Somewhat cured of Akrasia after ~2 years?

Life
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This is a small update about how I went from turbonerd to normal nerd in my ~2 years using Beeminder.
I think something clicked for real, so much that I am going to pause most of my goals. I thought I’d share it instead of going to bed at the right time, which is kind of ironic.:sweat_smile:

I realize now that I have the impulse to do things.

Here’s how it goes:

  • My room is messy, I should tidy it. I want to tidy it now!
  • Oh yes, but is Beeminder asking me to do it? Be smart and optimize!
  • Idk, guess I won’t do it
  • 19:00: uh oh, I have 10 beemergencies
  • tidies room very fast

Sure, that sounds bad.
But the truth is that now, I tidy my room, and I have the urge to make it better.
That’s a big difference from before, where I didn’t even recognize that the situation was bad.

I put a big break on most of my goals for one month as an experiment.
If I don’t fall back into depression, I’ll just put a bigger break, and next time, I’ll archive all my goals.

Broadly speaking, I think that Beeminder did this:

  1. Forced me out of depression by forcing me to do things once in a while (tidying my room)
  2. Taught me good habits that are now stuck inside me. I don’t need Beeminder to brush my teeth anymore.
  3. Pushed me to innovate. Okay, I cannot tidy my desk anymore, it’s as tidy as it could. But what about tidying my closet? What about decorating my room? :exploding_head:
  4. Reduced the friction to do the actions — tidying becomes an easy action, the same as unlocking my phone — just pick some stuff and put it somewhere else.

Here’s how I’m going to use Beeminder from now on:

  1. There is something I need to do but don’t know how / feel shy about doing (like, getting a haircut right now)
  2. I create a goal with a predefined end date. E.g. go get a haircut once every 3 weeks until I got 12 haircuts done
  3. I respect the Beeminder goal or pay the price!
  4. I learned the new skill, and next time I really feel like getting a haircut, I’ll go naturally :slight_smile:
  5. (if I loose the habit, I’ll create the goal again)

I learned a bunch of basic life skills, and now, I don’t need Beeminder.

I also learned the life skill of trying out new stuff even if I’m shy about it.
I didn’t need a Beeminder goal to go to the gym. Oh actually I did. I wrote in my journal. And I write because of Beeminder, lol. Some day I just felt “ready to go the gym” whereas before it was “too soon”.

Anyway. I might not even need Beeminder to learn how to go outside and ask for a haircut! Which is mind blowing to me. I’ll just do it one day, when it feels right. And I’m sure this day will come rather than sure that I’ll just let the problem get worse with time.

Some new behaviors that emerged:

  • I went to the gym
  • I went to a store to buy clothes, and picked from my taste rather than generic stuff (I even got cool chains)
  • I got lenses (and actually learned how to put them on without Beeminder)
  • I go to restaurants, coffee shops
  • I can sustain eye contact :flushed: (I could talk about this new superpower for hours)
  • I purposefully go outside to meet new people

I now realize how crazy that must seem to normal people. I feel like they were born with these basic skills. Or rather, learned them at school while I didn’t for some reason :thinking:.

Anyway, my point is that I am now a socially acceptable & normal human being somehow, and this is greatly due to Beeminder.

I just wish I saw a post like this a few years ago. I’m sure someone is going through a variant of what I’m going through. Hopefully they’ll find this post and it’ll resonate with them.

Thanks Beeminder :v:

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This is so inspiring! Thank you for this post, it is a reminder of how much we can change, just a little bit at a time, until we become the sort of person who does these things naturally.

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Hello everyone,

I am NOT cured of Akrasia :joy:

I started hyperfocusing on work like before. Neglecting friends, familly, etc…

Reintroducing goals

I am re-introducing the most important Beeminder goals progressively.

  • taking meds
  • calling mom
  • texting friends
  • answering texts
  • emptying inbox
  • doing my Anki reps

Quitting Toggl Track

I was more productive for a while with a timer running.
But in the end, I find that I feel quite constrainted by it and it takes the fun out of working.
I prefer working without Toggl.
If I want more, I should reduce friction, and Toggl still is a big friction for me.

Using iOS shortcuts

I am using iOS shortcuts to enter datapoints now.

When I took my meds, I say “hey siri, I took my meds” and it enters the datapoint automatically.

This is a big improvement from opening the Beeminder app (… the iOS app is quite clunky — but this is compensated by the fact that it supports shortcuts natively!)

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:wave:
Welcome back
Not cured? :wink: Well even of you still benefit from the tooling now, you can still compare with where you were. Maybe there is a struggle still but note it is how to do things even better and before it was how to do some things at all.

I too primarily use the ios app and have set up handfuls of shortcuts and some automations for entering data. These all use the api directly.
The ease at which data can be reliably entered into beeminder has an impact on which (bmndr) goals (and rates) I decide on.

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I’ve been trying the Rize app and you might like it better than toggl. it auto tracks your time and tries to Auto detect when you’re focusing and prompts you to take breaks, etc. it’s kind of hard to explain and take some getting used to and tweaking, but it’s the first time tracking thing I’ve actually found to be useful without being constraining. I briefly tried toggl and rescue time and I found them both to be inaccurate or annoying. Rize has been fun so far.

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