Show off your goals and how you're Beeminding them!!

Akrasia
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I looked around to see some successful use cases and examples of what people are Beeminding and I couldn’t find much information in an organized way.

Then the user @shanaqui suggested me to create this post.

To make things more structured (after all, we’re all data nerds) I’d like to suggest this initial structure:

What I’m Beeminding:
Link:
Integration used and some context:
Personal motivation for it: (optional)
How successful I am so far: (optional)

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Alrighty, I’ll get us started with arguably my most impactful goal so far:

What I’m beeminding: The number of hours I work in a day, keeping them below 6.5.
Link: https://www.beeminder.com/shanaqui/clockoff
Integration used and some context: Toggl, so it started as a do-more goal. It tracks my cumulative hours worked, so everything for all my different contracts. I converted it to a custom goal and flipped the road over to become a do-less goal, and then modified it to be non-cumulative, and flat at 6.5. I decided on that instead of just making a do-less goal because there’s no fussing about with auto-ratchet or something, and it’s easy to compare days across time.
Personal motivation for it: As a freelancer, I set my own hours, and it’s tempting to work as much as possible every day. It wasn’t very healthy, though. I still work every day, though I’ve been decreasing my weekend hours, but this goal sets a firm and healthy cap on my hours.
How successful I am so far: I’ve derailed a few times; some of those were non-legit, because they happened due to things it was hard to plan ahead for (like meetings of unknown length). I’ve found it has the effect I want, though, and I’ve found myself returning to some of my online haunts and offline habits that I missed but felt I had no time for.

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What I’m beeminding: User-Visible Improvements to Beeminder
Link: https://beeminder.com/meta/uvi
Integration used and some context: Manual (though could be automated with our Twitter integration)
Personal motivation for it: To keep Beeminder moving forward and demonstrate to users that we’re always improving
How successful I am so far: Beeminder unambiguously wouldn’t exist without this!

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I have quite a few examples, and I talk about them a lot in my thread, so here you go! Looking at my page, each goal has a little written purpose in its description. My apologies for not keeping with your format. :slightly_smiling_face:

Writing
  • Writing: This keeps track of each word that I type on Draft, which eventually will become a finished work within one of the following:
    • Blog: My current blog, connected via IFTTT on Medium for ease of automation. I’m still trying to find my voice and what I’d like to consistently write about, but I am going to be starting to post bi-weekly.
    • Journalbar: That’s my Bee journal thread! A side-blog where I force myself to review and reflect what I want/ought to be doing vs. what I’m actually doing.
    • Morning Pages: Using Google Docs and URLminder, since that allows you to change the 12am default deadline. Under construction still. :sweat_smile:
    • Poetry: I’m currently writing a new poetry chapbook, and publish one new piece per week via Tumblr and IFTTT.
  • Twitter: Not exactly related to my other writing, but I’ve been using Twitter as a private, short journal for daily summaries and progress.
Productivity
  • Productive Time: A daily count of software and website monitoring with RescueTime. Recently had to increase the rate to 3 hrs/day, since I’ve been on the computer so much.
    • GitHub: Keeping track of the commits I push to my coding repositories, also had to increase the rate since I’ve been programming a lot.
    • Courses: Keeping track of the courses I’ve been taking, currently on a good tutorial about SCSS and Tailwind!
  • Distracting Time: Ideally, I want to be spending all of my recreational time on analogue, since I have to spend so much time in front of a screen for work, also with RescueTime.
Physical Health
  • Daily Activity: I’m aiming for 10k steps a day, and I usually take an hour-long walk or bike ride daily–I find it really helps with my ability to work mentally, via FitBit.
  • Sleeping: Sleep hygiene is a major issue for me. I need to convert this to a custom goal since I also want to cap the amount that I’m sleeping to further improve my consistency, also via FitBit.
  • Weight: Tracking the fluctuations in my weight, also also via FitBit.
  • Foodlog: Manually writing down everything I eat during the day. Definitely should be transferred to something more automatic (like w/ FitBit) to actually count calories and nutrition.
Mental Health
  • Gratitude: Manually writing down one thing that I’m grateful for, each day.
  • Meditation: Tracking the amount of time I meditate each day via Apple Health integration on the iOS application and various meditation apps. Currently just doing simple timed meditations with Insight Timer.
  • Prayer: Practicing the Rosary prayer via the Rosarium app on iOS which has a nifty Beeminder integration.
Lifestyle / Misc.
  • Duolingo: Currently in the emerald league! Aiming for two lessons in French per day.
    • Clozemaster: Similar to Duolingo, just tracking the amount of points I earn per day. A good supplementary that’s easy to add.
  • Books: Currently taking out audiobooks on Libby which are not only free, but also give me only two weeks to make sure I get through the entire book.
  • Jobs: Tracking with Google Sheets and IFTTT, I add the company, job title, date to a new line on the spreadsheet, and that triggers IFTTT to add the data to Beeminder.
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Okay, so, some background here… I’m nearing the end of a bachelor of law degree and as any student ever has done I’m prone to bouts of procrastination and lack of motivation (especially given the current worldwide happenings).

What I’m Beeminding: Study hours!
Link: https://www.beeminder.com/hiddenspark/studyingtime
Integration used and some context: I choose not to use an intergration for this, although I could have incorporated toggl easily enough, because it wasn’t about how much I actually studied per se. If I studied more than an hour? Great, but I didn’t feel as if I really need to know exactly how much. Which means that technically my units are a little vague. There is one rule I’ve set for myself though… I can only round down, I can’t round up the hours.
Personal Motivation For It: When my depression rears its ugly mug I can find it hard to self-motivate. So, there’s a little push here to help me. Plus, it ensures I do it more regularly and don’t binge my study sessions into 7 hours in one day or something silly.
How Successful I Am So Far: I’d like to say relatively successful… we’ll see when my grades come back :wink:

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Ooh, it does? I didn’t know about that one! We should help promote it. See also Code and Catholicism: Beeminding Praying and Integrating Beeminder on iOS | Beeminder Blog

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It’s actually the same app, they just renamed it haha!

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My turn! After 15 days of testing, I’m certain this was the BEST decision I’ve made this month.

What I’m Beeminding : My sleep. More specifically, the latest time I’m allowed to go to bed.
Link : https://www.beeminder.com/gustavohsouza/offlinenights
Integration used and some context : RescueTime + IFTTT
Personal motivation for it : Sleeping well is as important as eating healthy. And I’m not happy with my current sleeping habits.
I’m going to bed much later than I wish. 100% of the time it’s because I’m on the computer or phone doing all sorts of things.
If I tinker with my computer or pick up my phone after 12am, I programmed RescueTime to send and alert to Zapier and Zapier will send this to Beeminder. That will sting me.
Weekends are days off.
How successful I am so far : 15 days so far and no derails. I’ve been having much better nights of sleep because I’m keeping a routine.

What I’m Beeminding : Meditation
Link : https://www.beeminder.com/gustavohsouza/meditation
Integration used and some context : Apple Health (Apple Watch’s Breathe app + Headspace)
Personal motivation for it : Meditation is a great habit I’ve started to build at a point in my life but completely derailed. I’m starting with a very easy goal and I plan on increasing it over the next months.
How successful I am so far : No derails so far. But there were days I didn’t meditate and was relying on my buffer minutes previously accumulated.

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