that initial week of flat spot

Minor epiphany: The imposed initial week of flat spot is a bad idea.
First of all, most people don’t seem to want it. We don’t usually want
it for our own goals. Typically you reset your graph upon saying to
yourself “ok self, you little slacking $#!^, let’s start not sucking
right the hell now”. And the only counterargument is the people who
bite off more than they can chew and immediately drive off their
roads. Which sucks, but those people know it was their own damn fault,
and feel stupid and are probably going to be happy to risk the $5 to
try again. [cf bmndr.com/money]

There’s also the apparent confusion that that flat spot causes (and
these were no idiots who expressed such confusion).

Finally, we’ve talked about an advanced feature for retro-ratcheting
your road when you get too much safety buffer and want to throw it
away, but that feature is a poor solution to the initial flat week
because it doesn’t take away all of the safety buffer. If I
retro-ratchet on the first day I still have 6 days of safety buffer
remaining. The whole point is I want to throw away that safety
buffer. I want to be bound, dammit.

So here’s the plan:

When you create the goal, whatever rate you specify (or implied rate
if you specify goal and goal date) takes effect immediately. If you
don’t specify anything the entire road is flat. No kinks in the road
either way.
Once your graph is created, the road dial has the same one-week delay
as now. [1]

Keep an eye on twitter.com/beemuvi if you want to see when we deploy that.
We’ve also started google-plussing things in a Beemindees circle. Add
me if you want in on that: profiles.google.com/dreeves

Footnote:

[1] The fully general way to deal with this is that you can always
make your graph harder starting now but making it easier has a
one-week delay. But I’m reluctant to do that because it makes it more
complicated. Like what kind of window do you have to undo it if you
accidentally make it too hard starting now? We could come up with an
answer for that but it makes the interface seem inconsistent unless
the user understands those rules.


http://dreev.es – search://"Daniel Reeves"
Follow the Yellow Brick Road – http://beeminder.com

This is done now! Try creating a test goal if you want to try it.
(Anyone on this list not have a Beeminder account? Please email us!)

The interesting part is the thing at the bottom where you can set 2
out of 3 of {goal date, goal value, rate} and it infers the 3rd.
It’s nice if you’re like, “I’d like to weigh 110 lbs by xmas” and then
you see that that means losing 8 pounds per week, so you’re like “ok,
maybe 3 pounds per week?” and then it shows that that will get you to
110 pounds by next fall, so you’re like “ok, well, at 3 pounds per
week, what will I weigh by this summer?” … etc.

Next we’ll be putting that same interface below your graph at all
times, not just on goal creation.

Thanks everyone for all the feedback lately; it’s been an immense
help, and seriously inspiring.

Danny and Bethany

PS: There’s also exciting new stuff announced on the blog:

On Wed, Aug 31, 2011 at 11:15, Daniel Reeves dreeves@umich.edu wrote:

Minor epiphany: The imposed initial week of flat spot is a bad idea.
First of all, most people don’t seem to want it. We don’t usually want
it for our own goals. Typically you reset your graph upon saying to
yourself “ok self, you little slacking $#!^, let’s start not sucking
right the hell now”. And the only counterargument is the people who
bite off more than they can chew and immediately drive off their
roads. Which sucks, but those people know it was their own damn fault,
and feel stupid and are probably going to be happy to risk the $5 to
try again. [cf pricing – beeminder]

There’s also the apparent confusion that that flat spot causes (and
these were no idiots who expressed such confusion).

Finally, we’ve talked about an advanced feature for retro-ratcheting
your road when you get too much safety buffer and want to throw it
away, but that feature is a poor solution to the initial flat week
because it doesn’t take away all of the safety buffer. If I
retro-ratchet on the first day I still have 6 days of safety buffer
remaining. The whole point is I want to throw away that safety
buffer. I want to be bound, dammit.

So here’s the plan:

When you create the goal, whatever rate you specify (or implied rate
if you specify goal and goal date) takes effect immediately. If you
don’t specify anything the entire road is flat. No kinks in the road
either way.
Once your graph is created, the road dial has the same one-week delay
as now. [1]

Keep an eye on twitter.com/beemuvi if you want to see when we deploy that.
We’ve also started google-plussing things in a Beemindees circle. Add
me if you want in on that: profiles.google.com/dreeves

Footnote:

[1] The fully general way to deal with this is that you can always
make your graph harder starting now but making it easier has a
one-week delay. But I’m reluctant to do that because it makes it more
complicated. Like what kind of window do you have to undo it if you
accidentally make it too hard starting now? We could come up with an
answer for that but it makes the interface seem inconsistent unless
the user understands those rules.


http://dreev.es – search://“Daniel Reeves”
Follow the Yellow Brick Road – http://beeminder.com


http://dreev.es – search://“Daniel Reeves”
Follow the Yellow Brick Road – http://beeminder.com