shanaqui's Beeminder Journal

I did have a dunwanna goal! And yep, it was for when I just didn’t want to do something, although it was a do-more goal with +1 whenever I felt like I really did not wanna and I did the thing anyway. I ended up archiving it because there was no chance of me ever derailing – I couldn’t think of a way to formulate it that was quite robust enough about what counted.

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Derailments: /neatscience; I didn’t get round to it in time, and by the time I was about to derail I didn’t have the time to put in the research to do the right kind of post. $10 fee for not prepping ahead? Okay.

New goals: /nouptime, /breakfasttime, /cuddleclair and /nosetonose have been reborn with +6 per week. That’s mostly just so if I do slip and don’t cuddle a bun for a day, it doesn’t stay permanently in emergency days. I need to remember to add an autoratchet to these so that doesn’t also attract vast amounts of safety buffer.

I’ve also now got a /craftathon goal. Me and Lisa got tons and tons done when we were crafting together frantically before Christmas, and my /crafttogether goal was meant to be making sure we keep doing that. We are, but the goal is in an awkward place where it’s always just about manageable, but only lets me keep up with my bookblanket, not enough other stuff. So /craftathon is now enforcing a Saturday or Sunday spent mostly crafting together. And I should run, because that’s today…

Changes to existing goals: /gym is becoming more /regularwalks, but I don’t think I’ll bother changing the name. Gym membership is expensive and walking round our local park is cheap. :laughing: Re: /enteringmeals, which I mentioned last week, as of Monday (I work well with arbitrary deadlines) it’s full details of everything being entered into my food log, or no +1 for that meal.

Other comments: /gameofbooks2019 is going really, ridiculously well. I’ve clearly got the points system pretty down pat this year, since most books are averaging out to being worth about the same points, once length/interest/time on my backlog etc are all taken into account. It does mean that /writethosereviews and /bookblanket are never coming due, though, so possibly that needs a rethink.

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Why? I think I’d derail on that frequently.

So British :uk:
This raises a good point: there are goals that you can do last minute, and then goals that take advance planning. Is it worth treating them differently (putting the widgets on different parts of your screen, or indicating in goalnames)? Or maybe beeminding an auxiliary goal (or changing the goal to) “advance plan for goal X”?

Like I have a “get haircut” goal. If the deadline is on a day or at a time she’s not open, maybe it should count to text her to make an appt?

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Because I have depression and anxiety and there are a lot of things I fundamentally do not want to do, starting from getting out of bed every morning. Or working instead of reading (often many times a day!). Or keeping on with this bookmark cross-stitch when I just wanna run off and cross-stitch this tree with rabbits. Or just leaving it for Lisa instead of cleaning out the hutch.

It was too easy to just say, “Yeah, I was kinda resistant to that, +1!”

It is? :laughing: And btw, I’m glad you did not call me English. Full marks!

It’s possible I need a second goal for doing reading and research related to my science blog. :thinking: It’s certainly something I could use a reminder for.

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You made me realise why my version of the dunwanna goal does work for me:

Because for me that includes “log that +1 for buying a free nope ticket right now” for I have log that immediately to not forget it. Turned out this is already quite substantial motivation to just do that thing.
I did not anticipate that this goal would have this effect but I’m glad it does. Which is why I also never derailed on it despite having autoratcheting turned on.

Thinking more about this, this reminds me of a (different) technique to educating little kids: When you offer them an “alternative” to what they should be doing that isn’t really an alternative, tricking them into thinking they have a choice where they really don’t :stuck_out_tongue:

Anyways, here’s my goal:

Which in some ways is the successor of this one:

Given what you said about your dunwanna goal I’m curious to learn whether doing it the other way round would work better for you. In either case, hope this helps and thanks for posting this journal!

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Hmm, yes, that might be a good way of doing it. Avoids the temptation of manufacturing or inflating a dunwanna in order to make it count… yeeees…

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I was very confused reading this. Then I read your exchange with @phi and it made sense. You were thinking back at the end of the day and logging a +1 for anything you did that you were resistant to. Like @phi said, I was thinking you’d have to log it at the time, not that you could go back to think of something.

That’s amazing and makes me want to try it!

Yeah, we always say “around to it” in the US :us: round is only the shape of a circle.

Oh no, I did log it at the time usually, but because it was a do-more goal, there was always an incentive to do something I’d been even slightly reluctant about and then say, “yep, that’s it! I didn’t want to make lunch, and I did, so that’s a +1!” It was within the letter of the goal, but it wasn’t what I was really going for.

Huh, good to know.

Just wait until I start telling people I’ll do something “now in a minute” or something is “over by there”… #taffy

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So it did help! Then that seems legit - you just need a higher rate, like +10 each day instead of +1!

Can you post bunny pictures here? I wanna see em :rabbit2:

Sure, this once! (They each have a twitter account, for general bunny cravings… :wink:)

Heeeeere’s Hulk, trying to hide from me in the worst place imaginable for hiding from me:

Breakfast:

Here’s Biscuit, trying to figure out what I’m reading:

And here’s Eclair, chillin’ like a villain:

[Totally relevant for the forum. Here are the four main causes of my akrasia…]

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So a day early, as I don’t like anything to go into beemergency mode if I can help it:

Derailments: /upanddressed, because although I was up, I got distracted and was still in my jammies at 2pm… And /kingdomhearts again, because it’s pledgeless and the first thing to go. I might start letting it charge me again. It’s not a critical goal in any way, but I was making more time for myself when it was a thing I had to do.

New goals: None that I can think of.

Changes to existing goals: None that I can think of, apart from /kingdomhearts going back to having a pledge.

Other comments: I don’t think /ufos is working as I’d hoped to make me finish things. So the list is now locked: I cannot add any other projects. I can work on other projects, but I can’t make them part of this goal now.

I did finish a project this week, apart from washing it, pressing it, backing it, and turning it into the bookmark it’s meant to be. (That sounds like a lot! But the stitching is done.)

[Pattern credit: HeartyCraftology.]

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Another week, how?

Derailments: /bookbed, my goal for going to bed early and reading with my wife. Basically, I didn’t want to just phone it in and call it good, we were already late to bed, so I let it derail.

/activeminutes, which I set to enforce 10 minutes of activity minimum every day, no rounding up. Then I miscalculated how far we were likely to park from a venue and somehow ended up with 0 active minutes. Whoops.

New goals: /activeminutes. Actually set up exactly like a user’s goal, because I like to do that to make sure things are working right.

Changes to existing goals: None that I can think of!

Other comments: I did finish another project absolutely fully for /ufos, though it was one started since the beginning of the year. Twitter post with the images, credit for the pattern, a couple more details and a progress pic, and just one pic here:

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And yet another week gone!

Derailments: /kingdomhearts – I finished Reverse/Rebirth, and just didn’t feel like sitting down to watch whatever they’ve done with 358/2 right now, so haven’t done that yet. The derailment was $0, and I just reset the mercy to give me a long time after a derailment.

New goals: I keep complaining on social media, so I’m trying to be a bit more positive, hence /tweethappy. 1/day rate to make sure I post something positive every day.

Changes to existing goals: I don’t think I’ve made any this week!

Other comments: Another success for /ufos – I finished the elephant cross-stitch completely with proper backing and interfacing and so on. My mother will have just got it today (UK Mother’s Day). Wonder what she thought of it… Link to the finished product, of course!

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And it’s time to check in again already.

Derailments: /neatscience derailed, basically because I still haven’t come up with a good way of ensuring I have something to write about.

New goals: I don’t think there’s anything new this week!

Changes to existing goals: There’s a flat spot from 5th to 11th on a bunch of my goals that don’t make sense while I’m away from home. It’s my grandmother-in-law’s 90th birthday party, so I’m here in (shock, horror) Europe to attend the party.

Other comments: I’m way behind on making motifs, but /bookblanket isn’t anywhere near stinging me. The method @zedmango suggested worked great… until I read a lot at once, and got a lot of buffer from that, and then got distracted by a whole bunch of other craft projects. Sooo… I need to think up some workaround, maybe a meta goal… HELP?

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It always struck me as odd how many¹ Brits refer to continental Europe simply as “Europe”. To me this has a ring to it as if they felt it was something separate from them. Something they don’t consider themselves to be part of. Subtly engraving this connotation into their minds every time someone used the abbreviation.
Or it’s just me putting way too much thought into this use of a language that is notorious for abbreviating each and everything that’s not on a tree on the count of three :slight_smile:

But where are my manners! OMG HI @SHANAQUI WELCOME TO THE EUROPES! Enjoy your stay :partying_face:

¹ Purely anecdotal evidence from a small sample size of me being over there a couple times in the past. Brits would walk up to me as I tried to figure out the train station time table – not so much for offering help but because they needed help themselves. Eventually I realised that the platform number I was looking for was simply not on there and you had to listen to the barely understandable speaker system while you hurriedly grab your luggage to catch the train that was just announced to have arrived 7 platforms away from you.
Your train conductors are super chill though! I really appreciated that.

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I think so! I used it consciously and ironically, because Brexit.

My dad’s favourite quote is an old newspaper headline in the UK, when there was heavy fog in the Channel. “Mainland Europe Cut Off From Britain”.

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This week finds me back in the UK, and incidentally celebrating my beeversary – I’ve been working for Beeminder for 12 months and 2 days!

Derailments: None, mostly because I had breaks in all my goals.

New goals: None so far, but I’m considering one for Beeminding my book-down-try-to-sleep time. Let’s be very clear: it’s better for me to read than lie in bed tossing and turning, yes, I know. But if I don’t even try turning the light out/putting the book down, and don’t sleep until 5am, you get… me today, total space cadet, anxiety-ridden and tired.

Changes to existing goals: I think I made some tweaks on my goals as I got them started up again, but I can’t honestly remember. Oops.

Other comments: I’m really tired. Goodnight!

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Another week, another review! This is a long one since there’s a bunch of new goals and stuff to consider.

Derailments: /enteringmeals derailed, because I realised I was not sticking to the letter of the goal and had been a bit lax about it, and it was time to start over and do better.

New goals: /forest was born! This app locks down your phone so you can’t use any apps/can only use whitelisted apps, or the virtual tree you’re growing dies. This is ridiculously motivating to me, but I’d also like a little sting if I forget to use it. Usually if I do use it, I’ll do plenty of trees, but if I forget, I won’t do any; it’s more the streak I want to maintain, which is why this is also a custom goal with skatesum aggregation – no buffer for me!

/sleeptown was also created since the last review. Similar to Forest, created by the same people, this locks down your phone during the hours you want to sleep. I was talking about some kind of goal that encourages me to actually put my phone/ereader/etc down and try to sleep by a cutoff point, and this is achieving that. Thus, this was born.

Changes to existing goals: /bookbed just got a couple of extra days of buffer because my wife was too tired to go to bed early to read with me. This is a not-uncommon issue, so I need to reformulate the goal to take it into account. I’m thinking of something like +1 when I make the time, regardless of whether it’s actually used for reading in bed, but that seems a bit woolly in that I’m almost always awake enough to read a little before sleep, so I have to guess about whether I’m reasonably allowing enough time for Lisa to be able to read before bed. Any thoughts?

My /bsupport goal, because of a change in my schedule that made TagTime less sense-making, is now running on Toggl entries! At first I was doing that manually, but we got the autodata set up this week, which will make my auto-ratchet much more reliable about keeping me on my toes (since I can’t just not enter data for ages).

/crafttogether was running on very little buffer for ages, but then we started watching Due South and the various adaptations of the Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries while crafting, and that’s led to us being way ahead. So way ahead that it doesn’t even matter that I’m missing about 8 hours of data (estimated). I’m going to go ahead and call that lost, and in future the entries for this goal will include the show and episode title/s, so I can see when data is missing!

Other comments: I’m still way behind on the book blanket, and I still can’t figure out how to make the goal more robust to me reading tons and staying ahead of the need to be caught up. At the moment, a finished book adds +2 to the other graph, but I’ve been reading so much that I’m nowhere near derailing, even though I’m at least 15 motifs behind. :scream: I think I’ll reduce the IFTTT trigger to adding +1 instead of +2, at least until I’m caught up. I’ve finished some major craft projects recently, the ones with real deadlines, so I’m back to stitching now. http://shanaqui.commits.to/change_IFTTT_recipe_for_book_blanket

For /gameofbooks2019, I discovered there’s a column in my spreadsheet that hasn’t been counted since the beginning of March, so I have some serious work to do correcting the data. Fortunately, that can only put me further ahead on the goal! http://shanaqui.commits.to/correct_data_for_GOB2019

For /ufos, I finished another project! That gives me more than a month’s leeway for the first time, and the auto-ratchet kicked in to keep the pressure on!

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Aaaand another (tiring, long) week bites the dust.

Derailments: As far as I remember, none this week!

New goals: /planahead came into being in order to make me plan my day in my bulletjournal the night before, rather than get halfway through the day and then try to set goals (which are inevitably more realistic and thus less actually useful in pushing me to get stuff done).

/bookblanket_catchup has been brewing for a while, obviously. When I made it, I was 24 motifs behind. I gave myself a rate of 2/day. This goal is a short-term one which will be archived when I’m done, and resurrected when necessary. (Hopefully it won’t be necessary again, but you never know.)

/reviewcommitsto, because my percentage of commitments fulfilled slipped largely due to not checking commits.to at all. That’s now fixed, and it’s reminding me to actually use commits.to more!

Changes to existing goals: None, I think!

Other comments: I think everything’s all good this week. Well, no, everything isn’t, and my Beeminder goals are rather jumping all over me – deadlines don’t come singly, they band together to steamroller you when you looked away for a second – but it’ll be fine.

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What, Saturday again already?!

Derailments: Gah. I forced /inhaler, because I realised I’d marked it as done just before going to do it, and then hadn’t actually done it, two days in a row. (Because my spacer wasn’t with it, and I had to look for my spacer, but then I got distracted by something else…) So now that’s back on track and my spacer and inhaler are in the same place again, right by the sink so I can do it just before brushing my teeth.

/mits went as well, mostly because I was being bad at picking what the real most important tasks were. Which is not necessarily part of the goal – I haven’t decided whether I can switch my most important tasks on the day of, and since I hadn’t decided and any decision when you’re about to derail would be weighted in favour of not derailing, I decided then was a bad time to decide. I think I’m in favour of being allowed to switch my tasks IF I submit them as a new 0 datapoint before 2pm on the day of.

/inboxzeroes also careened off the tracks, essentially because I just got too much email that deserved time and effort, and I had no time and effort to give.

New goals: /wyrdandwonder, because someone bet me I couldn’t read all 22 books from my Wyrd & Wonder reading list in May, and even a bet with no stakes is fairly irresistible to me. I’ve read four books from the list so far.

Changes to the existing goals: Put off /kingdomhearts a bit more, a little too late, so I’m going to need to do something with it this week. Which kinda sucks because I started playing the Spyro remake instead…

Other comments: Despite the derailments this week, I’m feeling okay. I’d like to get things a bit more under control, but that’d be easier if I didn’t get distracted by a book all evening. Ahem.

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