Hi, I’m cocoapunch. I’m been on a big self-improvement journey over the past few years - working on my physical and mental health, pushing out of some comfort zones, challenging myself more at work, and in general trying to understand myself better.
Like most folks with ADHD, urgency and social pressure are required for me to initiate tasks, so that basically means I do great in public-facing settings while all of the little consequence-free things in my private life pile up. Stuff like setting a timer and pleasure pairing don’t do jack. The beast is sated only by my terror. That’s where Beeminder comes in.
I’m unsure if this is the exact platform for me, but I’ve committed to a 90 day tryout. My starter goals to get my feet wet are:
/housework - Knocking out some things around the house. This uses Todoist data, since that’s my preferred app for listmaking. It checks to see if I’ve completed tasks labelled “home.”
/zoneminutes - Encouragement to walk to work. Technically I can cheat this since it looks at Fitbit’s zone minutes (something I can do at the gym without walking to work), which I didn’t consider when making it, so I need to find a backup plan. I also need to think of derail prevention for days when weather warnings mandate working from home. (We’ve been snowed in most of the week.)
A third goal for addressing some of my projects’ technical debt is in the works, but 1) TryDeepWork doesn’t seem to work for new users and the dev is unresponsive, and 2) I can’t link directly to my company’s services, so it may take some doing to figure out effective tracking. The minute I have to manually enter data, this whole endeavor is doomed. (A body doubling service like FocusMate might be the move here, we’ll see!)
Right now I’m trying to learn the platform a little better - it appears that the way my goals are currently configured, I’ll get a generous derail buffer for going above and beyond. That’s gotta be tuned way down.
I’ll try to update this weekly with any progress, insights, challenges, or other nonsense. Good luck to all of you!
If I understand correctly and you’re worried about not having to make any progress for a while because you did more than you needed to, you can always manually “ratchet” a goal when you think it has too much buffer! I usually ratchet any goal with more than a week of buffer, for example!
Thanks for the tip! I signed up for Bee Plus and configured autoratchet, which is honestly worth the price of subscription for me. Manually ratcheting is a friction point, and the more friction I encounter, the more likely I am to drop a service.
I’ve been tinkering a bit, trying to fine-tune things without succumbing to fuckaround-itis, and I think Beeminder is in a decent starting position:
/cinderelly - the housework task from my OP, tweaked a little with autoratchet to keep me accountable without being overly punishing. Linked to Todoist.
/chairforce - walking to work. Decoupled from Fitbit, now a manual entry. Yes, yes, I said earlier that manual entries would doom me, but I’ll get to the reason in a second.
/sweatnik - tracking my gym visits, mostly so I can play around with various integrations for different kinds of activity. It’s the goal I care least about, so I’m fine with adjusting it/breaking it/deleting and rebuilding it/etc in the name of better understanding Beeminder. (Today, it’s purposefully going to derail so I can get a feel for what the derail experience is like without feeling like I failed at something.)
The reason I’m OK with introducing manual entry is because I’ve signed up for an accountability service, aiming to add in the layer of social pressure that helps motivate me. Things are still early days with my coach and we’re still settling in, but like Beeminder, I’m committing to at least three months. Anyway, she’s reviewing my proof and entering the data, not me.
This still doesn’t solve the issue of tracking progress on technical debt (I can’t show my coach confidential information, after all), but one of this week’s objectives is sorting that out.
reason