The Zed Sched Fire Trial: I take Mary's scheduling challenge!

[zedmango]

@lanthala

Interesting technique for handling payment! If I’m understanding this correctly, you have Beemium or whatever it is that lets you keep goals at $0 forever, correct?

I do have Beemium (lifetime member baby! woo hoo), which allows for freebee goals. I highly recommend Beemium!

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And then you manually run all your derail “payments” through a separate goal that keeps a tally and “derails” when it totals $5?

It’s not quite that I run the derails through a separate goal that keeps a tally - instead I just made some $5 goals so if I derail on 10 I can easily charge myself.

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If so, is there any reason you don’t just let your daily goals derail whenever they don’t get accomplished, and move the complicated bookkeeping for when it “doesn’t count” due to fine print to the payment goal?

I’m sorry but I’m not quite sure what you mean - can you elaborate? Remember, these are 50 cent goals and the payment goals are $5 daily goals, so I need to keep track of which goals I owe money on on a per-goal basis.

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Another question-suggestion: have you already done/considered doing a couple “dry runs” of this daily routine before you actually start the 30 days? It seems like a LOT of habits to start all at once, and like you said, the failures could cascade quickly. Alternately, you could start with say, 10, and add a couple more every day (ideally in chronological order by schedule), so you could more easily adjust to the increasing workload, and also adjust your planned routine as it hits reality more gradually. I’d just hate to see such a burst of productive energy burn out early due to overload!

A dry run would be nice but there isn’t time! I have too much to do this weekend and it starts on Monday!

Also, I’m trying a new viewpoint on the “adding more every day” thing. @mary talked about this in her post:

@mary

There’s a reason people suggest we only try to change one or two habits at a time and I’m very aware that I’m going against good advice in a rather extreme way, but I’m aware that it’s not the optimal way to make a new habit stick (or… 33 of them) and am trying it as a can-I-pull-this-off challenge that I hope might work rather than as a thing that I expect should or will be workable.

@mary

I just want to reiterate that this is still just a crazy experiment that I’m trying and it might crash and burn, so I would be very reluctant to actually recommend it to anyone! It goes against basically all good behavior-change advice and if I hadn’t been using Beeminder for nearly 20% of the time I’ve, you know, been alive, I expect it would be harder than however hard it’s going to turn out to be.

Here’s the theory I’m testing out: most alleged “good behavior-changing advice” is total crap and @mary has the right idea.

The theory is based on my observation that when I change environments, like starting a new job, a new school program, go on vacation, to a workshop, a conference, or a retreat - and there’s a schedule provided for me - it’s effortless to fall into the new way. It just sort of happens. I respond to the new cues.

Maybe, just maybe, it’s easier to throw yourself into a new system than to inch in little-by-little.

Also, don’t forget (bolded so I remember): I only have to start each task! I can just do 1 minute on it! And this is not an “ice-cream-truck loophole” - I fully intend to make use of it, especially at first. So I can adjust to the increasing workload by going longer and longer on each task.

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(FWIW, I love the idea of block scheduling, but every single time I’ve tried it it ends in complete and utter failure, so I’ve just had to accept that my brain does not work that way. As someone who loves color-coded calendars, this is very sad for me!)

Oh, me too! And I also love color-coded calendars! But I want to see if I can do it, and I think this is worth a try.