shanaqui's Beeminder Journal

Life
161

Derailments:

  • /clockoff - But I called non-legit, because it was due to a long-running meeting that I was only aware of from the day before. (Meetings are always an exception, per my fine print – I don’t want to end up cutting short a meeting that’s important in some way just to avoid going over my working hours cap.) I provided proof with a screenshot showing the meeting was arranged last minute.
  • /shelfappreciation - This is my goal for spending some regular time browsing my own shelves, to keep me aware of what’s there. I really intended to do this one, and then it was suddenly midnight. Oops.

New goals:

  • /bellonaclub - A new reading goal for one of the books from the ‘shelf of abandoned books’, Dorothy L. Sayers’ The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club. I actually love the Peter Wimsey books, I can’t believe I managed to stall on one of these. I expect this to go fast! Standard rules: 5 pages a day, autoratchet to never gain buffer.
  • /thefirebird - Ditto, for Susanna Kearsley’s The Firebird.
  • /thestoryofwales - Aaand ditto, for Jon Gower’s The Story of Wales.

Changes to existing goals:

  • /beneaththeworldasea - Archived! I finished the book, and I tentatively used the trick @mary taught me for making a goal that’s reached its end total (but not its implied end date) archiveable as of the next deadline (ratchet it to 0 days remaining). It worked!
  • /digginguparmageddon - Finished the book, archived the goal!
  • /ninecoacheswaiting - You’ve guessed it. I’m finding this method reaaaally powerful for shifting books off my shelf of abandoned books.
  • /waterbalance - I’m overachieving so drastically, there’s currently no point. The need is covered by my /hidrate goal, which is also autodata and trucks along quite happily without any intervention from me. So this is now archived.
  • /bodyweight - Every time I do a particular set of exercises, which are pretty integral to my bodyweight workouts, my shoulder is frozen for the next day or two. None of the OTC painkillers we have are touching it, so I paid the rabbit tax (i.e. included a cute pic of one of my bunnies) and Jon kindly gave me two weeks off. I’ll reassess before the two weeks are up and figure out a new routine if necessary.
  • /bsupport & /todoistzero - Both got a week-long break, because I’m taking a holiday starting on Thursday and these goals are exclusively work-related!

TaskRatchet Successes & Failures:

  • Failed: N/a.

Other comments:

  • I think my medication increase has helped a lot; it’s amazing to me to go from ‘everything is frightening’ to ‘ah, that’s weird, I’ll keep an eye on it’ to ‘it’s probably nothing’ in the space of a few days. I’d say I wish I could bottle this, but apparently someone already did…
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162

Derailments:

  • N/a.

New goals:

  • N/a; still working on the book goals I added last week, and I don’t have my course schedule yet

Changes to existing goals:

TaskRatchet Successes & Failures:

  • Failed: N/a.

Other comments:

  • It’s been a pretty quiet week for me! Holidays are nice. Three days left.
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163

Derailments:

  • N/a.

New goals:

  • /lshtm_biostatistics - Apparently I should study about 150 hours for this course, so I’ve set a goal to spend 150 hours on it by the month before the final exam (which is worth 100% of my grade :scream:). I am wildly enthusiastic about the epidemiology half of this course, but dreading the biostatistics a bit. Still, @adamwolf and @dreev have been kindly helping me remind myself of how to do algebra. I am so lucky in my friends. :blue_heart:
  • /lshtm_biology - Same, except it’s a final assignment, not an exam. I’m actually better at exams when they don’t involve too many numbers, so I’m a bit sad about that. In any case, I’ve never actually tried to study the proper number of hours recommended before; I usually do quite a bit less, and get good but not stellar grades. I’m assured that beeminding it is absolutely transformative.
  • /ankicreate - For creating Anki cards to help me review concepts learned each week! I plan to go through my notes each Sunday and create cards; I’ve been putting symbols in the margins for key concepts to put in there, but also plan to read over it and see what’s sticking and what isn’t, in order to add the latter as cards too.
  • /newsflesh_feed - Back to my shelf of abandoned books! Next up is my reread of Mira Grant’s Feed, which stalled early in the pandemic. Time for more zombies! Same deal as usual: goal of five a day, autoratchet so it’s always one day from derailing.
  • /changeyourmind - And here’s a goal for reading Michael Pollan’s How to Change Your Mind: The New Science of Psychedelics. Same deal again!

Changes to existing goals:

  • /thefirebird - For some reason right now it looks like this derailed before archival, but it never did and it just got archived because I hit the end-total… so it looks a bit ugly, alas.
  • /clockoff - This goal got a bump put in it to let me put in a few extra hours a week to make up for my holiday, for a couple of weeks. I dislike the way it looks with the isolines very much, so I may retroactively remove the bump… but then my datapoints will look like I derailed, so I’m kind of hesitant. Maybe I’ll just set the x-min so you can’t see the bump anymore.

TaskRatchet Successes & Failures:

  • Failed: N/a.

Other comments:

  • “lshtm” is an acronym for “London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine”, so I promise it does not violate our general preference for goal slugs that are memorable and make sense. And this way any goals I make will be easy to tell apart from my old goals for my OU studies.
  • Aaaand the holiday’s over! And studying has started, as you can tell from the new proliferation of studying-related goals. I haven’t decided about a rate and setup for a goal to review my Anki cards, though. Any thoughts, o bright sparks of the forum?
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164

Derailments:

  • /teeth - Sigh. This happens periodically because basically I can never remember to do it. Beeminder keeps me on track more than I would by myself, so it’s doing the job, though.

New goals:

  • /bc_goblinemperor - Legendary Book Club of Habitica pick of the month! A favourite of mine, so I barely need the graph, but I’ve been known to accidentally abandon even my favourites halfway through on occasion.
  • /bc_blackleopard - Also a book club pick. I don’t like it much, so oh boy am I gonna need this goal.
  • /newsflesh_deadline - I finished up Feed, so I figured I’d make a new goal for the second book right away and maybe one day I’ll get to the end of the trilogy.
  • /stuckvaccine - I am, well, kinda stuck on reading Stuck: How Vaccine Rumours Start And Why They Don’t Go Away by Heidi Larson. It’s really short, so it shouldn’t take me long to polish it off, but it’s taken me more than 3 days to finish it, so by my Shelf of Abandoned Books rule, it needs a Beeminder goal.

Changes to existing goals:

  • /newsflesh_feed - Finished and archived!
  • /kushielsdart - Finished and archived.
  • /shelfappreciation - I’ve scheduled a month-long break in this goal, because useful as it is to be reminded of books I’m dying to read (I swear I have the object permanence of a goldfish once a book is on my shelves), I have a lot on the Shelf of Abandoned Books that I need to finish reading first. Might need to extend this break for longer, but we’ll see how I’m doing.

TaskRatchet Successes & Failures:

  • Failed: N/a.

Other comments:

  • I wanted to make a Rescuetime goal to track and reduce the time I spend checking Slack outside work hours, but I can’t get Rescuetime to track properly (dear Rescuetime, I’ve definitely played more than 6 minutes of Hades today, 100% guaranteed). So that plan’s on hold while I figure that out!
  • I also need to remember to make a goal to read Kushiel’s Chosen, but I want to check whether the folks I read Kushiel’s Dart with are doing a readalong for it as well.
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165

Derailments:

  • /clockoff - I forgot to mention this, but it was non-legit anyway. It originally happened because I went over on a meeting while training a new recruit. Meetings are in my fine print. It did demonstrate a failure point with this goal, though: once I go over the limit and derail, there’s nothing to stop me just working on because, well, already derailed! That happened in this case too, and I briefly considered letting the charge stand… but I really wouldn’t have carried on without that initial derailment.
  • /clockoff - You’re not seeing double, it happened twice. Also because of a meeting. I very carefully did not do more after going over on this one.
  • /writethesereviews - I firmly intended to have this done, and then it was after midnight and I thought… yeah. Just let me buy the slight flat spot here, I need it.
  • /teeth - Yes. Again. I just forgot.
  • /bc_blackleopard - I just really couldn’t get into it that day. It’s not an easy book, and this isn’t one of my “just five pages a day” goals (it’s set to let me finish the book within a month, for a book club). Bleh.
  • /gmailzero - What a week. I don’t even know, here. It just happened.

New goals:

  • /biostatreviews - I’m not leaving learning via flashcards to the end this time! I’ve set this to 5 reviews/week for now and we’ll see how it goes. I don’t plan to do a ton every day or anything, but I want to be constantly checking in and finding my weak points.
  • /bio101reviews - Same deal, different class.
  • /breathe - A review of several studies found that abdominal breathing exercises can help strengthen the diaphragm and help to control GORD. Since I’m struggling mightily with GORD right now, it’s worth a try. I’ve made an IFTTT button on my phone which I can press every time I’ve done 15 breaths with focus on abdominal breathing; I need to do 10 of those in a day. (It’s what got suggested on a GORD forum, and it’s a place to start…) My main worry is remembering to do them at a sensible hour so I don’t have to just sit there and do 150 breaths in one go.
  • /worrytime - CBT homework. Meh. I should do this every day, but I’ve set it to 5/week in case I struggle, because… well, struggling’s clearly happening at the moment.

Changes to existing goals:

TaskRatchet Successes & Failures:

  • Failed: N/a.

Other comments:

  • Wow, I did not realise how badly I was doing this week until I wrote this up. Hooboy.
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166

Derailments:

  • N/a

New goals:

Changes to existing goals:

  • /newsflesh_blackout - Whoops, I went ahead and did it! Goal completed and archived.
  • A bunch of my goals got some extra leeway and/or archived, due to health-reasons. Long story short: anxiety is bad and acid reflux is worse. Or sometimes it goes the other way round.
  • Separately from the above, any Fitbit-linked goals got archived as once again I can’t wear my Fitbit. I think I know why I’m blistering underneath it, but I need to let the skin heal before I can fix that.

TaskRatchet Successes & Failures:

  • Failed: N/a.

Other comments:

  • I’m hoping to get back on track this week – with a little help from Taskratchet applying some extra pressure, maybe.
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167

Derailments:

  • /breathe - I kinda just let this derail to get it out of my hair, because I wanted to archive it (see below).

New goals:

  • /murderouscontagion - This book should be pretty up my alley, but it’s more historical than scientific, and it’s dragging a bit. I should’ve made this goal last week, to be honest, on my “struggling for ~3 days” rule. As ever, it’s 5 pages a day, with an auto-ratchet to make sure I stay on the hook for those five pages even if I read 25 the day before.
  • /eagleoftheninth - This book is a childhood favourite, and I can’t believe I got stuck on it… and hopefully this graph is just a gentle reminder to keep reading it at my own gentle pace.
  • /fakelaw - I expected to take a while with this book, so I created a goal pre-emptively, based on my chapter-by-chapter experience with the Secret Barrister’s other book…

Changes to existing goals:

  • /fakelaw - …only to devour it in just over 24 hours. Finished and archived!
  • /breathe - Set this up to archive because it just isn’t working – beeminding it, that is; I have no meaningful data by this point on whether the breathing exercises help with GORD in any way. I’m just not doing it, Beeminder or no Beeminder, unless I have to sit there and literally do 150 breaths in a tearing hurry before midnight. I can’t put my finger on why it’s not working, but this was getting more irritating than helpful.

TaskRatchet Successes & Failures:

  • Failed: N/a.

Other comments:

  • I actually wrote a blog post this week (well, I wrote it before now, but it’s been published now) on the long process of figuring out how to beemind reading. It encapsulates a lot of things I figured out in this thread, so if you’re interested to read: Beeminding the Right Thing: A Bookcase Study. (The pun, good or bad, belongs to @dreev. I just agreed it steered people better on the content of the post than my original title, which was “Beeminding the Right Thing: A Case Study”. I find it funny, though.) Anyway, I think the blog post talks through some good stuff about the process of figuring out how to beemind something, which can be less a process of figuring out what you want to do as figuring out what’s stopping you.
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168

Derailments:

  • /hidrate - Honestly shocked this is the first time; I really slowed down on my water drinking after a couple of weeks of being good about it. If anyone else uses Hidrate, seriously, let me know. I could use some extra accountability.

New goals:

  • /leviathanwakes - I’m starting over reading The Expanse series by James S.A. Corey, starting with a reread of Leviathan Wakes. Also, it’s sci-fi month! Since I’d like to read at least a few sci-fi books during the month, this graph is on 50/day – but I’ll give it an easier autoratchet just in case that isn’t very sustainable.

Changes to existing goals:

  • /thefifthseason - It’s been a long time coming, but fiiiinally I’ve read The Fifth Season, and it was worth it. Need to pick up the next book soon!

TaskRatchet Successes & Failures:

  • Failed: N/a.

Other comments:

  • I need to add some new goals for clearing out the Shelf of Abandoned Books, but not tonight, oof.
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169

Derailments:

  • /gmailzero - Ugh, I was distracted and complaining online about the Welsh team’s shoddy performance in the Ireland v Wales match, and then lo and behold… I derailed. Legit, though; I could’ve noticed.

New goals:

  • /feelingblue - It’s time for a new batch of goals, a la Beeminding the Right Thing. One target for feeling better about things is my sleep schedule: I’d like to get it regular, and sleep for a bit longer. We have a SAD lamp, though it’s only 400 lux, so that will give me a start for helping me wake up in the mornings. The rate is set to 5/week, because currently my morning routine is pants on a weekend.
  • /riseandshine - Speaking of which, I’ve created a daily on Habitica for a morning routine. It has a checklist of 5 items. To start with, until the habit is starting to establish, 2/5 is enough to let me check it off… and I’m using the Habitica integration, so if I check off that daily, I get a +1 on my Beeminder graph. I’m setting thing to 6.5 days a week; I can gain a little buffer by being very good about it, but with such a low threshold, I want to make sure I do it every day. I think this goal will help me start working days with the right attitude, and keep a good schedule.
  • /slackoff - I spend too much time on Slack! This one is a 6/week goal, so I can gain buffer at a reasonable pace if I slip… which I will. I’m permitting myself short checks of Slack via my phone, and I can restart Slack if there’s an emergency (one of the sites I work on is down, for instance, or someone I need to sub in for is sick)… but otherwise, no more 24/7 availability! The exception is Habitica’s mod Slack, since that’s meant to be done in my spare time, but the notifications for that also turn off automatically after a certain time.
  • /calibanswar - Onto the next book of The Expanse!

Changes to existing goals:

  • /leviathanwakes - Finished the book, archived the goal!
  • /bc_blackleopard - Same here. I would probably not have tried to finish this book without Beeminder, yeesh. Hard going.
  • I put breaks into /lshtm_biostatistics and /lshtm_biology in order to get those back to a point where they felt less overwhelming…
  • …and now I’m trying another experiment. Until December, I’ve put in a big increase in the weekly time to spend on the principles of biology class, and a big decrease for biostatistics. I still want to make some progress with biostatistics in the meantime, but I want to push ahead with principles of biology. I’m hoping I can actually finish the course material pretty quickly, since I literally just finished my biology degree two years ago. Biostatistics has an exam, so I’d like to start focusing on that a lot more towards the end of the time – but principles of biology is an open-book assignment, so I’m less worried. But we’ll see how my little trial period feels during the next couple of weeks.
  • /gmailzero - I decided that being allowed five emails was too many and I’ve set the road to slope down to allow me only two.

TaskRatchet Successes & Failures:

  • N/a. I am really not using Taskratchet very much at the moment, because money is a little tight and I have a lot committed on Beeminder. Maybe in the new year I’ll make a goal for this!

Other comments:

  • I promised I’d make some more goals for books on my Shelf of Abandoned Books, and I really should soon because I went through my shelves and added a few more books (I’ve decided to add the next book in any series I’m partway through, for example). However, I just added a bunch of new goals, and I prefer my list to be manageable, so I’m going to give it a week more to see how the new goals shake out.
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Derailments:

  • /hidrate - Argh, this goal and the smart water bottle were working so well for me, and now… Bleh. It doesn’t help that drinking so much water seems to activate my reflux, but not drinking as much exacerbates different issues. SIGH.

New goals:

  • /iron - Got restarted (possibly even last week already) after I realised I wasn’t having medication side effects, I was anaemic again. @hiddenspark’s facepalm was heard around the world. (This isn’t the first time.)
  • /networkeffect - I can’t believe I didn’t just mainline the latest Murderbot book as soon as I got access to the ARC, but there you go, my bad. But, ah, I sped through it…

Changes to existing goals:

  • /networkeffect - Sooo it’s finished and archived.
  • /murderouscontagion - All done!
  • /calibanswar - And this one too!
  • My gmailzero goal got archived with immediate effect after agreement with some accountability buddies on Habitica that it was not working out, plus my wife vouching that I was not feeling up to doing it.

TaskRatchet Successes & Failures:

  • N/a

Other comments:

  • Tired, tired, tired. Anaemia sucks, y’all. It’s probably that which is really sapping my energy, so here’s hoping I pull out of it and start re-establishing my safety buffer on some of these goals, 'cause ouch!
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171

Derailments:

  • /nofudge - I had tons of buffer and then it snuck up and bit me. Ouch.

New goals:

  • /metazoa - We return to the Shelf of Abandoned Books and my usual 5 pages/day rates and days of safety capped at 1. Technically, Metazoa isn’t abandoned, it’s just a really slow one for me. I’m actually contemplating abandoning it, but we’ll find out soon…
  • /progressofacrime - I stalled out on The Progress of a Crime (Julian Symons) almost a month ago now. It would’ve been so topical to finish it on Bonfire Night, sigh.
  • /goldilocks - I stalled on this one near the start of the pandemic, and I’m annoyed I never got back to it. Starting over from the beginning and hoping to read it pretty fast, as Laura Lam’s books normally get their hooks into me prettttty good.
  • /treadlightly - A goal for using my new treadmill! More about this one in another thread!
  • /screensoff - I hadn’t known about being able to set custom schedules on Rescuetime, so when a user mentioned using them to create a Rescuetime alert and then using an IFTTT trigger to send the data to a goal, it sounded like genius and I agreed to be held accountable for making a goal with that concept myself! Behold, my /screensoff goal, which is starting out somewhat permissive (for instance, the alert doesn’t trigger during weekends, and the rate allows 1.5/week). We’ll see how it goes.

Changes to existing goals:

  • I decided to continue the experiment with /lshtm_biostatistics and /lshtm_biology. I’m steaming through the biology module and I don’t think I’ll even nearly need 150 hours to complete it and the assessments. I’d like to get the actual studying part finished soon, and then do my formative assignments as soon as possible so I have plenty of time to work on any of the feedback I get… or just focus on biostats.
  • For /riseandshine, I’m raising my requirement to 3/5 in order to be allowed to check off the daily.

TaskRatchet Successes & Failures:

  • N/a

Other comments:

  • I think that’s it! It’s not been a great week, and I’ve lost a lot of safety buffer on my goals, but I have thoughts on improving matters.
172

Derailments:

New goals:

  • /il_thelostplot - From the Shelf of Abandoned Books comes my reread of The Lost Plot, since I’ll be getting the newest book in the series on my doormat sometime in the next week or two. Standard reading goal rules: 5 pages/day, auto-ratchet allowing only 1 day of buffer.

Changes to existing goals:

  • /goldilocks - I finished reading Laura Lam’s Goldilocks, so that’s archived now!
  • Further changes to lshtm_biostatistics and lshtm_biology! Biostatistics is now flattened through to January, so I can go hard on the principles of biology class and just get it done. It should be easy; I only graduated from a biology degree a year and a half ago!

TaskRatchet Successes & Failures:

  • N/a

Other comments:

  • I sense the /hidrate goal is going to come off the rails again soon. Problem is, drinking water seems to almost inevitably cause my acid reflux to flare up. Not positive what to do about that yet; it may be linked to my anxiety medication (since calcium channels are implicated in GORD, and guess what pregabalin blocks). A meds taper is likely to cause a certain amount of disruption to my goals… let’s see what happens.
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Derailments:

  • N/a!

New goals:

  • /il_themortalword - I finished The Lost Plot, and I decided out of an excess of caution to start a goal for the next book.
  • /il_thesecretchapter - I finished The Mortal Word, so I suspect this is even more excess of caution, but it’ll be kind of nice to have graphs for the series. (Barring the first three books… but I’m sure I’ll reread them someday.)
  • /pillbox - My wife bought me a weekly AM/PM pillbox, so now I have to fill it on Saturday nights and maybe then I can retire the goals for vitamin D and iron!

Changes to existing goals:

TaskRatchet Successes & Failures:

  • Now using this to commit to doing a section of my studies per day! (Aside from tomorrow, which is “create new Anki flashcards day”. I have 15 pages of notes to turn into cards, so that’s not any kind of cop-out!) Yesterday: the complement cascade. Today: inflammation. Monday: phagocytes. I’m hoping to finish the last 11 topics before Christmas!

Other comments:

  • I feel like maybe I have a few too many goals at the moment, but the pillbox goal will help consolidate things a bit.
  • I’m also now requiring 4/5 tasks in my checklist to be completed in order to check off my morning routine goal. Which could also aid in consolidation of habits, because the checklist includes cleaning my teeth. On the other hand, I’ve had my /teeth goal since September 2018… seems a shame to end it now!
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Derailments:

  • N/a!

New goals:

Changes to existing goals:

  • /earning - I’ve upped the amount required to £70/day, owing to extra money coming in… and extra student loan obligations due to go out.
  • /hidrate - This goal was dropped to 1000ml/day for two weeks while I figure out a problem I’m having with drinking water triggering reflux.
  • /lshtm_biology - This goal got a three-day break owing to the attentions of an electrician, who found unsafe wiring in our house and therefore had to have our power off for most of two days, right at the time when I need to study.
  • A whole bunch of goals got a couple of days off over Christmas. I tweaked my max safe days on /bsupport so that won’t get swallowed, so must remember to change it back to 7 later.
  • /ankicreate - This got overwhelming as I increased the amount I was studying, so instead of creating cards once a week, I’m going to do it at the end of each day. I’ve set the rate to 6/week and made it kick in right away.
  • /il_thesecretchapter - Finished and archived!

Other comments:

  • It’s been a weird week, and kind of rough to manage. Here’s hoping next week goes better.
175

This will be the last update in this thread, since it’s getting pretty intimidatingly unwieldy! I will start a new one for 2021.

Derailments:

  • /teeth - Sigh. One day I’ll get this one down. One day.

New goals:

  • I’m a bit frazzled, so no new goals this week!

Changes to existing goals:

  • /worrytime - This is archiving; I haven’t written anything down to worry about later for a couple of weeks.
  • /thespoiltkill - I finished this the day after making the goal, just to get it done. It was pretty depressing.

Other comments:

  • Hope everyone who celebrates had a restful and restorative Christmas!