big things for the post-doc project this week. Now I can finally claim that, okay, my elaborate system with tracking pings and time is bringing me to produce the planned project outcomes, after all.

Derailments

  • none that I remember - I realized I have quite a problem here

New goals

  • none this week

Completed goals

  • none this week

Changes to goals

  • tbr_purchased - planned a jump since I will need to purchase some more books for my project
  • Now, this one’s big: I finally came up with a way for the goal bookblog_wordpress, which ensures that I post reviews to read books, to adequately demand reviews of me without making me finish more books. I already had code that scrapes the number of books on specific Goodreads shelves, now I am just using another instance of that to see how many I finished already this year and update the book-blogging goal’s road accordingly. I can make a publicly usable version if there’s interest.
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    The only downside is that it’s designed to be steppy, so I can’t use it toward my meta goal.
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40

One of the goals that I have been beeminding for almost as long as I have beeminded anything - for a couple weeks short of 10 years - is dedicated to working through the backlog of photos that I have.

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Now… you can see easily that it’s not really fully doing what it is intended to do. I mean, it would be way worse without this goal, but I am clearly behind of the plan to actually reduce the backlog. (All the jumps here are not derailments but planned jumps for trips where I was going to take many new photos. By no means this is supposed to restrict me from taking new photos.)

I was making some progress for the initial several years; then in 2018 I got a new camera that 1) opened up the world of wildlife photography for me; 2) produced much “heavier” photos that my then computer would open really slowly, so I took a break in actively working on that until I got a new one in 2021.

I have had a supporting goal for years as well, which requires me to process 15 photos a day (and actively auto-ratchets). (Processed = deleted over 2/3 of them, “developed”, cropped, and uploaded the select ones to iNaturalist to ID/archive. 99% of what I take photos of with a camera is wildlife nowadays.)
This whittle-down goal here, on the other hand, has the rate of -10 photos. So, I am supposed to be building some buffer for future photos but I am hardly building enough to go without jumps for actual birding trips. It’s only effective to the extent that for the past 2.5 years, the jumps have been in the same area around 20,000, not going even further up.
Still, I have between 1,500 and 3,000 for each of the years between 2019 and 2024, which I hardly go back to, as both these goals’ rates are always easily satisfied with just going through very recent ones. Over 2024 alone, I have processed over 7,500 photos. But as the year has ended, I am still left with over 3,000 photos that I haven’t dealt with yet. And if I just continue as usual, it is safe to assume that I will soon have enough of 2025 photos to satisfy both goals.

So I decided to add one more whittle-down goal for the 2024 backlog only. Not supposed to grow, so there’s no need to be gentle with the slope. At the current setup (-15/day), I am supposed to be done in about 7 months, but it is also set to auto-ratchet, so I hope to be actually done earlier. If it works, I will also attack previous years’ backlogs in a similar way after that.

UPD: thought I might as well share my iNat handle since I mentioned this

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