Thanks!
It was Central Hall Westminster for this one, and it’ll be the Barbican for the next one! But I did honestly contemplate a visit anyway…
Opening thoughts:
Hello from London! I’m heading home tomorrow, but this evening we got back to the hotel nice and early to have a chill last evening after a long day of walking to and at the zoo.
It’s possible that I should be announcing a derailment of my /2026books goal, but since we dropped a lot of the books off directly at the car, I haven’t been able to catalogue them. It’s a small reprieve though because there’s a lot of books. Either I’m going to have to start a lot of books at once (which I will only do if I am genuinely interested in reading them soon) or I’ll derail. We’ll see!
(Some of the books got catalogued already because I got them at museums or at the two indie bookshops I checked out separately, but there are lots more waiting in the car.)
Changes to existing goals:
- /iqoro - It was inevitable that I’d forget something, and of course it was a medical thing – the bit of plastic I have to put in my mouth to use to train my tongue, palate and oesophagus to help reduce acid reflux. The support team added a break for me so I can resume once I’m home. Oops!
Closing thoughts:
And that’s it! Beeminder goals resume normal service on Sunday, once I’m home and have had half a minute to breathe.
3 Likes
Opening thoughts:
It’s been a hectic week – more hectic than I’d anticipated, really! Somehow there’s still a mountain of laundry, and somehow we hit the house like a hurricane on our way out to go to London. It’s slowly coming back under control, and yesterday I had a fairly normal day, so here’s hoping for a chill weekend.
It’s also been a week with a lot of work, somehow, which you’ll see reflected in my derailments.
Derailments:
- /clockoff - I haven’t derailed on this one in ages, but here we are. I had a tricky email thread to handle, and I kept going back to it and thinking about how to handle it, and then poof! Over my time limit.
- /noworkathome - Yeah… yeah. I know. I’m bad about this. What’s weird is, I swear I wasn’t this bad at it before I had the goal. Maybe I’ve got an Israeli daycare problem going on here, where now I’ve simply set a price on “working from home” (i.e. on my gaming computer)? Maybe the solution will be to jack up the pledge to something I’m not willing to pay.
- /2026backlog - This one is for reading books from my backlog, and between my tooth pain (still unresolved) and the general weirdness of being away from home, I just wasn’t reading enough.
New goals:
- /lunchbreaks - Speaking of healthy boundaries around work, I’m trying to reinstate my set lunch hour, ideally away from screens. It’s a simple 1/day goal with weekends off. Here’s hoping it helps…
Closing thoughts:
Discerning eyes may have noticed I thought I might derail on my /toberead and /2026books goals. I didn’t! It involved starting a lot of books at once, which… is a lot! I really do mean a lot! But I kinda like it, because this is how I used to read before I got very goal oriented. It used to be quite normal for me to read many books in tandem, a chapter here and a chapter there, but I actually used Beeminder to make myself pare it down, a couple of years ago, thinking it was overwhelming and didn’t lead to books getting finished. I’m quite interested to see how my reading motivation works over the next couple of weeks while I work through all the books I have started!
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Opening thoughts:
I thiiiiink that both my wrist injury and the pain in my teeth might be starting to heal. Certainly since I created my physio goal and got serious about doing exactly the amount of physio prescribed at exactly the frequency recommended, my wrist has stopped stiffening up, and the pain is a lot more dull. I don’t feel it when using my mouse any more at all, though I am wearing a wrist support when I do a lot of repetitive motions like playing clicky games.
So, wooo! Progress! And it’s otherwise been a quieter week with no derailments, albeit some goals have been dancing on the edge.
Changes to existing goals:
- /yoghurts - I’m gonna have to ask support for a couple of days’ break on this one, because my yoghurts didn’t get delivered with the shopping and aren’t available in the shop at walking distance, so it needs to wait for my wife to pick some up. Just when I’d built up some buffer, too… sadface.
Closing thoughts:
Yep, that really is it!
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Opening thoughts:
Things clicked a bit this week and routines started to feel a bit more normal, which is nice. I then undid it a bit with a late and distracted night last night (see also: not writing this until Saturday!) and thus not getting up on time this morning… but it’s a start!
Derailments:
- /2026pages - I’ve not been reading a lot lately for various reasons (not least being most interested in hidden cat games at the moment, ahaha) so this ended up derailing. I actually thought I was gonna manage to edge-skate at least another day, but I guess the values on StoryGraph didn’t get immediately updated after I removed a previous reading session, because even though I’d synced Beeminder manually (and it matched StoryGraph at the time), it was telling me the wrong totals due. Still, I accepted the derailment because I wanted the buffer.
- /physio-wrist - I was all set to do this, but by the time the deadline came, I hadn’t. At that point I figured, you know what, I’m clearly tired and overwhelmed: it’s time for bed, and I’ll do this tomorrow. So I let it derail, though I’ve ratcheted away the respite.
New goals:
- /waterpik - I have difficulty with regular flossing, including because my wrist still hurts when I try to make those movements, so I got a water flosser and this goal is for using it. (Note: no advice desired on this topic, thank you.)
- /alittletotheleft - The game A Little to the Left has a “daily tidy” challenge… requiring 100 ‘tidies’ in total in order to get the achievement. Well, I’m stubborn. Let’s do this.
Closing thoughts:
I don’t really have any other thoughts right now, aside from being sort of pleased in a silly way that my number of goals is currently a multiple of five. I like multiples of five.
3 Likes
Opening thoughts:
This week has, like last week, been a little easier than weeks have been of late. And my raid group in FFXIV hit a milestone this week, which means the end of this expansion’s raids are in sight, albeit distantly – which means I conceivably may have some more free time in future, for a while.
I did have one evening blighted by migraine, meaning I’ve had a rare derailment I called non-legit on for reasons other than data entry issues. More on that below.
Derailments:
- /2026backlog - I decided to take the sting on this one (again) in order to get some respite; I’ve not been in a reading mood, and I thought it best not to punish that too harshly but instead make room for it.
- /yoghurts - This was the derailment due to migraine, which made me too nauseated to even think about food for… honestly most of that day. A rare case where I couldn’t possibly have completed the goal (at least, not without vomiting, which I think is a bit too much to ask), so I called non-legit.
Closing thoughts:
I think there may have been some minor adjustments to safety buffer, but mostly things have been trucking along as normal other than the above derailments. Next week I’m away in London for the day for my graduation (yes, I had first graduation last month, but what about second graduation?), and I haven’t really planned ahead for that in terms of breaks on my goals, so uh… good luck, me!
(If you were wondering and I haven’t already said: my course was delivered by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine but adminned by the University of London. Both are thus entitled to call me one of their graduates, and thus I am entitled to two graduation ceremonies. Since my mother also graduated from University of London, I thought it might be nice to do the same, though on an emotional level being a graduate of the London School, #3 university in the world for my subject, means a bit more to me.)
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Opening thoughts:
This week’s been a little weird due to taking Tuesday off for the graduation. If anyone’s curious to see the most formal and ceremonial graduation I’ve ever done, this timestamp is just before I walk the stage. We had to bow and everything!
Derailments:
- /2026reading - I wish I’d set longer respite for this one, honestly, because my reading routine has been so thrown off lately, and I don’t like forcing myself when I’m clearly not in the mood. Ah well!
New goals:
- /flowersmadeourworld - A goal for finishing a book I was due to trade in to Bookloop, but hadn’t finished yet. I made it on time! The book was David George Haskell’s How Flowers Made Our World.
- /queergeorgians - Ditto, but for Anthony Delaney’s Queer Georgians.
- I technically had two more, for my BookSpin and DoubleSpin reads, but I changed my mind about the rates and ended up deleting them before the initial 7-day period was over, to avoid derailing because this week was just so much busier than I’d hoped.
Closing thoughts:
So… yup, that sure was a week! I have some changes to my daily schedule probably coming up, so I might be revamping my goals a bit if it feels like there’s too much, but for now, truckin’ along.
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Opening thoughts:
It’s been another busy week for a range of reasons, including having issues with my laptop, more dentist shenanigans, etc. The less said about it, the better.
Derailments:
- /2026pages - Yeah… I’m falling further and further behind on the yearly reading goal, and this derailed again. I probably need to have a think about reducing it at some point in the future. For right now, I still hope to rescue myself, maybe?
New goals:
- /stepaway - There’s a free game on Steam that makes you leave the PC for a bit. It fits in fairly well with my lunch break/screen break goals and intentions, but I keep missing days and it has an achievement for a 31 day streak. This goal is a simple 1/day goal for opening the game and doing a hike of any length, and is set to end when it reaches a total of 31. If I miss a day, I’ll have to think about how to reset it.
Changes to existing goals:
- /clearspam - We’re receiving too much spam which I need to check and whitelist due to Help Scout’s policies of throwing away emails altogether if a domain gets spamboxed too often. Since the amount we receive has dramatically gone up, I’m slightly shifting how I deal with it and hoping to do an extra clear-out per week… somehow without making it the same day as I check our feedback emails (M-W-F). It might make most sense to swap them, since I’m pretty on top of the feedback emails these days, but I’ll see how both being on three times a week works for now.
Closing thoughts:
I do indeed need to make a few adjustments to my work days and sleep/wake times to fit in some upcoming changes to my routine, so I may make goals for that… or change or end some of my goals to support it. We’ll see how it goes, though. For now I’m observing my daily routines and figuring out what flows and what doesn’t.
3 Likes
Opening thoughts:
This week there’s really nothing much to report, for a wonder! I’ve made some tweaks to how I approach my daily routine, and that’s been working really well. More changes are coming, which might still necessitate tweaking some goals, but… yep, not much to report!
Changes to existing goals:
- /feedbackzeroes - As I mentioned last week, I changed my spam management task to be due three times a week, and it makes most sense for that to be M-W-F. Given that, and how this week went, I’ve tweaked this goal for categorising our feedback emails to be due twice a week instead (so likely to do them on Tuesday and Thursday instead now).
Closing thoughts:
I’ve been pondering starting individual, low-rate goals for some of the books I have on my currently-reading pile, so maybe I’ll trial doing a couple of those next week. For now, best to keep things chill thanks to personal stuff.
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Opening thoughts:
I had an idea for a goal or two I might make, but they’re reading-related and (as you’ll see in a moment) I had a bad week for reading, so that’s on hold for now.
Derailments:
- /finishline - I wasn’t reading anything much at all, so I ended up derailing on this even though it requires only 15 minutes/day. Mostly I just wasn’t feeling the book that I had to read for this, and still am not, so it was difficult and I was feeling meh, so… I let it go.
- /2025books - This is my goal whittling down the books that I got in 2025 and haven’t started yet, and again, I didn’t feel like reading, and it would’ve added to the problem of having too many books on the go at once… so I let it derail to buy myself some time.
- /2026reading - Same deal: didn’t feel like reading.
- /2026pages - And ditto!
New goals:
- /bookcaseblanket - For completing my crochet project, someday! It’s only set to a rate of one row per day, because that’s what I seem to be able to manage on most week nights (at least when I have raids). There’s an autoratchet so I don’t get more than 9 days of buffer, though I want to keep 7 days of buffer ideally so that I can adjust it if I decide to do fewer rows than planned.
- /powerwashsimulator - I had to set up a Steam-linked goal in order to update the Steam integration help doc, so I made one for doing 15 minutes of PowerWash Simulator a day until the hypothetical day I manage to 100% the achievements (very far away currently). I decided to keep it, because I would actually like to get all those achievements but I have a terrible habit of forgetting about playing at all, sooo. Here we go! I expect to play more at weekends and probably not on raid nights (M-W-F), but hopefully it will all balance out.
Closing thoughts:
As you see, not the best week. Next week I’m going to try to get ahead on various things so I have a fairly easy first week or two of June, so wish me luck…
3 Likes
Opening thoughts:
It’s been stinking hot in the UK, which is pretty scary given it’s only May. Thankfully the hot weather has broken now – at least for a while – and it’s just pleasant.
The hot weather didn’t help me at all with motivation on sorting out my reading goals… but ah well. I didn’t derail on any more, at least!
Changes to existing goals:
- /noworkathome - I don’t often add fine print to my goals, but this one I decided to formalise. Faced with 32°C weather (in the UK, where homes are not designed for it), I decided to work in the room with my gaming PC, which is normally set aside just for fun stuff, because that has a portable air conditioner that also works as a dehumidifier and fan. My usual workspace lacks these amenities, and also contains the rabbits, who are heat sensitive – it seemed like a bad idea to sit in there with my laptop creating more heat for them. This applied in time for 25th May and onwards, and did really help me keep working through the heat (though I did take it a bit easier this week).
- /2025books - I originally set this up with a slope aiming at getting all my books bought in 2025 started by the end of June. On reflection this isn’t working well for me, because a lot of the books I need to start are the first book in a series, where I’m waiting for more to come out. I’ve adjusted it out to the end of December, instead.
Closing thoughts:
It’s time to start thinking about what I want to do for a goal in June, and I’m not sure – maybe some really bitesize tidying, or something like that? I’m definitely thinking something small, as I have a new client I’ll be doing work for starting 4th June, and at first it’ll take some getting used to and settling into my daily routine.
2 Likes
Opening thoughts:
The weather cooled down here, so it’s been possible to think again! I haven’t been feeling great, though, so I’ve rather dragged myself through the week. I ended up letting some goals derail to give me breaks, and adding a break or two here and there, to give me some space to settle down and feel better, and to in the meantime do things according to my whim.
Sooo let’s look at the damage.
Derailments:
- /2026backlog - This is the one for reading books that were on my TBR before 2026 began, and I did noooot feel like it, despite having a couple of them in progress. When I’m in a bad mood my reading often suffers, and thus it has been here.
- /2025books - This is also about backlog books (specifically from 2025), and isn’t really working for me in combo with the other – too much pressure to read specific books, I think. I may archive it. For now, anyway, I let it derail with plenty of respite.
- /2026reading - This is the one for reading 400 books this year, and it also suffered from the same mood issues.
New goals:
- /tidyingsnacks - New month, so new goal for the NMR thread! This one is for spending five minutes tidying each day, starting with my desk and expanding outwards if there’s time. The hope is that keeping my desk (at minimum) tidy will help me in general, since I do usually feel better (and less anxious) in a space that’s tidy.
Changes to existing goals:
- Some breaks added here and there to give me space to address some mental health problems.
Closing thoughts:
Nothing much else to say, I think; I’m still contemplating whether I need to lower any rates, but I think for now I’ll manage it by adding extra buffer here and there.
2 Likes
Opening thoughts:
A busy week for me working with a new client, but not a bad one – I carved out quite a bit of downtime for myself since I knew I needed it. My mood’s definitely improved, so wooo.
Derailments:
- /2026pages - This one trailed the others a bit, but still ended up derailing, and now has plenty of buffer to give me time to settle down.
- /timetorecline - This goal is often linked with reading, so it also suffered and ended up derailing… twice. For the same reason as the reading goals, I let it have plenty of buffer the second time.
Changes to existing goals:
- More buffer for goals I’m not feeling at the moment but don’t want to totally give up.
- /stepaway - After a day where I thought I might’ve lost the streak, I held my breath and went a couple more days and… ping! The notification of getting the achievement for opening the game 31 days in a row popped up. I’ve archived the goal since I don’t really need to be forced to do it every single day – I mean to use the “game” a bit more sporadically than that.
- /powerwashsimulator - I got all the achievements here, so it’s archiving! I did immediately get PowerWash Simulator 2, but between settling into a routine of opening the first game for at least a bit for achievements, and a routine of playing it with my wife, it’s a habit at the moment. I’ll create a goal if interest wanes, though.
Closing thoughts:
I’m… just gonna keep things low-key for now, since my schedule’s still settling into a new format, and I don’t want to tempt the low mood into coming back.
2 Likes
Opening thoughts:
This has been a very quiet week, Beeminder-wise, other than a goal I started for support/testing reasons! So this will be brief.
Changes to existing goals:
- I’ve kept on adding breaks to a few goals that are for fun things that aren’t feeling fun right now and ended up just adding to my overwhelm. Hopefully I can phase these back in if my new routine keeps helping!
Closing thoughts:
Yep, that’s really it! And that’s OK for now – after how rough I felt a couple weeks ago, I’m okay to take a bit of a breather and coast.
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Your stepaway goal actually inspired my own computer-screentime goal. I checked out the game on steam for a bit. I’ve been looking for a way to actually manage screentime rather than just track it (since It’s too easy to lie on toggl), and making sure the cursor remains in a fixed zone is a really good way to do that. I wasn’t a fan of the game itself (mostly due to the limitations of the steam integration), but AI got me a working mvp on val.town that has more granular data. Really glad I read these journals as I doubt I would have come up with that idea myself. Thanks!
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Opening thoughts:
Here in the UK it’s too bloody hot so let’s get this over with ASAP and get back to being lazy.
Changes to existing goals:
- /alittletotheleft - 100 day streak complete! I thought there was an achievement for more, but nope, so this goal is done now!
Closing thoughts:
It’s too bloody hot. 
Bye!
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Opening thoughts:
The weather cooled down here, so I’m doing a little better – albeit I’ve got a bit scatterbrained and frazzled in the last week, and have been falling behind on some goals, alas.
So let’s have a look…
Derailments:
- /physio-wrist - I didn’t leave enough time in the day to do this one, so it derailed.
- /checkmail - I think this might’ve been the same day? Poor planning, again, didn’t leave enough time.
- /2025books - I hadn’t meant this to start being due again, but I missed my chance to add more of a break… and then, once more, time got on top of me. I’m lowering the pledge and pledge cap, though; I never meant it to be so high, not sure why I forgot to cap it.
- /finishline - In this case, I forgot I’d ratcheted it and had counted on having buffer. Oops!
New goals:
- /ffxiv-login - A fairly easy to fulfil goal just for logging into FFXIV and doing something, giving me a chance to stay social with my group outside of serious raiding.
Changes to existing goals:
- /it-takes-two - My wife and I finally sat down and did the last achievements for this, and we actually almost perfectly hit the time estimate I’d come up with, so this goal is done now! The game has fun mechanics, but we didn’t enjoy the characters or plot.
- /stopbyseven - I lost a lot of buffer on this one, and I need some breathing space to figure out how to sort it out. So I’ve added a break which will kick in soon-ish, and hopefully can avoid derailing it until then!
Closing thoughts:
My wife is having a minor surgery next week, so things might get a bit disrupted. I guess we’ll see how it goes!
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Opening thoughts:
Welp, we’re in a heatwave again already. The respite was short! But we’re figuring out how to keep the house a pretty reasonable temperature, which helps.
I kept things pretty chill this week because of my wife’s surgery (which went well as far as we can tell), so there’s not much to report.
Changes to existing goals:
- Still adding short breaks here and there to put off goals that are causing too much stress right now without archiving them, so they can stay in my consciousness.
Closing thoughts:
It’s going to keep being hot for a while, I think, which is horrifying. We’ll see how I manage!
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Opening thoughts:
This week I have been plagued with migraines, including today, so I’ll keep this short!
I’m embarking on an impromptu long weekend in order to get some housework done, help install heat reflecting film on my wife’s office windows, and get my bike shed built. And hopefully get some extra reading done, but the shed is my main priority. That means I did some extra on a couple goals this week to get ahead, and added a break here and there.
Derailments:
- /yoghurts - This fell by the wayside a bit due to home routines being disturbed by my wife’s operation. I kept up with it at first by eating a yoghurt with lunch, but then… oops.
Changes to existing goals:
- /clearspam - I added a break to this one; I think it’s the only work goal where I did, so far, otherwise working ahead to avoid them being disrupted by the long weekend.
- /noworkathome - I tentatively added another exception here, with the approval of my wife: I have a new client and some tasks are better done on a beefier PC that lets me open more tabs at a time without starting to wheeze like an asthmatic. However I think if this is happening more than once a month (which may represent 3-4 datapoints if it’s a longer project) then I’ll view that as encouragement to get a better laptop already.
Closing thoughts:
No thoughts, only migraine.
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Opening thoughts:
It’s been a quiet week, with thankfully no full-blown migraines, albeit one day where I thought “uhoh, this is migraine prodrome again”.
Because I’m mostly working on keeping those under control, there’s nothing much to report…
Closing thoughts:
…so little to report that we’re here at the end of the update already. I really don’t think I’ve done anything than chug along as usual, this week!
I do have some ideas for my August goal, but I’m experimenting a bit first – I want to do some jaw exercises to relax my jaw, and maybe jaw massage, to help deal with my jaw-clenching. But we’ll see!
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