Time-Decay-aggregation method?

I’ve been using the triangle aggregation method and have really enjoyed it.

Specifically the great thing it does it it acts like a generalized pressure towards doing something less (or more) in a given day.

I was recently dealing with “OK I need to do ~30 of Goal A every day, but I wish I had a natural pressure to spread that out more throughout the day”

And was struggling to operationalize that in a good way.

Then I thought “what if I got extra points for doing them at a certain hour?”

Like point * deadline - current hour or something along those lines.

So if deadline is say at 8 PM (20:00 hours military time), and and I do 1 of them at 9 AM, then I get 11 pts, if I wait until 7 I only get 1 pt, something like that.

Maybe it needs to be worked out a little more to be a little less extreme, but even that I would probably use (maybe I just set the deadline to 11 PM if I want to end at 8 PM so I get at least 3 points or something).

5 Likes

I ended up creating this myself via Keyboard Maestro + Python

I have a separate more complex version of this integrated with Intend (I complete operate Intend primarily through Keyboard Maestro macros), but this is the basic concept in a more portable form.

So far I’ve been enjoying it quite a bit, the actual equation I ended up finding feels about right is this:

max(1, (tasks or points complete) * (31 - current hour) * 0.15), rounded to the nearest 0.1

The core benefits I get out of this is:

  • It’s more valuable for me to do work tasks earlier in the day (because more people are online, reducing feedback loops)
  • The more I put stuff off, the lower quality it usually is (I may be cramming a bunch of tasks in the last 1.5 - 2 hours for example, tasks may be a bit “fluffier”)
  • I just like being done with stuff earlier in the day

Python

KBM Macro

4 Likes

I’ve had one case of wanting to do something spread out throughout the day, and I addressed that using Microstings.

2 Likes