The case for making "Automatically trim safety buffer" a free feature

Bugabee
41

I like the idea of the Flippening, but I also think @dreev is correct that it will mystify and anger new users who build up a safety buffer. Maybe it’s even a violation of the anti-magic principle.

What if you send users an email the first time they hit a 30 day safety buffer with an opt-in button?

3 Likes
42

Would love to see this automatic option implemented either free or Infinibee as would allow for daily goals even if i go over my desired goal on a daily basis and keep me on track to still put in effort the next day. Double the monthly price to get the feature is too steep for me personally.

Been trying to use IFTTT instead to trim the safety by subtracting 1 if it equals a certain number of safety days but this has meant creating lots of recipes for each of my goals and for the number of safety days I may accumulate. I havent properly got it working with the if more than certain number of safety days unfortunately and when it did work it only removed -1 from the goal rather than triggering multiple times.

Perhaps have it unlocked like your suggestion with the gaining new goals by derailing with money on the line (then gradually drop more features and understanding of the website as you go along) or weasel proofing/no excuse mode if enabled?

I don’t think this is as magic with ratcheting already being in place and a massive amount of what is good about Beeminder is the magic of APIs and auto-population of the goals.

3 Likes
43

Linking from this thread to @narthur’s autodialer

2 Likes
44

I greatly miss this feature. I only track one goal, number of items ticked off on todoist. Everyday, I waste about 2 minutes to login to the website, and ratchet this goal to zero. Otherwise it just accumulates. I would be ok to pay a little bit for this feature, but 165 USD a year is a bit steep. I wouldn’t use any of the other features of the beeplus plan.

7 Likes
45

Five out of eight of my current goals are phrased, in my head, as “do at least x units every day/week.” For example, I want to have a one hour contemplative period of not using devices every (continuous) week, even if I spent two hours last week. However, I have no way of communicating this to Beeminder without autoratchetting. As a result, Beeminder disincentivizes me from achieving my goals whenever I happen to do them ahead of time. I know I could pay for a more premium plan, but they are incredibly pricey for the one feature I’d be getting. The feature would also make me more likely to derail, which is a win for Beeminder.

8 Likes
46

I want to echo two previous posts.

Is this topic dead or there’s some ongoing discussion?

Maybe consider bumping from $8 to $10. How many people are at 8 vs at 16 plan? Maybe make 16 unattractive to make people buy 8 plan? Call me Ebenezer but I think it’s possible to pay $100 for browser automation that would ratchet daily and keep $65 (and 165 next year) in my pocket.

2 Likes
47

This topic isn’t dead, just clearly a bit backburnered. But it does continue to come up and I think it’s important.

Btw, can you spell this out more:

pay $100 for browser automation that would ratchet daily and keep $65 (and 165 next year) in my pocket

1 Like
48

Sure. I mean I can use cypress or playwright or selenium to log in and click „reduce safety buffer”. Then, I would launch this program automatically every day.

I tried cypress and it works:

describe("template spec", () => {
  it("passes", () => {
    cy.visit("https://www.beeminder.com/users/sign_in")
      .get("#login_user_login")
      .type(userData.user)
      .get("#login_user_password")
      .type(userData.pass)
      .get("[name=commit]")
      .click()
      .wait(5000)
      .visit("https://www.beeminder.com/skorytnicki/conquers-duolingo") // your goal
      .get('[name="newsafety"]')
      .clear()
      .type("45") // some new buffer
      .get('[data-disable-with="Ratchet!"]')
      .click();
  });
});

I subscribe to $8 plan and just like @goalpuma2 I don’t want to pay extra (double my monthly payment) for exactly one feature I care about, even if Beeminder generates more than $16 a month for me.

2 Likes