A recurring friction I have with Beeminder occurs when I take a long-haul flight across many time zones. I see two aspects to the problem:
I have to change the time zone manually, which is annoying and can cause derailments if I forget.
I get confused about how many days or nights have elapsed between the time I get on a plane and the time I get off.
The only concrete feature suggestion I have is to automatically update my account time zone with the time zone of my mobile device.
But more broadly I wonder if the Bee Team has thought about this and Iâd love to see what the community thinks.
Often the approach I take in practice is just to take a break on all my goals while traveling to avoid confusion - usually when I travel for work I am overwhelmed to begin with and my goals are less relevant since they have to do with challenges of routine daily life.
This is hugely complex for something that sounds so straightforward!
I also used to travel frequently for work and there was no good solution. Luckily, I was mostly bouncing between Europe and North America, with the occasional stint in the Far East. So I was able to set a Beeminder timezone that mostly worked as a universal middle-of-the-night boundary that I didnât need to think about very often.
Similarly, I had to lock down my TagTime timezone so that it didnât constantly update the whole goal history when I travelled.
Particular challenges:
automated datasources with their own idea of day boundaries
reinterpreting (or not) past datapoints based on the new day boundary
changing timezones manually can also cause derailments
I have lots of thoughts about the Beeminder day vs calendar day problem but much fewer thoughts about timezones, other than to agree with @philip.
Maybe this is like the Copenhagen interpretation of ethics: No matter what we do, timezone-wise, it will sometimes lead to derailments, so itâs safest to do nothing. Suppose we auto-update your timezone to match what your phone or browser says. Pretty non-crazy thing to do! But then if you travel west, weâve made your goals due earlier in body time. Not (necessarily) fair! Especially if youâre down to the wire when an hour is lopped off the countdown timer. If we donât auto-update your timezone and you travel east then your goals are all due earlier in clock time. Also not necessarily fair!
But besides Beeminder seeming less culpable in the version where we donât touch the user-chosen timezone, I think I prefer it as a user. I already mentally keep track of my home timezone for other reasons when traveling so it doesnât feel like too much of an additional burden to keep in mind that my Beeminder goals also keep using that timezone.
Of course I may just think that because I only ever travel east. My Beeminder goals are always due at a nominally later time when I travel.
Now Iâm curious:
Should Beeminder auto-update your timezone when you travel?
I have been burned by the current way things work before, but I think itâs probably the best of the bad options, as far as simple solutions.
As katriel said originally, a lot of goals go on break anyway when I travel, which helps. My tagtime goals in particular mostly do, which saves me the hassle of thinking about what the hell is going on there. (Wait, shitâŚcan it retroactively derail me by updating the history, @philip?)
As far as complicated solutions, something analogous to breaks for temporarily changing the due dates of all goals on a future scheduled date might make sense. But Iâm not sure itâs worth the effort.
Iâm pretty sure that it (old version of tagtime on Mac) compares what Beeminder said happened on a âdayâ to the pings it thinks happened on a day and âfixesâ it. Donât know how far back in history it goes, but my bmndr.settings.pl file has a line that forces $ENV{TZ} = 'Europe/London';
1.) this post is super crucial because iâll begin a very long trip on monday and now at least i know that beeminder will be stuck in the olden times! most of my goals are on break, anyway, but at least iâll know whatâs going on for the ones that arenât. :)
2.) my sleepy brain is unable to comprehend this right now:
even when you only travel east, you travel west when you travel back! but i guess that just resets to the original time zone in your mind? still, on the way back you loose that extra time again âŚ
i will also be keeping track of my home time zone while i travel, but i imagine itâll still be super weird to have deadlines in the middle of the day. i donât have deadlines in the middle of the day on purpose.
but i guess if it bothers me too much i can change it manually.
I do not know that this has stung me yet, unexpectedly. I know when traveling that the âdayâ becomes shorter or in any case the time I can devote to a bmndr goal is less anyway.
Once at the destination, I usually set my smartphone and watch to the local time (zone) and expect photos I take while there to have metadata indicating the local time the pictures where taken.
Similarly I expect things I do toward the bmndr goals to also count in local time at that point.
I would need not bmndr itself to automatically, that is without prompting me, set the timezone. It could, however, post an info box indicating the timezone set on my account and the smartphoneâs registered timezone are not aligned. It could at that point offer a link to helpdocs about timezones. It could offer a button to tap to set my accountâs timezone to the current local timezone (showing me which one it detecting, maybe having that as the default when picking a new one to set while offering the rest in the dropdown as well).
If a banner merely appeared across the top of the screen, mentioning the differing timezones, (I am picturing a small line of text in the ios app before the first goal in the gallery/list of goals), for the duration of the differing timezones, I might find that helpful enough despite being so basic.
As for the datapoints, I would not expect that changing my timezone in my bmndr account to adjust the dates (daystamps) of past datapoints.
I also used to struggle with timezones. My solution to the problem was to live in the âalways keep your bees greenâ state, where you donât get to live so close to the edge (i.e. < 1 day until you fail). In such a state, no flight or time zone shift is going to make you fail your goal. I realise that this is probably in the âeasy to sayâ category of advice, but it is what worked for me when I was travelling a lot.
Changing your time zone in the settings will give, technically, the same effect as changing all the deadlines, but in my experience itâs less confusing because with the deadlines changes youâll need to keep the conversion in your head all the time (the website says⌠but in fact itâs⌠so Iâm safe forâŚ), while with the centrally changed time zone all the deadlines switch to your usual time but in your new time zone.
I usually add breaks for the day of actual travel, especially when itâs across quite a few zones, and often for the day right after that as well, because the time change is overwhelming by itself.
Deadlines can be set within a particular range with the reference point being end of day.
deadline (number): Seconds by which your deadline differs from midnight. Negative is before midnight, positive is after midnight. Allowed range is -173600 to 63600 (7am to 6am).
For beeminder purposes, deadlines basically shift the end of days in your beeminder goals.
There is no deadline of âthe rest of this day plus tomorrow until its 11:59amâ. (The current max in that direction is for 6am.)
I usually use @scarabaea âs tactic of scheduling breaks during the days of travel and/or schedule/perform tasks beforehand such that some particular goals are not due during traveling and in general far fewer would be due.
This has worked out OK and has become a struggle all the same during one particular trip where flights were delayed for multiple hours.
Also, if youâve got any automatic data sources you might need to change timezone in all of those services too. If it goes horribly wrong, email support for each unexpected derailment.
