Well, happy new year! 2026 is here. And so’s Friday, meaning it’s check-in time, and time to make my seventh Beeminder journal thread. (Time flies!)
What’s this?
Each week, I post a summary/reflection on my beeminding from the previous week (derailments, new goals, changes to my goals, and any other musings). I usually post on Friday, though sometimes I’ll post a couple of days earlier or later.
Feel free to join in and ask questions, poke me and give me accountability, and 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.
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 and I don’t want to answer.
Many of my goals carry a week’s worth of buffer, akin to the orange is the new red strategy. This doesn’t mean they never derail, in fact, but often when you peek I’ll have quite a bit of safety buffer on the majority of my goals.
I use this weekly post as a way of reminding myself about calendialing!
Welp, without further ado, let’s get down to it! Obviously this post features the sunsetting of my 2025 goals, and the opening of my 2026 goals, so it’ll be a little busy.
New goals:
/it-takes-two - The Steam integration has soft-launched, and I’m testing it out with this goal to play 15 minutes of It Takes Two, a co-op game that I’m playing with my wife. I checked out how long the game takes to 100% beat, and set an end total for roughly that amount.
/2026reading - 2026’s main reading goal, for reading 400 books this year. I reserve the right to adjust this up or down, but it seems like a fair start since I’ve read 400 books two years in a row now.
/2026backlog - This goal is for finishing 100 books bought before January 1st 2026. I thought about not including books from 2025 (since I already have a goal for starting those), but that would’ve added a bunch of admin. I’ll keep it simple.
/2026pages - Based on last year’s successful goal, this one is set for 100,000 pages read in 2026.
/2026books - Finally for reading goals (for now), this caps the number of books I can buy without starting them in 2026. Same rules as the 2025 goal: books enter the list when I catalogue them on Storygraph, and leave it when I start reading them. The cap is 20 at a time bought this year and unstarted. Last year’s goal really helped, while being flexible enough for my usual book sprees, so I’m actually excited for this! It’s my “No Excuses” and “No Derailing” goal for New Year’s Resolutions: Lock in for 2026.
/checkmail - Some of my best goals in the last year have been goals that take a household chore and break it down even smaller. This one’s for checking the mail and actually sorting it, rather than leaving it lying in the hallway. I’ll need to do it a few times a week to be safe from derailing, and hopefully it’ll inspire us to return to sender the debt letters for the previous tenant already… It’s my first New Month’s Resolution for 2026.
Changes to existing goals:
/newmonthresolution - This goal ended and immediately got restarted and set up for 2026, same as before. More on New Month’s Resolutions in the relevant thread!
/2025backlog - This goal is retiring with honour: I successfully read 100 books from my backlog in 2025!
/2025pages - I can’t remember what the original goal was for this, but I kept on upping it, eventually reading over 100,000 pages in 2025. Nice! The goal’s ended now, of course.
/2025reading - I set a goal of reading 400 books in 2025, lowered it when times were tough, and ended up gradually raising it again over the last three months. In the end, I hit 400 books after all!
Closing thoughts:
That was a lot! And I’ve probably forgotten something. But for now I feel pretty well set up for 2026!
So far so good, for me at least! No derailments, and no major problems with my goals. Soon I’m planning to take a bit of time off work and probably some of my other goals, to rest my wrist (injured in August, still not healed) and get some chill time… but not sure when that will be.
Closing thoughts:
Yeah… I think this is a first. No changes to my goals, no derailments, nothin’.
This week was a busy one, as I worked ahead a bit to make sure everything needed was done before my holiday. That meant some long hours… and an excessive amount of chocolate to fuel them. Still, not a bad week for my goals in general!
New goals:
/takeleave - I’m bad at taking time off. I’m reliably informed that, for my health, I should take a bit more time off. 28 days is standard for a full-time worker in the UK (which I am if I combine all of my self-employed contracts), so I’ve set a goal to take 28 days off over the course of a year. They get into the goal when I book them, not when I take them, and I’ll count them in gradations of half days. Swapping shifts doesn’t count.
I backdated the start of the goal to the start of the year, for neatness, but set January to flat so I wouldn’t have to sort out taking time off right away. Technically leave wouldn’t go by calendar year but by accounting year, I think, but shush, I’ll never get started that way, and this is just an experiment.
Derailments:
/snackattack - Got into the red on this one and decided to just cry uncle and get a bit of leeway. I don’t get a lot on this goal, but a couple of days were all that was needed to get out of the hole.
Changes to existing goals:
Breaks were added to most work goals to add two weeks of buffer, to cover my time off – aside from /freshdocs and /freshsupport, where I just worked ahead and did ten extra articles each this week.
Closing thoughts:
I left all my other goals as-is, at least for now, but I might add some more breaks here and there… we’ll see!
My accounting year matches the UK tax year, so April 5th to April 6th of the next year. But it’s pretty moot, I can’t see that there’s any special reason for it to apply here, since taking days off doesn’t change anything about my taxes.
So far my time off is treating me well: I think it is helping my injured wrist, and I’ve managed to fit in a bunch of appointments next week to get various things sorted (or at least start doing so). My restorative time on Oura is up, and my ability to engage with my hobbies and so on is also increasing, so… yeah, I probably needed the time off. 2025 was a heck of a year for me.
Derailments:
/timetorecline - I was running close to the wire on this one. I’d been putting in breaks for quite a while, then decided I really ought to stop that and try to find the time to relax enough to sit on my recliner for just 30 minutes a day. That… didn’t work, because last week was when I was working flat out to ensure there was no problem for anyone else because I was going to be off. So I ended up derailing. I didn’t like it running low on buffer, so I did put another break in it, but I’m going to try and get back to it now.
Changes to existing goals:
/ffxiv_ew-a - I’ve killed 2,000 A ranks in Endwalker areas, so this goal is done! I want to move on and create one for Dawntrail A ranks, but not right away while I’m so busy with the new tier of Savage.
Closing thoughts:
It’s amazing how manageable and chill my goals have felt during this week. It doesn’t take long at all to deal with them – except when you’re already frazzled, apparently. I still might need to think about toning some down again in order to keep up with them alongside work, but at least this week has shown me I’m pretty happy with the current balance in many ways.
Welp, my injured wrist turns out to be a problem with two ligaments plus some muscle wasting from not using my hand for nearly six months, and I have a splint and some nasty physio now to resolve that. So I’m tired and sore and will keep this brief!
Changes to existing goals:
/it-takes-two - I’ve added a break on this because I can technically play it in my splint but it’s awkward and quickly gets painful.
Closing thoughts:
I thought about having a goal for spending at least some time in my splint each day (since I don’t have to and indeed shouldn’t wear it all the time, because it could contribute to the muscle wastage), but so far I’ve done okay without a reminder and/or the members of my raid group happily nag me about it.
Things are a little better this week, as I’ve settled into a routine with my physio and it’s getting a bit less gruelling. That probably means I should go up a resistance level soon… blech. But for now, things a little easier.
I am however (despite having just had time off work!) a bit overwhelmed and frazzled, which may be a combo of working so hard on the physio, knowing I have upcoming dental work (I have a phobia of dentists), and some other personal stuff going on. So I’m looking for ways to recharge myself that don’t feel like additional chores, and there’s one new goal this week accordingly.
Derailments:
/dailyweight - My weight fluctuated up recently and I’m not really sure why. The derailment caught me by surprise, actually; I hadn’t had a good sense of being that close to derailing. I ended up crying uncle partway through the day, just to get it over with.
New goals:
/bekind - I thought about waiting until March to start this, as my March resolution goal, but I think it’d be good for me to start it right away. This is the idea for a way to recharge myself that doesn’t feel like a chore: it’s a semi-regularly recommended habit (somewhat less than gratitude journalling) for helping boost happiness and contentment with life, and I think it’s one that honestly suits me: I like doing little acts of kindness. This might be quite a bit of admin, but hopefully it’ll slot into my day in a good way. The plan is three acts of kindness per day, and they can be directed at my family, friends, communities, strangers, or the environment, or maybe other categories I haven’t thought of yet. I’m excluding kindness to self for now, because that has a different flavour, though it might be worth doing.
/postcrossing - This is my monthly resolution goal, to write three postcards for Postcrossing per week. I hope for a side effect of going out for more regular walks (in order to post the cards) as well, but that isn’t an explicit requirement of the goal, so if I’m injured, tired, the weather’s terrible, etc, it’s enough to write the card. Let’s see how it goes.
Changes to existing goals:
Once again some small breaks to goals that are meant to support me doing fun/relaxing stuff and seem to be just pressuring me at the moment. This may be a sign the goals need to be archived for now, but I feel stubborn about that: surely there is a way to get me time to play on my Steam Deck, chill on my recliner, etc. Surely.
Closing thoughts:
With two new goals added to my plate this week, I’m hoping the next week will be a quiet one, and my mood/energy etc will trend up again. Here’s hoping! My only plan is to reflect on whether the new goals are working, or whether they feel like work; if they do feel like work, I might bring them to a swift end for now.
Oof, it’s been a bit of bad week for my wrist injury, but I think I figured out why, so… onwards and upwards. My new goals have been going well and feel like positive additions, though!
Derailments:
/yoghurts - Lisa forgot to buy any, and then I got out of the habit of eating them, oops.
/noworkathome - I more or less accidentally got sucked into doing some work on my gaming PC last weekend, and that was a +1… and then I did again the next day! A deserved derail.
Changes to existing goals:
Still nudging out the deadlines on some goals that would need me to have full function back in my wrist. Don’t know when I’ll be able to ride my bike again and that’s sad. Mind you, the weather isn’t very conducive to it either!
Closing thoughts:
I should make a goal for reading this month’s picks for the reading challenge I do on Litsy (BookSpin). I’m going soooo slowly with the first one, and the other one’s chunky non-fiction too…
I can’t really say it was a quiet week, since there was a lot going on work-wise. But there wasn’t a lot moving in terms of my Beeminder goals; I just kept on trucking along with those.
New goals:
/domination - For reading Alice Roberts’ Domination: The Fall of the Roman Empire and the Rise of Christianity. I’m finding it kinda slow going, but it’s my BookSpin for February, and I’m determined to finish it. The way I’ve set it up means I’ll need to read about 50 pages a day, which seems doable. Maybe I can get ahead a bit over the weekend as well.
Closing thoughts:
I should possibly make goals for a couple of other books, but I think I’ll wait and see how my weekend reading goes first!
So I procrastinated a bit too much on setting up reading goals, in part because of February being such a short month… and now I have 2-3 days to finish a whole bunch of books. Oops!
Derailments:
/2026pages - With a super busy week at work last week, I didn’t get enough reading time in to meet this goal.
New goals:
/howtofakeitinsociety - For reading KJ Charles’ upcoming book, How To Fake It In Society (I have an ARC via Netgalley).
/mysticalcatshelter - For reading Heather Fawcett’s Agnes Aubert’s Mystical Cat Shelter (just released, I think? I got a free copy from the publisher).
/platformdecay - For reading the new Murderbot book from Martha Wells, Platform Decay (received to review via Netgalley).
/nightshadeandoak - For reading Molly O’Neill’s Nightshade & Oak (review copy), which I think is out now?
/sololeveling8 - For reading the last volume of the Solo Leveling light novels. Sob!
/ancientwisdom - For reading Selena Wisnom’s The Library of Ancient Wisdom, which is quite a brick of a book.
Closing thoughts:
Looking at the above, I wonder about making a goal to prioritise reading ARCs in time somehow… though last year my 2025books goal did pretty well at that by pushing me to read new books in general, I think there’s just a lot of fun books coming out, combined with the fact that I’m now on Orbit’s reviewer list.
Folks may be interested to know that partly thanks to Beeminder, partly thanks to intense stubbornness, I finished all the books on my BookSpinBingo card for February.
Now I’ll do it again. I’ve not finished a single one so far, six days in, and I really need to marathon some reading in order to clear space for the books I’m inevitably going to buy on my trip to London for my graduation, so… hahaha. Nervous laughter.
New goals:
/magazines - My new month’s resolution goal, for prompting me to read the magazines in my library’s collection, mostly New Scientist (weekly), The New York Review of Books* (biweekly) and The London Review of Books (biweekly), so I set my rate to 2/week. I found another bookish magazine I want to try too, so I might need to check the frequency of that and up my rate a bit.
Changes to existing goals:
/ancientwisdom - This book got finished in time, and now the goal’s ended and been archived.
Closing thoughts:
That’s about it for now! Slowly but surely my wrist is improving, or at least going back to the status quo before it really started hurting in January, so maybe one of these days I’ll be able to go on my bike again… maybe.
I’d say yes, if it’s your interest. My full review isn’t on my blog yet but you can see the draft here. It takes a more sceptical tone about some of the myths of early Christianity (like the conversion of Constantine) that I found interesting and nuanced, but given it’s not one of my interests, I found it a slow starter. I usually like Roberts’ work, but found she had a couple of things that annoyed me in this book and should’ve been edited more heavily.
There’s only a selected bibliography, no footnotes, which I personally find irritating even in books for non-experts, though it is aimed at a popular audience rather than historians, so I get it.
It’s been a bit of a bad week for me, lots of derailments! I think it’s partly because I had a gnarly dentist appointment (due to a lot of work needing to be done to replace some broken old amalgam fillings, some clumsy dentistry, and a lot of pain afterwards) and partly because my hand is still hurting (sigh). Also just some mood stuff; one of those weeks. Onwards and upwards!
Derailments:
/fastfood - We ended up having an extra unscheduled fastfood night because we felt meh and didn’t want to cook.
/postcrossing - I didn’t feel like going for a walk, and everything was feeling a bit much, so I let this derail to give me some buffer.
/noworkathome - I derailed this twice… possibly on consecutive days. I really won’t learn, sometimes!
/dailyweight - Not quite sure what’s going on here, but the upward trend of my weight isn’t something I love. I guess this serves as a reminder to get on it!
New goals:
/physio-wrist - I’m not sticking to my physio very well, and thought I think I might need a scan etc, I can hardly go back to the GP for that if I’m not adhering to the prescribed physio. (I mean, I could lie, but I’m notoriously awful at that.) So here we go! 0.5/day, so every other day, as prescribed.
And next week I need to think about adding breaks to my goals ready for my graduation week! I’ll be spending it in London with my wife, and bookshopping sprees are in our future.
It’s been a rough week again, since I ended up back at the dentist for an adjustment to my new fillings, and am still in some pain now. Ah well.
Next week will be a weird week because I’ll be away in London from partway through Monday until late on Saturday for my graduation. Hopefully it will also be fun and relaxing!
Derailments:
/postcrossing - With everything going on, being in pain, etc, etc, I didn’t get round to writing any Postcrossing cards. I probably could’ve, if I’d made it a priority, so… yeah. Another derailment here.
/noworkathome - A member of my team needed cover, and I was in too much of a rush to go grab my laptop to do it, so I just did it on my home PC. Not ideal, and the derailment is here to remind me to do that as little as possible.
Changes to existing goals:
I put in breaks for the week after next on some goals to compensate for the fact that I’ll miss them next week, and have asked support to do a couple more that don’t have enough buffer to last, because somehow I didn’t grok that waiting until today to put breaks in for Monday wasn’t going to work. Simultaneously, the trip is next week and the week after next, in my head. Oops.
Closing thoughts:
Next week’s update might be on Saturday night/Sunday instead of the usual Friday, if I’m busy enjoying London!
If any Beeminder folks are interested in my graduation, it will be livestreamed here at 10:30 GMT on 25th March. I’m being awarded an MSc in Infectious Diseases via distance learning, with merit. I’d been gunning for a distinction, and ended up something like half a percentage off, so I’m very proud of my final result.
Congratulations! A lot of institutions seem to use the RFH as their graduation venue. If yours is one of them, then let me remind you of the physical location of the UK Poetry Library.
So I ended up derailing. I didn’t like it running low on buffer, so I did put another break in it, but I’m going to try and get back to it now.
Congratulations! 