Scarabaea's beeminder journal

Life
122

So, the Spring break is over (I am on a train riding back as I am writing this), I feel zero rested, and there’s no break in sight now. (sigh) But we managed to move apartments all right, and my partner is effectively recovering after his surgery. The problem is that for the past few weeks I only supported myself with the idea that I would have this break in April, and now there’s nothing to support myself emotionally. The teaching load will decrease soon (I had two intensive classes) but I also have two conferences in May that I need to prepare for from scratch. And one more obligation that was due before that break but I asked for an extension but didn’t fully finish over the break.

Derailments

  • just one this week: work_research_2bp - I was supposed to be working on that obligation but didn’t do enough

Changes to existing goals

  • some of the goals were on pause for the first half of the semester - now these flat spots are ending and I am adding more to some of these goals, as I am becoming aware of the illusion that I will have time for everything now

New goals

  • steps_if5k - for the monthly challenge; to enforce actually walking the average required number of steps (required by another goal) most of the days
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123

This was a very unproductive week, as the exhaustion of the past period doesn’t let me get back into the routine.

Derailments

  • again on work_research_2bp — didn’t do enough for what I am expecting myself on the outside-of-teaching aspect of my work

  • tbr_total — an acquaintance bought some books for herself but let me borrow them, as she doesn’t have the time to read them now… (as if I do…) but who am I to refuse books that I have been ogling myself, one of them something I deliberately asked her to borrow when she’s done.

Changes to existing goals

  • added more breaks to some of the goals that were on pause since the beginning of the semester; it’s just not the time to bring those back into circulation yet
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124

I am very much in the mood for a spring cleaning of goals today (including some from the monthly challenge, which were fun to try out but were never intended to stay indefinitely).

  • tbr_started_whittle - will end after acrasia horizon. It was a good way to whittle down the started portions of books originally, but lately the cutoff of 5 full books felt a bit artificial. I have enough constraints on my reading already. Might reuse in the whittling-down mode later.
  • tbr_arcs_overwhelm - thought to end this as well, as it also turned into a scarecrow of a line not to cross, but decided to give it another try if I actually use it for whittling down things.
  • photos-related goals have been on pause for a while; it’s not a priority now, but I am keeping them in the gallery to return to.
  • french_hours that has been sitting in my gallery without new datapoints since 2020 goes to the archive.
  • lipbalm_b4_sleep - ending this to potentially revive the next cold season; it’s been helpful for the wintertime/early springtime self-care, but for now, the burden of remembering to do this exactly before going to sleep (i.e. after I have posted the data point and closed the computer for the day) is higher than the usefulness.
  • steps_if5k - was fun to try out for a month; did I actually walk extra steps thanks to this goal? - I totally did, walking around my apartment or the long corridor in the apartment building that connects all the staircases/entrances.

New goals:

  • 2026may_drafts - a word count (URLMinder)–based goal to make sure I am producing the words on paper screen that I am expected to have produced for some events soon.

UPD: also added breaks for the conference trip in slightly over a week.

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125

It’s been a good week: I’m still behind on some of my commitments (real-life, I mean), but I am finally making some decent progress. Breaks that I created last week for the few days around my conference trip are a very welcome respite.

Derailed on my blog post goal a couple of days ago.

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126

Went to Paris for an academic event for two days; derailed on lit_anki_rotestock on the night of the outbound flight - arrived to the hotel too late to synch Anki in time to satisfy this goal.

Still so much behind on many real-life commitments.

Adding breaks now for another conference trip in 1.5 weeks.

127

Not much happening beeminder-wise this past week. Leaving for another conference in a couple of days, so breaks for most of the time-consuming goals for this time span.

128

Was away for a conference most of the week, for which period many of the goals are related to regular routines at home have been paused. Now that what I had to prepare for the conference is out of the way, as well as a major admin thing that I was occupied with before the trip, I only have one huge outstanding thing left that I am awfully late with. Hope to get that out of the way this week as well. Also planned a small trip (non-academic for a change, visiting friends) for later this week, for which days I have also added breaks for goals incompatible with the travelling mode.

129

Something uncanny just happened: it’s time to add breaks for another planned trip, as at next week’s review it will be too late. But then I discover that at least for some of the goals that I was planning to add them, I have them already added. With no memory whatsoever of doing this. One can gauge how tired I am after the semester, which is almost, almost over, but not quite yet.

Last week Ukrainian publishers had a ton of promotions, so I bought a ton of books. I have been dancing around the red line with tbr_pur_pages_stale for a while, reading up some of the older entries (that weigh up to x4 now, so giving way to 4 pages in newly bought books by each read page). But then I visited a friend who lent me quite a few titles from her home library that might work with my reading challenge (reading from countries from which I haven’t read anything recent), as well as some other things I was interested in. So I ended up derailing on both total pages and total books after I catalogued all the borrowed items. I am also increasing the rate on tbr_pur_pages_stale to encourage some more progress, or to discourage undoing the progress by acquiring more new books. A new goal (June’s entry for monthly challenge) tbr_10oldest_pages is also supposed to encourage me to make progress on those oldest in the list. Actively engaging with a book and deciding to DNF is also a valid option, it’s not like I am obliged to read everything I ever thought I might — but this should be an active decision rather than never getting to look at it.

Also derailed on going to sleep earlier this past week.

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130

It is slipping my mind what happened when :slight_smile: I thought I have two derailments to report from the previous week, but it appears that one of them was earlier and was already reported. So only one for teeth_hours from the last week.

Now that the semester is in it limbo phase, some of the goals I previously paused for the length of my busyness with teaching are starting again. But I still have a ton of grading to finish, for which I created a short-term goal 2026jun_papers_check.

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131

The short-term goal I announced last week was fairly effective to deal with the majority of grading in time. (Some late-comers are still arriving, I am dealing with them separately.)

This week, I am combining my work with a nice balcony view (workation?), so some of the goals are on a break for this little while.

No derailments to report as far as I remember.

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132

I returned the goals that were on pause for most of the semester into the list of those that count toward the meta goal, so its total received a deep plunge and derailed.

The goal that I’ve had since late April, for writing a few papers for conferences over the past two months, is over now. But I fully satisfied its requirement by word count before the last of those papers was even started (ok, the abstract was in that file and counted but not the actual thing). I had to write the paper after all, of course, but the goal was of no help. I’ll need to think of something else the next time - perhaps creating separate goals for each paper?

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133

Not much has been happening since the last update; the semester is almost over and I am mostly picking up loose ends that have been neglected when things were more intensive.

Created a new goal that ensures that I am actually reading what is in my “currently reading” list on Storygraph - reading or relegating the title to “paused,” that is. A script looks at the least recently updated item on the list and checks if it is the same as the previous time. (Yeah, just a new gamification around my reading hobby).

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134

tbr_pur_pages_stale has been lately my most often derailing goal, and that’s usually either (1) the goal is extremely effective, so that the desired action doesn’t happen if it wasn’t for the goal, or (2) something is wrong with the setup, and more likely conceptually than in terms of specific slopes. So this past week I have been mostly revamping this goal.

The goal is calculating the sum of pages in all of my acquired but yet unread books, with exponential increase in weight as they get older and “stale”. The ultimate purpose is to keep all the books in sight, as I was interested in them at some point but tend to get distracted by shiny new things, and to encourage attending to those older ones by the exponential weighting. Initially the limit was also important to keep me from grabbing too many ARCs that I would later feel obliged to read - but I have some other goals that keep an eye on ARCs and the workload they generate specifically.

I am restating what was the ultimate purpose behind the goal, because compared to that, I have been derailing for all wrong reasons: needing to get (and subsequently catalogue, so they start contributing) a bunch of books I have to read for my teaching; receiving a package with my own pre-owned books for the same purpose; visiting a friend and borrowing from her a couple of dozens of books for my reading-the-world challenge. These are just things that I have actually derailed for recently; other situations that created a lot of stress were when I had a chance to use a promotion and purchase a few books I have been interested in for a while, or my turn came at a library for something I have been waiting for months.

So, a goal that was supposed to take care of books that are ageing on my shelves, instead punished me for a totally different thing - getting new ones, including things with near deadlines like library copies and ARCs that have no chance to age because of this very fact. Moreover, the goal has been punishing me for things with intrinsic value for me: supporting favorite publishers, using the library system (and hence having their queue dictate when I get the book), participating in a circular book consumption and borrowing rare finds from a friend…

So I have been recently trying a new version that hopefully takes care of these problems while still using the advantages of the model. The new goal tbr_pag_grace_stale also tracks the exponentially growing sum of pages of unread books… but only past a half-a-year “grace period”. The hypothesis is that most of the books come and go way faster than that, and only for those that have lingered on my physical and virtual shelves, the power of beeminder will start nudging me to do something about that. I don’t know exactly how soon books come and go, the average “life span” might be even way shorter than 6 months, but over the past 6 months, I have read (or tried and DNF’d) ~110 books, of which ~30 were from those that I already had on the list before 2026 and the remainder ~80 “arrived” and “departed” already in 2026. So a vast majority of those that are added never make it anywhere near the point where they have been on my TBR for too long, yet the old goal punishes me for adding them… As for those that linger closer to the end of the grace period, I will be able to see any remaining bursts and prepare for them in advance, they will never be as sudden as what has been happening with the old goal when it’s been external events beyond my control the defines the timing of a book’s appearance.

I’ve been playing around with this for the past week or so after another dramatic derailment, fine-tuning the warning table that showing the movement of previously acquired books through the grace period etc. Fun. (Also obviously, being finally able to indulge in that activity as the semester is over now.)

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135

Not much is happening beeminder-wise. Still having fun with the setup described last week.

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136

Was sick for the most of the past week — I guess the consequence of finally having some time to relax after all the stress; the body takes its guards down.

Not much is happening in terms of beeminding. I mean, I am beeminding things, but no notable changes in the setup or anything.

137

Derailed on my teeth-brushing-earlier-in-the-day goal this week.
Also because I stayed at home curled on the sofa for a few days last week, I am really on the edge for steps goal, it is in the red daily now.

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138

Vacation mode continued. Not much happening here.
Though it is time to add some elaborate breaks for the future, as I am going on a library research visit in a week. (Which means the vacation mode is about to be over.) So, flat-out breaks for most of the goals for the days around travelling/settling in, and then a reduced rate or a flat spot depending on the goal for the entirety of the stay (6 weeks).

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139

I guess I forgot to mention with the previous update that I am doing another run of the goal where I work on finishing started books, like I did in February. I have too many “currently reading” right now. That is my pick for the goal of the month for August.

My knee has been aching for no apparent reason for the past two days, so I had to holler for help and ask the support to put breaks in the goals that propel me to actively use it. (Steps and physical activity, both of which are on the edge these days; for my yoga goal, I have some buffer and will be able to decide on adding a break later). (hiding some of rather experiential than logistical ramble, in case talking about bodily experiences of chronic illness might be too many details for anybody reading this thread; nothing too graphic though)
I mean, I can still walk, fortunately, but it would be crazy to have Beeminder make me do more of that just to hit a number. My idea of improvement is far from persevering through self-inflicted pain.
(I am actually in anticipation of all other joints joining in, which would mean I simply got glutened. Still sucks but at least it would mean the reason is not acute trauma and I am not making it worse when I have to walk or bend the leg, just painful.)

Other than that, I am actually right now on a stopover from a place where I spent my stay-cation for the past 4 weeks to the place where I’ll be doing my library research for the next 6. So a lot of changes in rates of most of the goals are upcoming to accommodate this period of intensive focus on the library resources and being away from home routines.

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140

It’s been the first week of my library visit; pretty productive. Also visited friends in another city and while they showed us the town, I caught up on my steps deficit. Fortunately, the knee is better so that it’s possible after all.
Had some derailments on the day when we were riding the train to see the friends – one I claimed non-legit, as I actually did the thing (anki revisions) on the train, just couldn’t sync before the deadline; others (mailbox) I legitly forgot, so there it goes.