Opening thoughts:
Little bit of a rough week, not helped by having two migraines.
New goals:
- /getout - A new goal for the New Month’s Resolutions thread. This one’s for intentionally getting out of the house (and not just for chores), and is currently set to a rate of 3/week. We’ll see how it goes… I wrote a bit more about it in that thread.
- /inkbloodsisterscribe - It’s been a while since I had a book-specific reading goal! But I’ve been kind of stalling on this book, even though I like it, so I resurrected the practice. The rate is just 5 pages a day, but there’s an autoratchet so I can only have a day’s buffer. I’m a little worried I’m going to insta-derail it, but more or less as we speak me and @dreev made a little bargain to try to boost the goal’s effectiveness for me, as an experiment.
Changes to existing goals:
- /odysseyreadathon - This goal is finished! And I made it, reading 45.4 hours in 10 days. Actually 9 days, since I think Bookly have stuffed up their timings (probably forgetting that midnight UTC on the 28th means the readathon ends just as the 28th begins, rather than when it ends) and the readathon ended at 1am BST on the 28th. It was a lot of reading, and it made my /timeforme goal look a bit wild!
- /stopbyseven - Added a break to earn buffer back, though it’ll take a week from when I set the break for that to kick in. Here’s hoping I don’t derail in the meantime!
- /physio - Ditto.
- /lshtm_time - Added another break, because I wasn’t feeling well.
- /morningpages - This goal has now been archived, because it reached the end date and I decided it’s not working out for me, at least right now.
Closing thoughts:
I need to start thinking about the breaks I need for my exams, and then a little after that, for the release of the new expansion of the critically acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV, which has a free trial that includes the entirety of A Realm Reborn, the award-winning Heavensward, and the also award-winning expansion Stormblood. You can play up to level 70 for free with no restrictions on playtime!
Sorry, it’s a bit of a meme… 
Anyway, Dawntrail’s due to come out, and because I’m a raider™ now, I need to get through the main story quite quickly in order to ensure I’m ready for the raid release… and I don’t think I’ll want to do all my Beeminder goals during that time, though there’ll be some that remain appropriate.
2 Likes
Opening thoughts:
It’s warming up here this week, which means I’ve felt very lazy – I don’t love warm weather. Nonetheless, things feel pretty on track! And a special shoutout to my own hard “work” on starting new books from my TBR so I could, uh, buy more books to add to my TBR without derailing on /toberead.
Changes to existing goals:
- /focus - I created this Focusmate-linked goal for my essay-writing, and that worked well, but it’s not serving me as well for exam preparation it seems. So, archiving it.
- /writethosereviews - I don’t seem to have noted this, so presumably sometime in the last week I put some buffer into this goal after edgeskating for a bit. Whew.
- I have added autodialling to /currentlyreading (with a minimum value of reducing the stack of books I have in progress by around one book a week) and /timeforme. I haven’t set a minimum value on the latter yet, but I should!
Closing thoughts:
I’ve ascertained what days I want breaks on, but have not yet added them. So maybe that’s my next step, because the exams are really a lot sooner than I’d like!
1 Like
Opening thoughts:
I intended to look at breaks for my exams this week, but I’ve spent the day stressing over the more immediate problem: the grades for my essays! So that kind of derailed me.
(If you were wondering, I’ve had two sets of grades back and I’m waiting on a third. I’ve done well, so far.)
New goals:
- /fishinglog - I was pondering the fact that one thing that’s very important to me but which I never beemind is Final Fantasy XIV. There are a few beemindable metrics for things that I want to do but which take time and effort, especially for achievements… and so was born this goal, for trying to catch all the fish in the fishing log by the time the new expansion comes out.
It’s dialled with the end date and end total (0 remaining fish), so that means right now I have loads and loads of buffer… but the fishing can be capricious. For example, right now it’s 11.23 days until Duskfish becomes available to catch, at which point I’d have just 23.20 minutes to catch it – if I was willing to get up at 5am for it. (I’m not.) So it’s possible this goal won’t work out, and @dreev and I had a good debate about whether I should choose an input metric instead (like time spent on it, or number of attempts)… but in the end, this felt like the easiest metric to beemind.
It’s starting at $0, but will go up to $5 in a week – and again Danny and I chatted a bit about that. I said that it maybe feels/seems weird to put money on doing a thing in a video game. But from my point of view, this is definitely worth at least $5 to me as a goal, so… why not?
Changes to existing goals:
- /inkbloodsisterscribe - I finished the book, so this goal is done with! Not entirely sure whether experimenting with having a reading goal for a specific book again worked or whether it’s something I want to pursue further right now, so I’ll try another one! Just one at a time, though, I think.
- /dailyfocusfinder - This daily goal-setting format isn’t working super well for me at the moment, so I’ve put a break in to give me time to think about making it work or just taking some time off from it.
Closing thoughts:
- For this week, I definitely need to put in those breaks. Not just for the exams, but also the week before as well, and maybe even the week after. I’m determined not to be a complete mess this year!
2 Likes
Opening thoughts:
Oops, I planned to do so much more this week, but I was kind of derailed by my assignment results, exam prep and my COVID jab. I hadn’t reacted badly to my last few, but since I wasn’t eligible for the free jab anymore (and until recently you couldn’t just buy one), I guess my immunity’s kind of starting over.
Still, here I am, getting stuff done!
Derailments:
- /2024reading_sprint - Kind of. It was at $0 anyway (it’s not meant to have a pledge, since it’s supposed to be going at exactly the same pace as /2024reading_sav, which didn’t derail. Somehow they’ve got desynced, and I don’t really get quite why. Still, they’re close enough.
New goals:
- /mentorroulette - Since I noted I wasn’t beeminding anything about FFXIV, but I do have grindy things that can be beeminded easily, voila: here’s a goal for doing mentor roulettes. The mentor roulette is a mode which can put me into almost any dungeon, raid or trial in the game where people just need one or two more people to get into it. Often it involves helping newbie players who don’t have anyone else to play with. There’s an in-game item (a mount in fact) for anyone who gets 2,000 mentor roulettes. I had done, when I started this goal, exactly 1,500.
Getting to 2,000 before Dawntrail’s release sounds really tempting, though day by day it’s getting harder, especially because mentor roulettes can take up to two and a half hours to complete (though this is very unlikely). I haven’t committed yet to trying to reach 2k by Dawntrail’s release, just to do some each day on average. We’ll see.
Changes to existing goals:
- I have finally put in a break on a whole bunch of goals which I consider non-essential and which often contribute to a sense of being overwhelmed around stuff like exam time. I didn’t put breaks on my reading goals, because I think it’s important that I still get a reminder that I ought to be reading (it’s good for my mental health) and get the cost externalised if I prioritise studying instead.
Closing thoughts:
My exams are scarily close now, but I’m oddly chill about it. It helps that the format this year seems very doable: the time limit is acceptable, it’s open book, and it requires a little research. These are things that I’m good at, while the questions are going to be similar to those from previous years, which I’ve practised at least some of. I think I’ll be okay.
I still need to add breaks ready for Dawntrail’s release, but I think that can wait until a little closer to my exams, when I get a sense for how well I’ve kept my goals above water under stress.
1 Like
Opening thoughts:
Sooo it turns out my exams start a week earlier than I’d somehow had in mind, and all my breaks were set wrong. I’m pretty ready for the exams all the same, but, uh, things are a bit frantic round here.
Unsurprisingly, my goals are tending toward the red now, except where my breaks have already kicked in due to the buffer I’d already earned.
Derailments:
- /2024reading_sprint - This derailed because I decided to let it. Last week I removed the buffer after the derailment to keep the daily rate close to the same as it was before, but… to be honest, I need buffer.
- 2024reading_sav - This also derailed. Ideally I wouldn’t be being charged on both; I don’t know where my $0 pledge cap went, or whether I forgot to set it, or maybe unset it for a test or something… But regardless, I’ll let it stand as I don’t really think I can make a principled argument that it shouldn’t be charged, other than “I didn’t intend to be double-charged for failing on a single goal that I track through two graphs”.
New goals:
- /outofthedepths - I said I’d try again with a goal for finishing a specific book, so here’s my choice for the next experiment. Out of the Depths was a bit more dense than I’d expected when I first picked it up and it’d been a while, so I started off from the start of the book again… and apparently a Beeminder goal might’ve been what did the trick? I’ve finished the book, and the goal has ended.
Changes to existing goals:
- /getout - This goal has ended, and I’m archiving it. It was created to try to get me out of the house more, and I was hoping it’d nudge me back to going for walks etc… but it was too non-specific in the framing, and it didn’t really work. I went out into the garden some, which is nice and all, but it didn’t improve my activity levels. It doesn’t help that now’s not the time for that; the state of my Beeminder dashboard confirms I’m in a bit of a state of acute stress. So we’ll return to that later.
Closing thoughts:
I need to come up with a goal for June, and I think I know what it’s likely to be (regular check-ins with a best friend from university via voice notes; I don’t expect it to be a permanent goal, just something to help her while she’s going through something, and because it seems to be a good stress release for me). But I haven’t made the actual goal yet.
Opening thoughts:
My first exam was fine, but pretty exhausting – I started at 10am and I wasn’t done until 8:30pm, though admittedly I did take a couple of breaks. Two more to go!
From a Beeminder perspective, I’ve been mostly doing okay with keeping up with my goals. Mostly.
Derailments:
- /lunch - I derailed on this during my exam day – I felt too icky to eat lunch, unfortunately: stress sets off my GORD.
Changes to existing goals:
- /quickbooks - This goal had to get an extra break last week because my tax software messed up and I couldn’t add my new records. (I don’t even use Quickbooks anymore, but I can’t be bothered renaming the goal and breaking all the links. So this is no aspersion on Quickbooks.) It’s sorted now, so I’ve ratcheted it down – both removing the break and making sure it’ll be due a bit earlier in the month, to try to poke me to do it a bit more promptly.
Closing thoughts:
I got nothin’. Exams on the brain.
2 Likes
Opening thoughts:
My exams are oveeeer! They were real marathons (each one took me about eight hours of solid work, not counting breaks – for one I started at 9am and finished at 9pm) but they’re done, and I won’t have another exam this year.
Soon enough I’ll need to start a goal for getting ahead with one of my courses – probably immunology & vaccines – for next year, which will be a busy one featuring one of the most advanced courses the university offers in this degree (tuberculosis, my beloved!), but I want to give myself at least some weeks (and certainly my holiday for Dawntrail’s release) before I worry about that.
Derailments:
- /timeforme - Sadly, this derailed. I was just five minutes under my goal for today, but really I derailed because of the lack of time I had for reading during my exam time. The style of exam I set this year was new and I had totally misleading priors about how much time it’d take (not helped by the university not being super clear about it). Still, I let this derailment stand – I knew I was taking a risk by not putting a break on this goal.
New goals:
- /check-in-amy - I forgot to mention the creation of this goal last week. It’s my June goal for the New Month’s Resolutions thread/goal. Unlike the others, it’s probably just for June (especially as it partially duplicates /reachout, just for a specific friend), but I might keep it and dial it a bit lower later? It’s partly as a stress release for me, partly to support a friend going through a rough and lonely time.
Changes to existing goals:
- /lshtm_time - With the end of the academic year, this one’s archived! I counted my exam time into it just to see how that looked, and you can see the massive jumps for my exam days.
Closing thoughts:
I’m taking a week (plus half a day) off work for the first week of July, so I need to remember to put pauses in the appropriate goals ASAP! I just want a few days to think about it first, because I want to pause some other goals as well for extra time gaming (given the release of FFXIV: Dawntrail), and I’m not sure what needs it.
For now, I’m mostly just thinking about how to chill out, but I do have a new gadget on its way sometime soon (an Oura ring, to see if I’ll stick to that kind of wearable any better than Fitbit/Garmin wristbands), and I have plans about diet, exercise and other healthy things. I’m just trying not to let the “oof, exams over, yay!” feeling lead me into overcommitting… I do better with changes that go one. step. at. a. time.
3 Likes
Opening thoughts:
As I mentioned, I don’t want to overcommit to a bunch of new goals just out of relief that my exams are done… but I do have a bunch of goals that shouldn’t take long each day, and should therefore be very doable. Whereas a goal for going for walks takes some rearranging of my day to make it happen, these should be easy to slot in wherever.
All the same, if they start feeling like a burden, I might trim them back down again.
Derailments:
- /ironandoj - Somehow I took my other supplements on that day, and not my iron. Oops. It’s a fair cop, guv.
New goals:
- /micronutrients - Horrible foot/calf cramps have induced me to try taking magnesium for a while to see if it helps – and my nutrition & infection course induced me to think about some other micronutrients that are low in my diet. The end goal is probably to switch to a multivitamin and just cover a bunch of bases at once, knowing that between the fact that I have no gallbladder and the fact that I have GORD (and medication for it) my digestion and uptake of micronutrients is probably a bit shaky. For now, I’ve picked a bunch of stuff that I know can be effectively supplemented, and we’ll see how it goes.
NB: I do not recommend this approach at home; a blood test and a doctor are usually a good idea – I just have a fairly recent blood test and some know-how of my own to be happy enough taking the risk. That said, a lot of this stuff can’t be assessed well from a blood test, and doctors also go on gut feelings with it…
- /brighteyes - I suffer from really dry eyes, especially in the morning, so a friend recommended some really good eyedrops. Now I just need to use them. Technically they’re intended to be used 3x a day, but I’ll probably be lucky if I remember to use them twice a day, so I’ve set the rate to 2/day.
- /exambacklog - Another heckin’ email backlog has built up. This goal intends to get my backlog dealt with quickly; I originally intended to set it up to end at the end of June, but then goofed and made it end about a week ago… and decided I’d stick with that. It might be that I need another separate goal to maintain it, but I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.
- /threadinglabyrinth - Another experiment with using reading goals for individual books again. This one’s for reading Threading the Labyrinth, by Tiffani Angus; usual rules, 5 pages/day, autoratchet to 1 day of safety.
Changes to existing goals:
- A majority of my goals have had a one-week break added for the period I have off to take a break (and play the new expansion of FFXIV). Health-related goals are generally not paused.
- /mentorroulette - With the new expansion, I have to re-earn my mentor status. I wasn’t a mentor at the start of the last expansion so I don’t know how long I have to do this, or how much I’m going to prioritise the requirements. So I’ve put a three-week break in this one, for a start.
Closing thoughts:
I’ve decided on my goal for July, and will need to make that by next week – I want to create a goal to stop snacking after 9pm. I’d say “after dinner”, but sometimes I do need to if I’ve had a problem eating dinner (I have some texture sensitivities, and also sometimes I just can’t eat much in one go without triggering my GORD), so it’s easier to say 9pm and make it a time cutoff.
So by next week I need to set that up. 
Opening thoughts:
Doing this a day early because tomorrow the new expansion of Final Fantasy XIV is available! 
I’ve been doing pretty well on getting prepared for it, and I’m excited to have a week of chill time (not all of it to be spent playing FFXIV).
New goals:
- /snackattack - This is the promised goal reducing the number of days I have snacks after 9pm. It’s set to 5/week, to allow for some late night attacks of the munchies (and also the fact that sometimes I need to eat because of my acid reflux). It’s got a bit of buffer to start with, as well, to give me a chance to make sure the rate works for me. I’ll probably enter data the following day and backdate it.
Changes to existing goals:
- /exambacklog - Successfully zeroed my inbox again, whew. And I’ve been keeping up with it since!
- /dailyweight & /weighingin - These goals both got autodata turned off for a bit because of the demise of the Fitbit web dashboard. (Thanks, Google, you suck.) But now I have a Withings scale, so sometime this evening the support team should be hooking those goals up with my Withings account. Yay!
Closing thoughts:
Soon, I should think about a shiny new goal to help make sure I get the most out of my Oura ring – both tagging stuff that might be useful and potentially an activity-based goal. I’m not going to set that up right away though, just to give me time to get used to using it.
And that’s it for me for this week! See you once I’m level 100 in FFXIV on my Paladin…
3 Likes
Opening thoughts:
It’s been a fun week, and I haven’t done a whole lot on my goals – adding breaks was a very good idea. 
As I write, I’m level 100 on Paladin (as promised), and gearing up for the end of FFXIV: Dawntrail’s story. Maybe then I’ll have time for other things again!
Derailments:
- /threadinglabyrinth - I’m not getting on incredibly well on this book, so when it was “a bit more FFXIV” or “not derailing on this goal” I picked the former. I do still plan to finish the book, probably, but I must admit I’m sadly not feeling very inspired. And… I actually derailed twice on this one…
Changes to existing goals:
- /fishinglog - This goal was meant to catch every fish in FFXIV before the new expansion released. The new expansion released… and I had one fish remaining, alas. The goal finished without derailing, though; I guess a bit of an edge-case thing. I have caught the final fish now, so the goal did the job!
- /stopbyseven - I missed this in adding breaks, but fitting my schedule around other people we want to play with used up a lot of buffer on this one. I added a bit of a break now to build it back up.
Closing thoughts:
Next week it’s back to work, so here’s hoping I get a nice smooth transition back into things.
I did have some trouble with tight, painful calf muscles this week, meaning I haven’t done as much walking as I’d like (and had to switch into recovery mode in the Oura app for a bit). Maybe I’ll make a goal soon about walking, or perhaps about working those calf muscles and trying to strengthen them/stretch them to ease out the trouble. We’ll see how it goes!
2 Likes
Opening thoughts:
This week has been back to work and back to reality! I’m still thinking about what I’d like to track re: my Oura ring, though I’ve been doing fairly well at paying attention to it for now because of the “Brand New Shiny” effect.
Derailments:
- /brighteyes - Not being at work, I missed the cues that normally had me remembering to use eyedrops, like my lunch break and the end of my workday. Sooo I derailed, alas.
- /dailyweight - My weight’s been trending up lately for reasons I don’t entirely understand, plus my new Withings scale tends to show I’m a little heavier than my previous not-so-smart scale. The derailment’s a nudge to think about it more and see if I can figure out what’s going on.
Changes to existing goals:
- /mentorroulette - I’d put a big break in this goal for doing mentor roulettes in FFXIV, since I wasn’t sure how long it’d take me to recertify as a mentor after Dawntrail’s release. Buuut I reopened my access to mentor roulette really quickly, so I’ve ratcheted away both the break and the buffer. I’m not sure what rate to pick now I don’t have a specific target in mind, but I’ve left it at 1/day for now, since I can only get rewards from mentor roulette once a day anyway.
- /threadinglabyrinth - I finished this book, more just to get it finished than because I was enjoying it. Just didn’t hang together very well, alas. Anyway, this goal will get archived tonight.
Closing thoughts:
And th-th-that’s all folks, for this week anyway! I’d like to set up another book goal for whittling away at a read I’m struggling with – possibly The Book of Doors, by Gareth Brown, since I stalled out a bit. It might be quite fun, I don’t know, but I haven’t touched it in a couple weeks, so I could maybe use the prompt to get going again!
3 Likes
Opening thoughts:
Oof, a hot week here! But I’ve persevered surprisingly well with my walking goal, and I’m deeply contemplating how it’d be best to set up something to encourage me to get a good activity score in the Oura app.
I’ve been doing less well with reading goals, admittedly: I’ve been teetering on the edge of derailing even on the slightly more chill version of the reading goal. I’m not sure whether I’ll derail or not – I guess we’ll see!
Derailments:
- /fastfood - I got more interested in doing the new extreme trials in FFXIV to be interested in eating healthy food. Plus, because one of them features a big bird-like creature, everyone was joking about eating fried chicken. What was I supposed to do?! (And eating fried chicken did indeed manifest the win.)
- /2024reading_sprint & /2024reading_sav - This was caused by the same reason – that and a trend in recent weeks of not reading very much. I’m waaay behind on my reading goal (around 34 books behind now), so… the daily rate is starting to bite. I need to figure out what’s up and get myself back into reading more regularly!
Changes to existing goals:
- /dailyfocusfinder - I’m archiving this goal because the format isn’t working well for me at the moment.
- /mentorroulette - I decided rather than pick an arbitrary date for reaching the 2,000 mentor roulettes goal, I’ll just do a minimum of 1/day (on average) until I get there – with an autoratchet to prevent me just getting way ahead and not having to do anything for a while.
Closing thoughts:
I have a few ideas for my August goal (wow, the year’s going fast), but I need to think it over and decide for sure. Maybe it’ll be the Oura activity goal I mentioned in my opening thoughts, but I’m also tempted by a goal for keeping up my Postcrossing participation. “Send three postcards a week” might make a nice proxy for “go on three walks a week”, since I need to walk down to the postbox.
On the other hand, that kind of proxy is easily gamed (give the postcard to someone else to post), so maybe something direct is better. I’ll keep thinking about it!
1 Like
Opening thoughts:
This week’s been pretty organised and going well, if only I wasn’t having trouble with insomnia! (No advice, please. I know all the conventional wisdom and the weird tricks too. I’ve got this.) I’ve also got another new fitness thing: I’ve caved and got myself some dumbbells so I can do strength workouts, since I don’t think going to the gym is likely to be feasible for a while to come. So that’s something to keep in mind and potentially make a goal for, to help me be consistent!
Derailments:
- /lunch - During my time off, I got out of my daily rhythm and stopped finding the time to eat lunch. I eked it out for a while, but then suddenly it was 4pm on the day of the derailment and I hadn’t eaten any lunch. Bah.
- /2024reading_ex - As I more or less predicted, I ended up derailing on this… twice, actually. I’m now 36 books behind my hardest reading goal, so it’s not too surprising! I haven’t decided yet whether that’s a sign to give up and lower the goal; I now need to read 1.3 books per day to meet that goal (and 1.05 for this one), which is still doable but not very compatible with stuff like my commitments to my FFXIV raiding group. We’ll see!
New goals:
- /lshtm_immunology - I’ve had a bit of a break after my exams, and now it’s time to start the grind again. This is my final year, and the courses are quite tricky, so we’ll see how it goes. I’ve set this one up with a schedule for the next couple of weeks (flat during the week and stepping up at the end), but haven’t gone far through the schedule yet. I’ve set a tentative end date of 1st December (sooner would be better!) just to keep it in mind, and an end total of 27, since there are 27 sections/units/whatever they ought to be called.
Changes to existing goals:
- /fishinglog - The first new fish for Dawntrail have been added, and I’ve got the “books of folklore” required to access all of them. There’ll be more fish later, but it’s a nice way to explore the game and see new things, and I don’t want to end up having 500 to catch at the end of the expansion or something. (You know, like last time.) So I want to catch up and clear my fishing log again. There are only five fish so far that have weird conditions (specific timers or weather conditions required) so I’ve given myself two weeks. It’s a whittle-down goal, set to reach zero by 3rd August. I’ve got all five of the timed fish already since creating the goal, so the rest is just a matter of some patience…
- /toberead - I’ve added a break through to my birthday, so the rate’s at 0/day, to give me some chance to get ahead before I (inevitably) get books for my birthday…
- /plank - Renewed this one to keep on going a bit longer, but with a break for a week or so while I get used to a new workout I’ve been doing and figure out how best to fit them together.
Closing thoughts:
I’ve been turning over my various ideas for an August goal, and I’m still not sure. By next week, I definitely need to have made one. Contenders so far:
- A goal for weight training
- An activity goal based on my Oura activity score
- A goal based on meeting my Oura baseline activity target
- A goal for sending X number of Postcrossing cards a week
I’ll pick soon, I promise!
2 Likes
Opening thoughts:
Welp, the weekend’s trip with a friend absolutely smashed the limit on my TBR goal, so there’s a derailment for that, and I waited until almost the last minute to come up with a goal for August… but overall, doing pretty good this week. The TBR goal is there to be smashed now and again (it’s mostly a reminder to be mindful about it), and it was important to select the right goal for August.
Derailments:
- /toberead - As mentioned, this derailed in style. I blame my friend Prof, for dragging me along (oh so unwillingly, you understand) to a city with the biggest Waterstones bookshop in the north. The goal’s now flat for a month (I get plenty of buffer time from derailments for good reason) so hopefully if I read plenty, I’ll earn enough buffer for my birthday books as well. Uh, wish me luck?
New goals:
- /inactive - It’s August and that means a new goal for my plan of monthly trying out a new goal. This one’s for my Oura inactive time metric, a Do Less goal where I enter the data the following morning (so my inactive time right up to midnight gets counted, but I don’t have to hover over it and enter it at 23:59:59 to be sure to be accurate and also add data). I don’t know if the 10/day allowance is viable, being honest; usually I exceed that many hours of inactivity on Oura, even on the days I go for walks and work out. Usually I’m hitting 12 hours/day, so maybe aiming for 11/day is a bit more realistic to begin… but I’m going to start with 10/day and see where it takes me, for now.
Closing thoughts:
I still have a bunch of things I might want to make a new goal for – walks! actually using my calf stretcher! yoga before bed! meeting my activity goal! – but I’m mostly meeting those on my own or finding what a good level looks like for me, so maybe for the best I leave those aside for a while longer rather than overloading myself on Beeminder goals.
3 Likes
Opening thoughts:
It’s been a busy week, and not always to the good – there’s a couple more derailments incoming because things have just been a bit of a lot this week. But that’s fine; I’m not sure I’d have realised I needed to slow down a bit and reprioritise if my goals hadn’t been demanding my attention. Work’s been busy, and the new savage raids in Final Fantasy XIV require quite a bit of my time, but… clearly I need to think about how to balance things a bit better!
Derailments:
- /2024reading_sav & /2024reading_sprint - Sadly, I just misread these and thought I only needed to finish +1 book, and actually I needed +2. I realised at 11:45pm, when I’d only just finished my first book of the day, so there was no chance to fix it. That’s fine, I could use the buffer while I settle into the raid schedule.
- /snackattack - I kept having to choose between this goal and fulfilling my yoghurts goal… and one evening, they were both in the red. I chose to eat a yoghurt since I know that’s been really impactful for my health, whereas not snacking after 9pm has a point but is a bit arbitrary. Physically, I chose the more important goal.
New goals:
- /steps - It’s been a while since I had a plain ol’ steps goal! I’ve been doing pretty well though with my Oura steps goal, in part because I set it quite low, with the plan of starting nice and sustainable, making it a solid habit, and then increasing it over time. At the moment, my step counts usually veer between quite high daily counts and really low daily counts, but it’d be good to bring up the low days to a reasonable baseline. So for the rate is 4,500 a day. Oura says my 30-day average is aaaaalmost up to the next goal they allow, I’m averaging 6,900 steps a day, so I’ll probably increase my Beeminder goal soon to help make 7,000 a day a thing.
Changes to existing goals:
- /inactive - Even on a day I really, really tried, I ended up with 10h 35m of inactive time (and somehow it kept increasing after midnight?!), so I think starting with an aim of only getting 10 hours a day of inactive time is a bit unrealistic, at least for work days. For now, I’ve increased the allowed rate to 11/day, which still feels ambitious. Also, there’s the new integration with Oura that I’m testing includes the sedentary time metric, so I got that added to this goal, wooo.
- /fishinglog - In theory, I have re-finished my fishing log and have no more unique fish left to catch in FFXIV. That said, someone pointed out that there’s a unique set of fish in an area called the Diadem. They don’t count for the log, but I’m a completionist… so watch out for this goal returning, I guess.
Closing thoughts:
I really need to work on getting buffer for my /toberead (TBR) goal, as I’m sure I’ll be getting new books for my birthday… I’m not sure the flat line is doing enough to prepare. I’m starting new books as fast as I can, but I’m also constrained by my /currentlyreading (CR) goal – for good reason, as it’s not really realistic to say that I’m reading 13 books at once. My wife Lisa’s suggestion is that I send some books back to my TBR pile (temporarily increasing that), and admit I’d have to start them over when I want to read them… with the trade-off being that I’ll get some buffer in the CR goal to start books I’m currently enthusiastic about, hopefully leading to a faster deficit in the TBR goal.
I’m not sure, but something has to be done – it’d suck to derail on my birthday if I don’t get enough buffer!
I am contemplating also just setting a graph segment where I’m allowed to increase for a bit, building buffer that way towards 20th August and the fateful day of gifts. But I’m feeling kinda stubborn about that, I’d rather get there by spending lots of time reading. I’ll have to decide soon (by 12th August ish), if I want to accrue any buffer by that means…
But mostly my attitude here is “oh no, I have to do lots of reading? How terrible!” 
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@shanaqui, I am really fascinated by your extensive setup around reading! Do all these goals (including TBR and CR) feed on Storygraph? Do you DNF often and where do you count that then? And do you plan your graph on the CR goal to become flat at some point? (I am still trying to figure for myself what is a realistic number of books that I can claim I am “currently reading” at the same time, with all of them library copies and ARCs and new purchases being so “tasty” to start immediately).
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Some of my goals feed from StoryGraph – /2024reading, /2024pages, /2024reading_ex, /2024reading_sav, and also (holding history from multiple years) /readreadread. Some of them are based on the stats in StoryGraph, but entered manually, since the official integration doesn’t hook into those numbers: that includes the TBR and currently-reading goals, and also /2024reading_sprint (since it’s a whittle-down).
/timeforme is also a reading-related goal; that one goes off my reading time as recorded by Bookly.
I don’t usually DNF, but if I do, what I do depends on how much I read of the book. If I read enough to want to write a review, I usually skim the rest and count it as a read book. If I only read 25 pages or so, I probably just remove it from my TBR and never enter any of it as read at all.
Eventually! It’s set up to plateau at 3 eventually, which should let me have an audiobook, a fiction book and a non-fiction book going at the same time, or maybe a fantasy, a crime and a non-fiction book, or whatever. I’m hoping three books at a time is enough to satisfy my urge to flit around, without letting it get out of proportion like it has at the moment.
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Opening thoughts:
Well! I’d been sleeping really badly and feeling like everything was bad and terrible. With the purchase of a foldout mattress for my office, so that if I can’t fall asleep in bed (due to noise etc) I can go and crash there, things are feeling a bit better sleep-wise. That said, I’m still tired and don’t quite have my focus back, unfortunately. Trying to roll with the punches a bit and just accept things as they come, which sometimes means just allowing a derailment to happen.
Derailments:
- /lshtm_immunology - A lot of stuff went wrong last week, and I went off the rails on this one when I didn’t have anything done by the end of the week. That’s fine, the actual academic year doesn’t start until October! Unfortunately I think it’s also going to derail this week too – with the sleeping problems I’ve been having, it’s just been too much to fit in.
- /brighteyes - It is bizarre how inconvenient and annoying I find simply putting in eyedrops twice a day…
- /lunch - Arrrghhh. I only notice this is in the red at 5pm, which I think we can all agree is too late for lunch. Probably Lisa’s going to start reminding me about the concept of food, at a suitable time.
Changes to existing goals:
- /toberead - I ended up adding a big jump to this goal for my birthday, knowing roughly how many books my wife has got me.
Especially after I cleared out my currently-reading list and pushed books back to the TBR goal. I didn’t want to end up paying because people were generous on my birthday. That said, I do want to try to get serious with this goal and not replace the books as fast I read them: before putting the jump in, I’d only managed a net -3 from when I started the goal last September, which kind of makes it look like the graph isn’t helping. I think it is, but I would like to make more progress. Maybe I’ll come up with a supplementary goal of some sort that will help…
- /lshtm_immunology - As I seem to have bitten off more than I can chew right now, I’ve set this goal to go flat. I’ll add some more jumps in it once things even out.
Closing thoughts:
For now I’m not adding any other breaks, but we’ll see – it might be necessary in order to help me get back on an even keel. I guess the next week will tell!
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Opening thoughts:
This week was my birthday, and I managed to just avoid derailing on my TBR goal on my birthday. Woo! Time to do plenty of reading and get that slope to go down…
Other stuff has been a bit less overwhelming, so we’ll see how things go.
Derailments:
- /lshtm_immunology - Aaand as predicted, derailed again. It’s now flat for a bit while I get things back on track.
- /check-in-amy - This one derailed because I planned to do it, forgot, and didn’t remember until… well. The next day. Oops.
Changes to existing goals:
- /bsupport - Added a one-day break to make up the safety buffer lost by taking a day off for my birthday.
- /tody - Added a one-day break to regain buffer.
Closing thoughts:
Nothing momentous to say this week. I need to change my /inhaler goal, probably, since I had my asthma review this week and I think my dose will change. But the nurse didn’t issue the new prescription yet, so I guess I’ll have to wait and see on that one! Hopefully writing this will remind me to check it next week.
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Opening thoughts:
This has just been a normal kind of week. I’m still giving thought to adding some breaks to my goals, but mostly I’m holding steady for now, and decided not to.
Derailments:
- /snackattack - Once more a clash arose between my “no snacks after 9pm” goal and my yoghurts goal, and I picked the latter, so this one derailed.
- /lunch - It is really hard to establish this habit, somehow. I just don’t notice the time, and then it’s 5pm and I can’t really be eating lunch then…
New goals:
- /serialreader - I decided on this for my September New Month’s Resolution goal. It’s because I redownloaded an old app, Serial Reader. It’s been a long time since I used it, but I felt like it might be fun to pick it up again. It has some Agatha Christie books in the lineup (I really haven’t read as much Christie as you’d expect given my interest in Golden Age crime), so I started on The Mysterious Affair at Styles, which I’ve now finished. I normally request a few “issues” a day, because it takes me only 5 minutes to read a supposed 15-minute segment, so I’ve set this goal to the “cap1” aggregation method. That way I can keep track of how many I read on a given day, but not earn loads of safety buffer.
- /birthdaybash - When I used Habitica, I used to have a yearly tradition of setting up a challenge with a bunch of tasks that were in some way relevant to me and my interests, such as “do some citizen science”, “read for 15 minutes”, etc, with a task for each year of my life. Obviously, I left Habitica and have no intention of ever giving them a cent again, but for the sake of some of the others who also left Habitica, I’ve kept up the tradition in a Discord server and by publishing a list. This year’s list is available, and I agreed I’d join in on trying to do all the tasks this year. Voila, a Whittle Down goal starting at 35 and counting down to 0, to be completed by 35 days after my birthday. Otherwise, I’m certain I’d forget. I’ve made the datapoints public, so if you’re curious what tasks I’ve done (and what I did to fulfil them), I guess you can check that out!
Closing thoughts:
I still haven’t received my new inhaler or asthma action plan, so this is just a reminder to myself to check I’ve adjusted my shanaqui/inhaler goal next week. Here’s hoping I’ll have all that by then.
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