shanaqui's Beeminder Journal

Derailments:

  • /nature derailed because I couldn’t be bothered. My mental health was terrible, but this is one that I could’ve managed. Legit.
  • /teeth derailed, but it wasn’t legit. Got to my phone to add the data just a bit too late.
  • /bodyweight derailed, mental health. Could’ve managed it, so, legit.

New goals:

  • /sciencewriting, for helping me stick to the FutureLearn course of that name. Mostly it’s stuff I already know about how to write from, you know, my English lit degree. But I’m hoping for new resources or ways of looking at things.
  • /histology, for helping me stick to the FutureLearn course on it! I’m excited by this one, and there’s a ton of material.
  • /priory, for the workerbee book club! @mary and I both have this book on our TBRs, and we managed to rope most of the others into it. :smiley:

Changes to existing goals:

  • A lot of my goals got extra breaks put in for mental health reasons. One of the potential criteria the workerbees have discussed for breaks for mental health reasons to avoid a slippery slope of weaselling was “it was so bad, I called my doctor”. This was one of those; I called my doctor the next morning and went back on anxiety medication.
  • /activeminutes got archived without finishing its countdown because my Fitbit refused to believe I was exercising. It wanted me to keep my heartrate higher than it ever really goes… Not clear what that was about.

TaskRatchet Successes & Failures:

  • N/a.

Other comments:

  • I’ve been doing better since I called my doctor and asked to go back on my anxiety medication. Turns out, one doesn’t have to be that completely terrified all the time. For a bit there I honestly thought everyone else was as terrified as I was and just pretending they were functional, because the fears seemed logical. Now I see that many of them were not, or were worst case scenarios, and that anyway I’d rather be optimistic and be able to read books and be kind to people, even if the optimism turns out to be unfounded. Anxiety messes with your head, folks, news at 10.
    (Obviously it’s a rough time for many, and I’m not minimising that. I was just totally immobilised by fear and turns out I didn’t have to be.)
3 Likes

Derailments:

  • /beemergencies derailed for the first time(? I think), due to my new tougher limits and my week of struggling. I think I’m getting back on track for full-time orange-is-the-new-red.
  • /dishwasher: I hold my hands up, I ignored this a lot and I deserve to derail.

New goals:

  • /sciencematters, for the Coursera course of that name about COVID-19.
  • /covid19, for the FutureLearn course of that name about… well, you guessed it.
  • /reachout, to remind me to message, text or call friends I don’t routinely speak to. The rate is 5/week. I don’t want to be contrived about this, so I might lower the rate a bit. We’ll see how it goes.
  • /gbhc, to make sure I attend aaaall the rehearsals for the Great British Home Chorus. It’s a highlight of my day, and I don’t want to end up having a backlog of unwatched rehearsals if stuff gets too much. Enforced enjoyment!

Changes to existing goals:

  • A bunch more breaks were added for mental health reasons, with thanks to the long-suffering @justanotherjon.

TaskRatchet Successes & Failures:

  • Nothing to report yet…

Other comments:

  • I’m back in the red on a bunch of things, sigh. But I feel better again today – lots of ups and downs – and am making some progress on clawing it back.
4 Likes

Derailments:

  • /nofudge, because quite frankly I could not be bothered. I pre-pay my derailments, kind of, because I have a US card via TransferWise which I load at the beginning of the month. This means that derailments are already budgeted for, and this one fit within that budget, so I let it go. I’m not sure this is good for me, actually; I think I’ll stop budgeting for Beeminder, and force the rest of my budget to rearrange as necessary to cover derailments. It seems sensible to have some money set aside ready for derailments, but in practice it means they aren’t actually a sting – the money was already siloed away anyway.

New goals:

  • /todoistzero – I have a lot of my work stuff all neatly filed in Todoist with deadlines and recurring tasks to keep me on track… and then in the last couple of weeks, everything fell apart and I couldn’t keep up. I’ve re-scheduled everything so it will join back in slowly, and this goal is for making sure I’m on track at least 5 days out of every week. Here’s hoping…

Changes to existing goals:

  • /housework – I lowered the rate myself, which will take effect next week, because I just don’t have the energy right now.
  • I had another couple of small rate tweaks and breaks this week (thanks, Jon). This is still under the “my mental health is actively being managed by a doctor because it isn’t going well” rule. I’m viewing it as an adjustment period during which things are a bit more malleable than normal, until I’ve been on an even keel for one full week. The adjustments are getting smaller and smaller! It’s a start!

TaskRatchet Successes & Failures:

  • Success: Made a Habitica challenge as promised!

Other comments:

  • How would you beemind working on an application to do another degree? I’m not sure I’ll need to; things are coming together alarmingly fast, and mostly I just need to wait for my references and write my personal statement. But I was thinking about a good way to do it, and I couldn’t immediately come up with anything, because all the tasks that make up the application are different time investments, and not always foreseeable. (Helping my dad find my degree certificates remotely was not something I expected, for instance.)
  • I want to start keeping some kind of gratitude journal, but I don’t really want to write it down on paper – I’d want something on my PC, preferably, or at a pinch on my phone. Any recs for Windows or Android apps? Especially if they nudge you to enter data at the right time. I want to beemind this, but have something more structured than a .txt file in Notetab.
2 Likes

Five Minute Journal, definitely. I noticed big differences in my outlook on life when I was using it vs when I wasn’t. Here’s the Android app. I believe you can set up recurring notifications for the nudge part.

That is a very interesting observation, thank you for sharing that insight!

Derailments:

  • /inhaler – Gah. I just keep forgetting the darn thing. I actually have other meds to take at the same time now, so I’m a little better about it, but… gah.

New goals:

  • /futurelearnarchaeology – Another FutureLearn course to keep me busy! This one is only two weeks long, so I’m halfway there already.
  • /gratitude – Reminding me to share the things I’m grateful for/that keep me happy in the Beeminder forum. I’ve only set it to 6/week, to give me some room for slippage.

Changes to existing goals:

  • /sciencewriting – Completed and archived!
  • /histology – Completed and archived!
  • /covid19 – Completed and archived!
  • /futurelearnarchaeology – Completed but awaiting archive.

TaskRatchet Successes & Failures:

  • N/a.

Other comments:

  • I think I’m sort of back on track now, which means next up is Project “Blue is the New Orange”, i.e. trying to get further ahead on my goals.
2 Likes

Derailments:

  • N/a! Exciting.

New goals:

  • /stavechurches – For completing the FutureLearn course on Preserving Norwegian Stave Churches. I know, not my usual field at all, but like my eclectic reading, I like to learn all kinds of things.
  • /clockoff – Experimental non-cumulative graph to cap my working hours at 6/day. My wife will approve greatly, though she also probably thinks I should make it even tougher. I rarely go over 6 hours anyway, so she might have a point, but I regularly go over 5… We’ll have to see, but I might lower it to 5.7, so I’m capped at 40 hours/week. It’s integrated with Toggl, so hopefully I can just leave it ticking along and ignore it. (It has nearly caught me once so far, and I barely even realised – guess I might go up to 6 hours more than I realised!)
  • /breathesbooks – For 10 minutes a day working on my book blog, either writing posts for linkups or visiting other folks’ posts.
  • /confusion-backlog – It died and now is risen… Uh, yeah, I completed the whole backlog and am keeping on top of it, except that there were some others hiding out under a different tag. So it has restarted to get those filed away too.
  • /understandingcbt – Unsurprisingly, this is my goal for tracking progress on a course about understanding CBT, offered by FutureLearn!

Changes to existing goals:

  • /hourofreading – I got this hooked up with one of my Toggl accounts, for easier tracking. That does mean I’m missing some time here and there from when I just pick up a book and read bits without bothering to track, but I think I always was.
  • /checkin – I gave this one day of buffer so it won’t ever go into the orange, because I’m working on not only orange-is-the-new-red but blue-is-the-new-orange.

TaskRatchet Successes & Failures:

  • N/a.

Other comments:

  • re: blue-is-the-new-orange, I know it’ll never keep me off the rocks entirely. Someday probably soon I’ll have an anxiety attack and lose hold of it. But we’ll see… It already helped when yesterday there was potentially-bad family news and I didn’t want to get stuff done!
2 Likes

Almost all my tasks are stuff like this - many subtasks with different time investments and unpredictable detours - and what I usually do is just beemind (or paper-journal) spending 15 minutes on the task, doing whatever needs to be done, and remembering that a big part of the task is to sit down, think, write down ideas, and figure out what the next physical action is.

2 Likes

Derailments:

  • /hourofcrafting – Sadly, it’s just the wrong time for this goal, I think. It’s derailed and I’m archiving it.

New goals:

  • /suggestions-backlog – A close cousin of the old confusion-backlog goal. There’s not as many here, and hopefully this will be a very short-term goal!

Changes to existing goals:

  • /nonewsisgoodnews – I actually had to retroratchet this or it would’ve given me waaaay too much leeway. Apparently I’ve got really good about this goal! Anyway, I decided I hated the big jag in the road from the ratchet, so I also edited the road. That means a bunch of my datapoints in the past are now in the red, but I don’t mind that tooo much.
  • /stavechurches – Finished and archived.

TaskRatchet Successes & Failures:

  • N/a.

Other comments:

  • Nothing major this week, I think. The 24-hour readathon helped me gain back some buffer on /hourofreading and /gameofbooks2020, yay. (Though I only read for about 5.5 hours.)
1 Like

Derailments:

  • /gbhc – I’m not having that much fun with GBHC at the moment (I’m very conscious that I can’t read music and that I’m out of practice), so I’m taking the obligation out of it. I derailed it and archived it!
  • /drinklesscoke – This was… expected. Especially when I drank three cans in one day. :grin:
  • /todoistzero – I could probably have finished this, but I didn’t want to. Meh!

New goals:

  • N/a.

Changes to existing goals:

  • /drinklesscoke – I’ve upped the rate on this a bit, since the immediate need to cut down on caffeine is gone.
  • /todoistzero – This is something I’m still struggling with a lot, as my derailment proves. I’m keeping the rate at 5/week, but I’ve put a tiny flat spot in it to help me get a bit more buffer, and the derailment helps with that too.

TaskRatchet Successes & Failures:

  • N/a.

Other comments:

  • I’m getting a bit scatterbrained and short of focus again, gah. Got to get on top of that.

Ever try caffeine-free Coke? It’s a lifesaver for me!

Once, when I first gave up Coke (for a long time; probably about 10 years)… but I don’t know, it didn’t taste right. Mind you, it’s been quite a while since then, might be worth giving it another go.

1 Like

Derailments:

  • /drinklesscoke – Yes, again. I’m gonna need to up the pledge on this, probably. One more try!
  • /water – The failure of these two goals is admittedly linked.
  • /clockoff – I only failed by 12 minutes! I genuinely did not realise I was even close! Boo.

New goals:

  • /vitd – My mother wants me to take vitamin D, and she’s a doctor, so she’s probably right.

Changes to existing goals:

  • /calories – I’ve lowered the allowance on this one because I don’t want to just be encouraged to track it now, I do actually want an upper bound.
  • /caloriedeficit – I’ve upped the deficit I need to hit, having realised it’s way lower on Beeminder than the target I’m actually trying to hit on Fitbit. I also ratcheted it, since I’d built up a lot of buffer that way!
  • /suggestions-backlog – Ended and archived, successfully!
  • /confusion-backlog – Also ended and archived, with success. Byebye, backlogs!

TaskRatchet Successes & Failures:

  • N/a.

Other comments:

  • Since I stopped budgeting for derailments, I keep forgetting to load my USD payment card in time for my payments to not just… fail. This is a pain for everyone, especially @dreev who seems to have to rescue me every time (because goodness only knows where I actually put the card). Any thoughts on a reminder system? Clearly the derailment emails aren’t doing the job, because they don’t make me think about actually paying
3 Likes

I don’t any good idea for a reminder system, unfortunately. But I do have a question about your Fitbit. A friend of mine had one and returned it because in his case it recorded “steps” when he was merely driving his car around. And it recorded quite a lot of these. Coming to think of it, there is another person who also returned their Fitbit. How is your experience with the device? Do you find the step count to be accurate? Noticed anything odd? Do you record your sleep with it, too? Can it even do that? Does the data seem plausible to you? I’m thinking about getting one, that’s why I’m so curious :slight_smile:

I think it’s… within tolerance. It does record some extra steps, but it was in general more accurate than the simple pedometer I used to use (i.e. I think the problem is common to pretty much anything that’s trying to count your steps based on tracking movement from a single point on your body). Rather than focus on the exact number of steps I get, I’m more interested in the “active minutes” (which it’s reasonably accurate about, at least once you’re active for around 10 minutes – it can be bad at detecting activity before that sort of threshold) and the general trends in step counts, calories burned, etc.

I do use it to record my sleep and it’s not bad; I can’t usually trick it by just lying still, for instance. The data usually makes sense: I don’t think there’s any good evidence that they can really track REM vs deep sleep and so on, but stuff like movement during the night is a decent rule-of-thumb proxy for depth of sleep.

So all in all, I take it with a pinch of salt, but find it broadly useful in seeing trends.

2 Likes

Derailments:

  • /teeth – And headed for another if I can’t get back into my routine! Grr.

New goals:

  • /genomicsera – For the FutureLearn course on genetics in medicine. Though it’s already annoyed me by asserting that “COVID-19 and SARS-CoV-2” are both names for the virus. (No: SARS-CoV-2 is the name of the virus; COVID-19 is in fact the name of the syndrome it causes. Like the difference between HIV and AIDs. They’re inextricably linked, you can’t have COVID-19 if you aren’t infected with SARS-CoV-2, but that doesn’t mean COVID-19 is the name of the virus. I expect a little accuracy from a course supposedly teaching science…)

Changes to existing goals:

TaskRatchet Successes & Failures:

  • Added task: Write personal statement for MSc application.
  • Added task: Request transcript for MSc application.

Other comments:

  • I think that’s it for this week!
2 Likes

Derailments:

  • /clockoff - I almost called not legit on this one, because I really wasn’t conscious that I was going over. But I think it might behove me to stay a bit more conscious in general.

New goals:

Changes to existing goals:

  • /understandingcbt - Course finished, graph complete, archived!
  • /quickbooks - Put a bit of extra break in, so it’ll be due after all my payments have come in

TaskRatchet Successes & Failures:

  • Completed: Request transcript for application.
  • Completed: Write personal statement.
  • New: Pick reference images for art commission.

Other comments:

  • Nothing else this week, I think.
2 Likes

Derailments:

  • /drinklesscoke - I just really wanted a nice cold coke after a thirsty walk. Bah.
  • /hourofreading - I wanted to watch the Great British Sewing Bee instead, so I did.

New goals:

  • /taskratchet - Trying out the integration, trying to make sure I remember to use Taskratchet! Conservative rate and lots of leeway at the start for now.

Changes to existing goals:

  • A bunch of my goals got breaks added, either by support (with my wife vouching for me that they were necessary) or by me to kick in later. I derailed on my reading goal; for me, that’s a serious sign that something isn’t right. So, working on that!

TaskRatchet Successes & Failures:

  • Completed: Pick reference images for art.
  • Added: Write to [old penpal].

Other comments:

  • I’m having a lot of trouble focusing at the moment. It’s probably partly the meds and partly anxiety. I’ve also come up in a rash under where my Fitbit sits! Steroid cream and no Fitbit it is (since I’ve also got lesions on my right hand/wrist from a fatal combo of eczema and compulsive skin-picking). I’m trying to be good to myself about this; it’s not being lazy, it’s not knowing I need to do stuff and just not doing it, but a lack of ability to keep my attention on the right things and remember consciously that there’s stuff that needs to be done.
1 Like

Derailments:

  • /water - I didn’t realise I was derailing on that day and then boom!

New goals:

Changes to existing goals:

  • Archived or archiving: /meta_nothungry and /meta_fastfood, /nothungry itself, /rescuetime, /drinklesscoke, /protein, /nailbiting, /checkin, /tabzeroes, /inboxzeroes, /sleep, /water, /statsupdate, /getmoving, /engage… this might not be all of them. Basically, I’m feeling burnt out and some of these goals are proving unhealthy, and others are just so routine that data-entry is actually more difficult than doing the thing!
  • Example of the above: /sleep has been archived because the result was me stressing out about sleep and I already have another goal which approaches the same problem better, /sleeptown. Sleeptown is an app where you create a town by building things overnight… as long as you don’t exit the app. So it’s been enforcing my sleep hygiene and is doing way better than the /sleep goal, which was just driving me loopy with annoyance when I felt well-rested and happy, and Fitbit insisted I’d barely slept.
  • Another example: /nailbiting has proven so successful that I don’t think I will ever derail. My biggest problem is remembering to enter the data. One of the things I’m doing now is trying to touch every goal every day, which means I am entering the data… but this goal essentially clutters up my list and makes data entry that much more difficult.
  • Example the third: /water is supposed to make me drink more water by being hooked into my water consumption in Fitbit. Problem is, measuring that accurately bothers me because I am obsessive, and I’ve been reluctant to refill the bottle with fresher colder water on hot days because then how much did I actually drink??? I don’t want to get into measuring it. I’m just going to create a new goal for simply filling up the water bottle and having it on hand. Aaand done!
  • I’m not going to go through the whole lot here, but I’ve talked them over and experimented a bit and realised… these goals were getting in my way instead of helping, or turning fun things into chores. Beeminder’s supposed to make me more awesome, not more frustrated and definitely not burnt out. Clearly things weren’t working.
  • Almost all my goals have a week of flat coming up. Some of them will need to be trimmed a bit over time, but I just need some space to figure out a new routine.

TaskRatchet Successes & Failures:

  • Completed: Write to [old penpal].
  • Added: Write Poke2 review.

Other comments:

  • I have 54 Beeminder goals, even after weeding out all those goals mentioned above.
  • I’m feeling a little burnt out and I’m not sure how to address it. Hopefully this reorganisation is the first step!
1 Like

Derailments:

  • I think I missed mentioning derailments on /gameofbooks2020 and /protein. It was just before I realised my goals were out of hand and ended up putting in tons of breaks and cancelling other goals.

New goals:

  • N/a.

Changes to existing goals:

  • I’ve put in a little more break on /sciencematters again since they’re still not uploading new material… sigh.

TaskRatchet Successes & Failures:

  • Completed: Write Poke2 review.

Other comments:

  • It’s been a quiet week, but I’m feeling about ready to get back to it!
1 Like