# This happened today, and it sneaked up on me. Any ideas on how to avoid this?

**URL:** <https://forum.beeminder.com/t/this-happened-today-and-it-sneaked-up-on-me-any-ideas-on-how-to-avoid-this/1392>\
**Category:** uncategorized\
**Created:** [November 3, 2012, 4:09am UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/this-happened-today-and-it-sneaked-up-on-me-any-ideas-on-how-to-avoid-this/1392 "2012-11-03T04:09:35Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Reto\_Stamm1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ad7895/32.png) [@Reto\_Stamm1](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/Reto_Stamm1)\
**Post date:** [November 3, 2012, 4:09am UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/this-happened-today-and-it-sneaked-up-on-me-any-ideas-on-how-to-avoid-this/1392/1 "2012-11-03T04:09:35Z")

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tl;dr Beeminders that should stay below an increasing limit do not provide  
a warning until it’s too late. Brainstorm please!

[https://www.beeminder.com/retostamm/goals/rescue-time-unproductive](https://www.beeminder.com/retostamm/goals/rescue-time-unproductive)

Essentially, I have a limit on Unproductive time (like Daniels TV thing).  
It’s auto-updated from rescuetime via script, which works like a charm.

Today, it snook up on me. I was not looking, and suddenly, it was too late!  
Since I can’t go back, I am not sure what I should do instead. I’d like it  
to give me some warning, like “At the current rate, you’ll fail in 5 days”.

My previous solution to this was to invert it. For my fitbit calorie  
deficit, I take the burned calories and subtract the eaten ones, giving me  
a deficit, and the bee minder daily goal is x Calories deficit, which is a  
yellow brick road that I must stay above. That works.

I think the equivalent here is an undistractedness-surplus, and while that  
might work it is quite contrived and unintuitive. Does anyone have any  
better ideas to avoid things like this sneaking up? Really, the problem is  
that Beeminder does not calculate estimated intersection for maximums until  
you are above it. Same is true for weight and other things.

I like to look a few days ahead (fail in one, three, five days). I have  
graphs generated on Ducksboard, which is updated with a script with data  
pulled from Beeminder, showing critical things from beeminder (first  
graph), and ideally integrated with todo list and calendar as well, as a  
one-stop-status panel).

[image: Inline image 1]
