I have created a daily step goal but I have a doubt.
Is there a way to reset the cumulative each day and start from zero? I mean, right now, it works like this if I’m not wrong:
-Monday: 10232 steps → Passed Cumulative 10232
-Tuesday: 14653 steps → Passed Cumulative 24885
-Wednesday: 8243 steps → Passed Cumulative 33128
Is there a way to get this:
-Monday: 10232 steps → Passed
-Tuesday: 14653 steps → Passed
-Wednesday: 8243 steps → Derailed
You’re not wrong—all Beeminder goals are cumulative, which also means that they enforce the average over time rather than a daily minimum.
Your sleep goal is enforcing an average of at least 7(?) hours per night, and the same logic applies. It’s just that your daily number of steps are more variable than your sleep pattern, so it’s more visible.
For myself, a daily minimum of 10k steps each-and-every-day would be horrible. There will be days when I’m stuck in an office, or travelling, or the weather is horrid. As an average, I can walk more on good days and less on bad days, while still keeping on track. Even for more binary goals (did it, didn’t do it) we don’t recommend setting a slope of 7 days per week.
There is a ‘ratchet’ feature that can make today (or every day) an emergency day, requiring some steps, but even that won’t reset your daily progress to zero.
very glad i found this discussion; now i don’t have to make my own thread about it.
it’s a shame that there is no workaround. my own step goal requires me to do exactly 268 steps today, which is a ridiculously low number XD i assume if i had done 268 more steps yesterday, it would not be a beemergency day today and i could have ratcheted it down to one with a more reasonable goal number?
i understand and get the idea behind cumulative rather than daily count. however, from experience with my steps goal, i know i would love an option to at least set a reasonable minimum each day. even if i’m sick in bed all day i will do more than 200 steps, just from trips to the bathroom, kitchen, whatever. (not to mention that being sick would mean non legit derailment for me; but i used this example mostly to illustrate how ridiculous my goal is today XD)
if i have a goal of 10 000 steps a day, it would be neat to set an option of, say, 4 000 minimum daily steps. so that whenever beeminder would require me to do only 268, or only 1 500 steps a day, that number would automatically go up to 4 000. this is just wishful brainstorming, of course.
background: my steps goal, and the way it is currently set up, with diligent daily manual ratcheting to 0 safe days after each midnight, has a specific aim: i want to slowly but surely make my feet get used to a lot of walking. i’m going on another city trip with my best friend this summer, and these historically always wreck my feet into a million pieces. i didn’t use to walk a lot, let alone regularly. doing 20 000 or even 30 000 steps a few days in a row thus is always very difficult and also painful towards the end. while it’s a nice thought to be “allowed” a day where i only have to walk 268 steps, that kind of defeats the purpose for me in this case. so far i have managed to always reach my aspirational daily goal even if the beeminder one was lower. but it would be nice to have a stricter option, as an option, sometime in the future. i bet a lot of people would love it!
(this feels similarly to me somehow to the “no excuses mode”. the fact that people voluntarily use it, baffles me endlessly. to make an extreme example: if my house burns down, my pet dies, i get fired, and i lose all my savings in one day—paying money for a derailment on top of all that seems fully absurd. but people use the no excuses mode, and it works for them, and that’s valid and great! the same way it would be great for some people to have an optional daily/weekly/whatever minimum for some/all goals.)