shanaqui's Beeminder Journal: 2024

Life
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Well, happy 2024! It’s time for my first check-in of the year, so I’m starting off with some housekeeping and making a new thread for the new year.

I can’t believe this is the fifth Beeminder journal I’m making. How time does fly!

What’s this?

Each week, I post a summary/reflection on my beeminding from the previous week. I usually post on Friday, though sometimes I’ll post a couple of days earlier or later.

Previous threads:

[Pre-2021] | [2021] | [2022] | [2023]

Ground Rules:

Feel free to join in and ask questions, poke me and give me accountability, chip in with your experiences. I’m game. If something’s out of bounds (e.g. because it’s too personal), I won’t be offended, I’ll just say so.

As I’ve warned previously, I’m usually very frank about my physical and mental health, particularly the latter. That means I’m usually happy to answer questions that others might consider impertinent or TMI… but I’ll let you know if it crosses the boundary.

Useful things to know:

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Opening thoughts:

It’s been a surprisingly motivated week. I felt pretty refreshed after Christmas and wanted to do All The Things! By today I’m pretty tired, but I don’t know if the enthusiasm is actually gone or if I’m just wiped out by the killer headache I had last night. I’ll refrain from adding anything new for a while, ahaha.

Completed goals:

  • /2023reading - This was my “easy” reading goal, aiming to read the number of books I managed to read the year before, 300. I made it well in time, so this only ended now because it reached the end date. I overachieved!
  • /2023reading_ex - This was finished well before the end date, and chronicled me reading 365+ books last year! Some of them were short, and I counted stuff like manga, comics and textbooks, but that was all in the plan (I always have counted that kind of thing).
  • /2023reading_sav - And this one aimed for 400 books. I reached it at the last minute, on December 31st.
  • 2023pages - This goal was aiming at reading 70,000 pages in total in 2023, and I exceeded it by quite a ways. I’m very happy with my progress here!
  • /2023_readingsprint - This was the goal I created in December (I think?) to count down the last books I needed to finish for my “savage” reading goal. This goal style was actually sparked by someone in the support inbox suggesting that they’d generally find whittle-down-style goals more motivating. I can’t say I found it more motivating, but it was a nice addition to my stable of goals. Also nice to have a manual goal to enter data into: I find the deliberateness of going to add data quite useful.

New goals:

  • /2024reading - This is my “easiest” reading goal for the year, aiming to read 300 books in total. This should be doable if circumstances remain the way they are right now, but I’m not ruling out having to reduce the goal – there have definitely been years where I struggled to read this much. It’s tracked via StoryGraph, using the slightly-hidden books metric that only the support team can switch on for StoryGraph goals (same goes for the other two).
  • /2024reading_ex - This is my moderate reading goal, aiming to read 365 books in total. A book a day, a lovely-sounding number.
  • /2024reading_sav - This is the hardest level of reading goal for the year, aiming to read 400 books in total. It’s also the first to get archived if it starts feeling too much like work to keep up. I made it to 400 books last year, so it is totally feasible… but it wasn’t easy.
  • /2024reading_sprint - I discovered toward the end of last year that I really liked counting down the number of books I had left to read for my reading goal, so I’m starting this goal at the start of the year this time. This one is set with the intent of reaching my “savage” goal, which… I’m not sure how I’ll handle it if I give up on that. We’ll see!
  • /2024pages - Linked with StoryGraph, this is a goal set up to get me to 84,000 total pages read in 2024. I set this goal by deciding that I’d like to read slightly longer books than I was averaging last year, say 230 pages or so on average, and multiplying that by my most difficult reading goal… and then rounding up a bit, 'cause I like round numbers.
  • /newmonthresolution - This is my meta goal for the New Month’s Resolutions challenge I’m running. More about this on the blog, or in the appropriate thread. I created it via the graph editor so it doesn’t slope but instead steps up on the precise date I want it to. Technically I wrote about this in the last update of 2023, but it seemed apropos to carry it over and mention it here too.
  • /plank - My first New Month’s Resolution! Simply put, I want to do a plank every day and hold it for as long as I can, working up the difficulty scale as appropriate. So far, I’ve ascertained I can hold a plank on forearms and knees for over a minute, so I’m now working on doing them on my forearms and toes.
  • /yoghurts - Also technically not a new goal, but it’s my choice for the New Year’s Resolutions: Ride or Die 2024 challenge, so worth mentioning here! It’s set up so I average eating 6 biolive yoghurts per week in 2024, for a bunch of health reasons.

Changes to existing goals:

  • /readreadread - This graph is barely in use anymore, but I’m loath to delete it because I like looking at it. So instead of archiving it, I edited it a bit via the graph editor so the bright red line is a bit closer to the data.
  • /weighingin - I’ve added a break for while I’ll be staying at my parents’ house (due to a family emergency taking my wife – and thus my ride to any part of civilisation from where we live – out of the country). I’m pretty sure they have a scale I could use, but I remember it being a bit inaccurate, and I’d rather stick to my own.

Derailments:

  • N/a! I’m sure they’re coming…

Closing thoughts:

  • Next week I’ll be heading to my parents’ house for a week, as mentioned above. I imagine that’s going to make life a bit weird for some of my goals, but I hope to stay on track with everything.
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Opening Thoughts:

It’s been a heck of a week, which is closing out with me injured! I should be fine soon, but for now I’m wearing an eyepatch part of the time and squeezing antibiotic treatments into one of my eyes every two hours. :grimacing: It wasn’t going great before that, so suffice it to say it’s been an active week for tweaking my goals. That said, I’m hoping it won’t hold me back long: for someone who was in eye casualty less than 24 hours ago, I’m remarkably functional now.

Changes to existing goals:

  • /lshtm_nutrition - Turns out the contents page of the course book isn’t super accurate about how much work each section entails. So after realising I’d misjudged the amount due by 7th January, I decided to rejig the upcoming sections.
  • /bsupport - I reduced my hours a tiny bit for this week and forgot to note it before. It might still be a bit steep, but I can add a break later to help catch up if need be.
  • /tody - I seem to have forgotten to pause this while I’m away from home. It had plenty of buffer, so adding some more worked fine.
  • /physio, /2024pages, /2024reading_sav, /2024_readingsprint - A few goals got a break because they were impossible due to my Thursday spent in urgent appointments, or with only one functioning eye!

Derailments:

  • /lshtm_nutrition - Related to my reference above to the course book not being accurate, I didn’t plan my time appropriately, and chose to derail on this goal to gain me the breathing space to work things out. Technically, because I slightly re-defined my goal, I could’ve got out of this one, but that felt like cheating. The change I made should prevent this problem going forward (though the goal’s nearly done anyway).
  • I also decided that some past derailments were at the wrong pledge level due to me being slow about reviewing pledges. So I kind of worked out what I should’ve been stung for, and set up a $50 charge for myself using the Slack bot.

Closing thoughts:

By next week, I want to go through all my pledges and review whether they’re in the right places, and whether my pledge caps look OK. I have one or two goals that should definitely be on $0 pledges… but mostly I think they want to have some money at stake. Same for $5 pledges that’re capped there.

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Opening thoughts:

As of yesterday, I have been discharged from the eye casualty clinic with no sign of infection, good healing progress, etc. :tada: So I’m starting to get back to normal.

Last week, I planned to do a bit of a goal review and check on my goals with $0 pledges, and also review the pledge caps. So I got that done, and now I have a bit more at stake in case it ever comes down to willpower on these goals. Maybe it won’t, maybe just the act of tracking it on Beeminder really was always going to be enough… but I feel a bit safer this way. :sweat_smile:

I also noticed that at least one of my goals had way more buffer than really made sense, so I ratcheted it down. Maybe next week I’ll do a broader sweep for that, too!

Changes to existing goals:

Derailments:

  • /toberead - So last week two things happened: I had a terrible time and I bought books for comfort, and at the same time I got sent a whole bunch of advance copies to read. So I derailed this one. I’d already bumped it to $5 from $0, so I have paid for my indulgences.

Closing thoughts:

  • Next week should be a bit more “normal” for me in terms of day-to-day routines, since I’ll be back home after staying at my parents’ home for a week, and also I’m no longer having to drop everything to put drops in my eye every two hours. I want to start thinking about what my February New Month Resolution goal will be, and maybe gain some buffer on my reading goals by reading a bit more than the required rate. Also, as I mentioned at the beginning, I might look at doing some ratchets for goals which have a bit too much safety buffer.
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I’m curious what is a weekly/daily focus finder?

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I wrote briefly about it over here – basically, it used to be a Habitica challenge, and though of course I don’t use Habitica anymore (for a lot of reasons), I carried that useful setup with me. :slight_smile:

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Opening thoughts:

Back home this week and starting to resolve some of the Christmas chaos. Our flat is tiny, so it feels like fitting new things into good/sensible places is one of those sliding puzzle games every time, so we’re still working on it.

As I planned, I had a look at the rates and safety buffer of some of my goals, and did a bit of a review of those. So that’s done now and discussed in the changes section!

Changes to existing goals:

  • /lshtm_nutrition - Looks like I goofed and missed one section out of my plan, so I added another week on to make sure I got that covered. And now I’m done!
  • /lshtm_time - I set a quick break on this since I just finished both my remaining modules and want a break before I get stuck into writing the assignments. If I start on those right away, I don’t think the info I need to call on will have settled down in my head yet.
  • /bibliophibianorbust - I have such a backlog of reviews, and am now participating so regularly in multiple weekly linkups, that the rate on this goal was too low and my autoratchet was kicking in every single day. I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep up a posting rate of 1/day, but I should be able to for at least a month based on the current material, so it made sense to up the rate.
  • /physio - This one was edge-skating more than I’m comfy with (meaning I sometimes had to do my physio anyway when it seemed like a bad idea due to other aches and pains), so I added a couple of days of buffer that will kick in soon.
  • /plank - This was my month’s resolution for January, and I’ve decided to keep the goal rolling for now. I have lowered the rate to 6 a week, so I can have a rest day, and extended the end date by a month so I can keep evaluating where it sits in my routine. As for my progress so far, I’m working towards being able to do a plank on my forearms and toes for a full minute (about 45 seconds for now); I can do a plank on my forearms and knees for 90 seconds. It’s a small thing that fits into my day, and I’m hoping it helps move in the direction I want.
  • /readreadread - I redrew the graph in the graph editor again, to get the old rate closer to the line. I’m not really actively beeminding this since I have yearly ones, but it’s still nice to have that long-term history. I read more on average per day than I would’ve guessed, judging from the slope of the lines I drew, so that’s nice!
  • /writethosereviews - I reduced the rate to 4/week during a kind of hectic period, but I’m keeping up with it better at the moment, so I upped the rate to 6/week again.
  • I said I’d reduce some of my extra safety buffer, and did so on these goals: /weeklyreview, /weighingin, /dailyfocusfinder, /writethosereviews, /esomeprazole

Closing thoughts:

By next week, I definitely want to have decided on what I’ll do for my February new month resolution goal. I think I might try out doing morning pages, after reading Roland Allen’s The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper. I keep a journal digitally (in the old LiveJournal tradition, but not on there!), and tried for a while to keep a private journal longhand as well… but fitting in both at the end of my day just didn’t work out well. But having a habit to start the day with might be nice as a way of building up a morning routine that tells my brain “hey, time to get ready for work!”

I’m also tempted to create a goal linked with Lichess, but I’m still working through the “learn” section, and the integration is more for playing actual games. :sweat_smile: I’ve dabbled in learning chess before, on and off, and it’s not been a habit that ‘stuck’… and I don’t think I’m very good at it. Maybe a future goal, though!

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Opening thoughts:

Unfortunately, this week got fairly derailed right off the bat by the death of my wife’s grandfather… and his funeral just five days later, in another country from us. We got things worked out, but obviously stuff got disrupted (I headed off to my parents’ house again, since we live in the middle of nowhere and my wife took the car), I needed to add breaks, etc.

I did at least get my February New Month’s Resolution goal set up as planned, more about which below!

New goals:

  • /morningpages - As I mentioned before, this goal is for writing three pages of stream-of-consciousness, whatever’s on my mind, more or less first thing on a morning. For now it’s set to run just through February, and has a bit of buffer since the goal isn’t officially starting yet. That said, I’ve been enjoying the habit so far, though I consistently underestimate how long it takes to write three pages! I guess this one is highly variable depending on your handwriting and the spacing of your lines: my handwriting is small, and I use narrow lines. Still, three pages is just a rule of thumb, and I find three pages is enough that I start getting out of just thinking about what I need to do today, and working out feelings or ideas on the page. I wrote a little more about the plan and goal setup in the New Month’s Resolutions thread.

Changes to existing goals:

  • /tody, /weighingin - Some breaks added quickly for the fact that I was away from home.
  • /lshtm_time - This one also needed a break because I wasn’t able to work on my essays while I was away… Someone forgot their textbooks, oops! Plus, research sucks without my second screen and the macros I’ve programmed on my gaming mouse and gaming keyboard, which I do not use for gaming.
  • /lshtm_nutrition, /lshtm_bacterial - These goals were for studying each section of my course book, and both were finally completed last week!

Closing thoughts:

I’m trying to close my posts each week with a goal-related task for the coming week, this year. This week I think I’d like to get some kind of new stepping-stone-to-better-fitness goal in place: probably for redoing the 200 situps training programme, because that’s something I’ve done before and it provides another point in my day around which I can start to crystallise some more exercise habits (while not being a particularly important/useful end in itself). I think I probably have an archived goal for it, so I might restart that… or start fresh, shiny and new. Either way, that’s my task for the week ahead.

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Opening thoughts:

I’ve been having a bit of a meh week, perhaps because I’m working really hard on an assignment. I was told that my original plan was terrible and I’d get a bad grade, so possibly I’m overcompensating… but I dislike doing badly, so I’m going all out to try and improve things, so I can get a better grade. We’ll have to see how it goes!

Derailments:

  • /stopbyseven - I’ve had really bad time management this week, so… ouch. There were extenuating circumstances, but still, mostly the circumstances were “I didn’t prioritise my time right”.

New goals:

  • /200situps - As promised last week, I’ve created a new goal for following the 200 situps training program. It’s something I’ve done before as a way of working a little bit more activity into my day in between work, reading, raiding, etc. The rate is 3/week; I will also need to do an “exhaustion test” (as many situps as I can) every other week, but I’ll just record that with a 0 for the sake of ease.
  • /focus - It’s been a while since I used Focusmate a lot, but right now it’s a tool that’s working well for me. I’m primarily hoping to do one session a day working on my essay… but obviously one can’t differentiate what counts on Beeminder based on what the session was about, so I’ve set the rate a little higher than 1/day to account for the other sessions I’ve been doing for stuff like “helping me settle down to read”, “getting my Beeminder goals squared away by end of workday”, etc.

Changes to existing goals:

  • /ironandoj - I got off-schedule with this one by a couple of days, and then decided to make it urgent for the next day by ratcheting it. So now I’m riding the bright red line on this one, rather than maintaining buffer, because it’s an easy one to complete as long as I remember it in time.

Closing thoughts:

I don’t have any immediate right now plans around my goals, but I do need to start thinking about what kind of goal I might make for March. Maybe it’s time to give that chess goal a try? If not via Lichess, then a manual goal for doing practice exercises? Or maybe something else will come up soon, but I’d like to try and keep my eyes peeled for that this week.

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Opening thoughts:

I’m honestly surprised I had no derailments this week, as it was a bit of a rough one for me, with insomnia and headaches out the wazoo. I’d say I have no idea what that’s about, but I’m probably being stressed out by my assignment.

I’ve been thinking as planned about what goal I might start for March… and I wonder if it’s time to start up a goal I’d been meaning to start at the beginning of the academic year, which is to read a scientific paper each week and really ensure I understand the contents (or find a place to ask questions if I don’t). Of course, I’m doing a lot of reading at the moment ready for an assignment, but that’s very targeted, and I’d like to read a bit more wildly (albeit still in my field of infectious diseases).

Changes to existing goals:

  • /2024reading_sav, /2024reading_sprint, /2024pages - Back when my eye was injured, I asked support to put breaks into these two goals because I couldn’t read. It took me some time to get properly back on track, but at the weekend I managed to catch up and stay on track enough to edit the graphs back to their original position, without derailing. Hopefully I can keep up now!
  • /earning & /bsupport - Ratcheted and x-mins changed for my new pay period!

Closing thoughts:

For the week ahead, I want to take a look at my goals and decide if they’re all necessary and whether any are adding unneeded stress. Basically, what does each one add for me, and is it a net good? Maybe I’ll make no changes, but it’s important sometimes to make sure my goals are still serving me.

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Opening thoughts:

I kind of expected to be archiving a few goals after doing the review I promised last week, but I ended up deciding on an archive for only one, made another one harder, and created a whole new goal to supplement where I’ve got a little weak around a different goal. More on that below!

New goals:

  • /todyburndown - In looking at my goal for clearing my Tody list, I identified that I’m not happy about my number of lingering household tasks that this goal doesn’t push me to do (because I’ve defined it as “only tasks due today”, and it’s not due absolutely every day). So this goal is going to get me back to zero tasks due on Tody (isolating my backlog), and then the existing goal becomes “must zero” again. This means me taking responsibility for Lisa’s tasks as well, but we got things done better back when I viewed it that way. I’ve started it at 20 tasks, which gives me buffer since I see 17 uncompleted tasks in Tody right now, and I’ve set a fairly arbitrary and generous end-date of March 10th.

Changes to existing goals:

  • /inhaler - In my goal review, I felt this one actually isn’t pushing me hard enough. My rate was around 3/day when I need to take 4/day, meaning it was okay for my compliance to be really bad. I’ve pushed it up to 3.5/day.
  • /healthierchoice - This goal was a nice idea, and helpful to identify some stuff I was doing that was counterproductive. That said, once I created some specific goals that push me to do the kind of thing I meant for this goal to encourage, it began to feel a bit superfluous. So I’m archiving it now.

Derailments:

  • /ironandoj - I procrastinated this one so hard that it felt like it’d be cheating to do it (even though the deadline’s technically midnight), since I’m supposed to take my iron supplements early in the day. So I let it derail, making sure I’d adjusted the respite to 0 so it’d be due the next day.

Closing thoughts:

By this time next week, I want to set up my March goal for New Month’s Resolutions. I’m pretty sure that’ll be my idea for reading scientific papers. I should also post my thoughts about the goal I created for February and any changes I want to make if I’m going to keep it (spoiler: I’m pretty sure I am, at least for now). Maybe I’ll also do an update on my January goal, which I ultimately kept.

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Opening thoughts:

It’s been a really busy week, and I’ve felt really overwhelmed, so… this is a busy, busy post! Lots of changes to add small breaks to help me catch up (and account for me taking Monday and Tuesday off), and a good fistful of derailments too.

I did manage to set up a new goal for my New Month’s Resolutions challenge, and did a big update in that thread.

New goals:

  • /readscience - This has a rate of 2/week, meaning I need to fully read and comprehend two scientific papers a week that relate to one of the courses I’m studying right now (parasitology, nutrition and infection, bacteriology). More on that in the thread linked above, since this is my March goal for that challenge!
  • /feb_backlog - Got an email backlog built up, which I hate, so I shoved it all into a side-label and created this goal to fix the problem.

Changes to existing goals:

  • /morningpages - This was my New Month’s Resolution for February, and I will be continuing it. However, I set it up at a rate of 3/day (because it’s 3 pages required), and I want to make the rate a bit slacker. That’s easiest if it’s just +1 for completion, so I’ve scaled the graph by 1/3. I’ve also adjusted the rate to be 6/7 per day, and changed the end date to the end of March, to give it another month’s trial as a habit. I found it a useful/interesting habit so far, which helped me produce some essay plans out of tangled thoughts, get some anxieties out of my head, sometimes create order out of my plans for the day, and do a little creative writing. It’s also made for a good morning routine that avoids me sitting down to work straight after waking up (and reminds me to brush my teeth and take my inhaler!).
  • /stopbyseven - Added a quick break to this goal for two days where I can’t stop working on Beeminder goals by 7pm because I’m covering for someone else in the inbox later. Actually, I didn’t set this break in time and this will derail tonight, but that’s my own fault. Bah, humbug.
  • Adding breaks to the following goals to give me some breathing space: /plank (I think this one needs two recovery days in a week, not just one, so I also changed the rate), /physio, /ynab, /dailyfocusfinder, /postcrossingtasks, /bsupport

Derailments:

  • /fastfood - I really wanted a couple of books that required Lisa to do a bit of driving to go pick them up, which was fine with them that Lisa didn’t want to cook after getting back. We compromised! I was prepared to take the books and an extra hit from this goal, and also, I’ll admit, I kinda did want that stupid spicy chicken burger.
  • /2024reading_sprint - As mentioned above, I had a overwhelming week. I did good work, but I didn’t have much energy or inclination to read. In the end, I let this derail rather than keep reading quick, low quality stuff in order to keep it rolling.
  • /2024reading_sav - Ditto!
  • /writethosereviews - I’m not even sure I’d fully comprehended this one was due, but when I got close to the deadline I realised, checked whether I had any reviews to write, and decided to let it go and win myself some breathing space.

Closing thoughts:

This week, I’m not really setting myself a Beeminder related task other than to catch up with stuff, set more breaks if need be, and find a way to keep my cool.

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Opening thoughts:

The number of derailments I’m having at the moment is definitely a solid sign of how overwhelmed I am. Ouch. Still, it’s a very important signal to myself!

As the week draws to a close, I’m feeling a bit less overwhelmed than I was last week, but the underlying problem (three essays due April 2nd) isn’t solved, as I still have one to write and two to edit. So we’ll see how things go…

Changes to existing goals:

  • /morningpages - Wanted to gain a bit of buffer on this one, so I’ve added a break.
  • /feb_backlog - Email backlog conquered! Goal archived.
  • /focus - I didn’t use Focusmate during my time off, which ate up my buffer. That feels undeserved since I was very deliberately not using it, so I’ve added a three-day break to help me regain that buffer. Even if I have to wait for that to kick in, that feels fair.
  • A couple of other small 1-2 breaks that I lost track of adding, for the same purpose.

Derailments:

  • /stopbyseven - As the prophet foretold, this one derailed.
  • /plank - I felt so physically and mentally tired, I decided to rest instead.
  • /physio - I don’t think I actually derailed on this one, but I decided to let the derailment happen to give me the respite and have fewer things in the red.

Closing thoughts:

For the coming week, I’ll just want to keep an eye on how the buffers on my goals look and how often it’s realistic to achieve them. It might end up being worth adding a “break” not of 0/day but something lower than it currently is, for example, until my essays are handed in. Food for thought!

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Opening thoughts:

It’s been a rough week, due to family illness and the stress about my assignments. I hung in there, albeit with some non-legit derailments due to being a scatterbrain.

Changes to existing goals:

  • /todyburndown - Finished and archived! I’m so glad to have got back to zero on our Tody chores list.

Closing thoughts:

Yeah, I’m keeping it simple this week. I just wanna keep hanging in here. :sweat_smile:

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Opening thoughts:

Well, I’ve duly kept hanging in there, with a couple derailments etc. Not too unexpected, with a deadline crunch and the family stuff going on.

New goals:

  • /march_backlog - Normally, keeping my inbox empty is something I really prefer, and something I’m good at. But once again I’ve dug myself into a hole, and hopefully this goal will get me out by the end of the month.

Changes to existing goals:

  • /situps - With my plank goal not going so well (see below), I decided to postpone this one by a week in order to give me time to get back into the plank habit.

Derailments:

  • /plank - I was making really good progress on this, and then got kinda stressed out and now it feels really difficult again? It feels like even half the time in a plank that I was managing before is too hard now. So I’ve gone back to the beginning of the training plan, but I still needed more rest than the goal had space for. Seemed fair to pay for that.
  • /readscience - This was just a bit too ambitious while I’m in the middle of writing essays. I hope I won’t derail again right away…

Closing thoughts:

It’s almost the end of the month, so my task for the week ahead is to come up with my new month’s resolution! I have an idea about what I want to do, to help foster my mental health: I think I probably want some kind of time-based reading goal. Deciding on the rate is trickier: something I can definitely manage every day? Or something ambitious, to push me to create more space for reading?

Another option would be to resurrect my inbox zero goal that had me adding a +1 if I emptied my inbox fully at any point in the day. Hmm.

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Opening thoughts:

Slightly early this week, since I’m attending a wedding tomorrow! It continues to be a bit of a disaster zone around here, with some more goals due to derail. Part of it’s forgetting, part of it’s just being that stressed my head’s gonna explode. That time’s almost at an end for now, with my assignments due on the 2nd, and full drafts pretty much complete…

New goals:

  • N/a! Not the time to take on anything new.

Changes to existing goals:

  • A couple of goals got a quick break given the wedding I’ll be attending.
  • /readscience - I set this to archive; it’s just not the right time.

Derailments:

  • /plank - This goal is really tough for me right now, and I’m not sure why – it doesn’t take long to complete. I may need to lower the rate a little bit more to help for now.
  • /morningpages - A valuable habit and something I should be keeping up while I’m stressed, but it’s just not happening because it’s time-consuming… and I forget. Again, maybe a slightly lower rate?
  • /readscience - See above!

Closing thoughts:

Right now, I just need to hang in here. I really can’t imagine it’s a good idea to set any other expectations!

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Opening thoughts:

Oof. It’s remained a time for derailments (and a bunch of accidental ones too due to me getting flustered, time-blind, and apparently even more unable to read numbers than usual). That said, the assignments are handed in and I’m slowly working my way back to an even keel. I’m sure to be thrown off again as soon as the exams show up in June, I know, but we work with what we’ve got.

New goals:

  • /timeforme - It’s a new month, which means it’s time for a new goal. This month, it seemed apropos to spend some more time on stuff I enjoy, to help me recover from the stressful period when my assignments were due. So, a reading goal. I’m debating about the rate, though: right now it’s set to an hour a day, but maybe I should be a bit more ambitious? Inasfar as being ambitious is a goal here, anyway – mostly what I mean is, maybe I should be encouraging even more personal time. Especially since I’m currently listening to ebooks while doing FFXIV stuff some of the time, which makes it easier to rack up the time spent reading… For now it’s at 1 hour/day, but I’m contemplating bumping it to at least 1.5/day, and doing so retrospectively since I’ve been earning buffer.

Changes to existing goals:

  • /tody - Someone (cough) did themselves a bit of mischief due to wearing high heels to a wedding, so they needed a bit of extra time to zero out their Tody list again. Especially as actually it was two somebodies, the only two members of the relevant household, and also we got a bit behind due to my overwhelm about my essays.
  • /lshtm_time - With my assignments handed in, I decided to take a week off from my studies at least, to catch up on the rest of my life. So I’ve added a week’s break to this goal, and combined with the buffer I’ve built up, that should work pretty well.
  • /stopbyseven - With a lot of stuff to catch up on, this one keeps sliding. Arguably it’s most important when I’m stressed out, but derailing on it all the time doesn’t help. So I’ve added a few days of break. They won’t kick in right away, but if I can stay on track through the akrasia horizon, it’ll add a bit of a breather to the situation.
  • /plank - I decided to add a bit of buffer to this one, too, to keep from constantly being right on the edge.
  • …And a bunch of other goals got a week extra, because I got overwhelmed one evening and realised I’d never dig myself out from the panicky stress if I didn’t get some space and take a few breaths. Obviously the breaks don’t kick in right away, but hopefully knowing they’re coming will help me prioritise and straighten things out.

Derailments:

  • /morningpages - As expected. I mostly just forgot about this one, during a weird day that wasn’t my usual schedule.
  • /2024reading_sav - I keep wanting to catch up with this one, but… alas. Maybe now my essays are handed in. Obviously /2024reading_sprint also derailed, since it has exactly the same rate (one counts up, one counts down). I’d like to get back on track and restore the old graph line as I did before, but it’ll take some doing now.
  • /stopbyseven - I got time-blind and just blasted straight past this one.
  • /toberead - I gleefully added a bunch more books, and paid the price intentionally. I do find this goal doesn’t appear to be helping me reduce the number of books I own unread (in fact the number has increased, very clearly). However, focusing on starting books so I can make my data slope down has been fun and useful, nudging me to look through my books for stuff I’m enthusiastic to start. I think it’s working in its own way, and I suspect I’d have even more books without its nudging. I do think it’s funny that you can track when I’ve felt overwhelmed and unhappy by the peaks in my data (though one of them was just Christmas). :sweat_smile:

Closing thoughts:

The plan for the week ahead continues to be to just hang in there, not derail any more, and try to catch up on things. Wish me luck!

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18

Opening thoughts:

Well, I’m kinda back on track now! Nothing’s running in the red every day, which is nice, and I’m all caught up on chores and doing quite a bit of reading.

Changes to existing goals:

  • I added a couple more breaks in order to help get things aligned with my calendar week. Not that it matters a lot, but it seemed psychologically nicer to start back on stuff on a Monday than a Friday…

Derailments:

  • /2024pages - I’m a bit mad about this one, because I hadn’t realised the time and might’ve done something about it if I had. But oh well, I didn’t really feel like reading this weekend, and it’s always better to listen to that than force myself.
  • /stopbyseven - Time blind again… But I’m kinda glad this one derailed, to give me a bit of a break.

Closing thoughts:

I’m gonna give it a week more on an even keel before I even think about anything new. But possibly I should decide how long a break to set for my exams, and just set it now before I forget.

I will also probably add autodialling to my recent time-based reading goal, but we’ll see! I want to run it for a little longer first.

3 Likes
19

Opening thoughts:

I said no new goals and promptly embarked on a couple of new things… but I shan’t hesitate to dial them down or add breaks or whatever to keep things manageable. And possibly I should’ve waited to make one of these very good ideas as my New Month Resolution, buuuut I’m impatient.

New goals:

  • /lunch - I guess this is a natural complement to my /breakfast goal. I don’t eat either meal naturally as my appetite is pretty small, which instead leads to lots of “grazing”. Which is fine, and I’m never going to eat either a big breakfast or a big lunch, it’s just not happening. But I can choose my foods better! So I came up with a shortlist of foods I will eat for lunch that are good for one reason or another (e.g. hummus, falafel, baked beans on toast), and I am starting at 4/week, and we will call this change in habits “lunch” because it also roughly sets a time range in which I should eat said foods, which might help me remember to do so.
  • /currentlyreading - It transpires that I have 27 books that are in some state of partially read. That’s overwhelming and there’s no way I’m paying attention to even a quarter of that many books. So, slowly and steadily, I’d like to start whittling this down. I’ve started the rate at -1/week, though I hope to go faster and ratchet a little along the way. I don’t have to finish the books: I could decide to return them to my to-be-read pile for later, or decide to donate the book to a charity shop and never finish it – that’s immaterial. All that matters is that the number of books I’m allegedly reading at the same time (according to StoryGraph, not Bookly, which disagree on their counts) goes downward.

Derailments:

  • I had a bunch of non-legit derailments this week for silly reasons, so I used beebot to pay $10. I’d actually have let the derailments stand if it wasn’t the /yoghurts goal – I’m stubbornly sticking to that one and I want the graph (and pledge history) to show it!

Closing thoughts:

I need to start thinking about what my monthly goal might be for May! It feels like time’s flying by this year…

4 Likes
21

Opening thoughts:

This week has been alright, just kind of slow. I actually decided I needed a break from studying for Thursday and Friday, so hopefully that little break will help me perk up and get my head back in the game!

New goals:

  • /odysseyreadathon - This very temporary goal is just to help me figure out if I’m on track for the highest level of Bookly’s Odyssey readathon. I don’t actually want to force myself to get 45 hours of reading in 10 days if that doesn’t end up working out, or sting myself if I don’t make it, but I’d like to see if I can, and the pace to keep if so. This is a rare instance in which I’m using the un-Beemindery $0 pledge/pledge cap I can use because I have Beemium, though mostly because it feels like double or triple jeopardy at this point, since I track my reading from several angles!

Changes to existing goals:

  • /200situps - I decided to archive this for now. I’m not making as good progress on the plank goal as I’d like, and I want to focus there rather than get split between which goal to do when I’m tired.
  • /focus - Changed this to 1/day, to fit my current schedule.
  • /lshtm_time - Added a two-day break to account for the two days I decided to take off.

Closing thoughts:

I reaaaally need to think about my goal for May! But my mind is blank, having started my two important goals recently (the ones for eating lunch and handling my mountain of books I’m partway through). Thinking continues…