Two most-wanted features for me, a weaselly bench

Bugabee
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So you have a blog post where you list the characteristics of the highest-fit Beeminder user. One of these characteristics is integrity. However, I may or may not be a person who can find any way to say “pity point because I had a minor emergency today” or “pity point because I intended a week ago to schedule a break for this weekend and I forgot to, but I never meant to be doing my goals today anyway” or “maybe the 15 minute brisk walk to the train can count as a workout today” or “maybe my protein bar can be counted as a protein shake today” etc etc.

And then my graph is like, not really showing my how often I do things, and I’m like “Ugh if I was sticking to the definition I WANTED this goal to have, then I would be accomplishing important things and I’d have a more useful graph.” But something about me just takes over to do the bare minimum I can get away with!!

So Beeminder is working less well for me than I wanted it to, except for autodata goals, which are awesome. And it’s totally my fault for not being stricter with myself! But a few features would do the strictness for me.

  1. A checkbox for “You must upload proof to enter data on this goal”
    If you don’t want to host images, you could do a textbox for a URL that you can make a required field.
    7-day deactivation delay on this.
    No one needs to check it if it convincingly FEELS like someone will check it. Option 1 for this is random spot checks (maybe even only one proof out of every 100), Option 2 for this is letting your proof be public.
    Since Forfeit can do this, I have been thinking of using Beeminder for my autodata goals and Forfeit for my manual goals.
    This feature request is much more important to me than the ones below, but also, I could construct it myself by telling my friends I will put a URL to a proof picture in the comments and asking them to do random spot checks.

  2. Autodata custom deadline. A bunch of autodata comes in as “0” pretty early in the day, like Fitbit and Apple Health. So it’s not currently possible to use a metaminder to enforce a deadline. But my day would be SO MUCH better if I HAD to log a work out or meditation before 9am, because I would start my day with it instead of squishing it in before midnight. Forfeit also does this! I am sorry! I do not want to abandon any more graphs than I have to! I love the graphs so much.

  3. 7-day delay on turning off no-excuses mode. I thought this was a thing but I was wrong.

  4. 7-day delay on changing a manual goal deadline. I’m pretty sure this isn’t a thing?

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2 should be very easy to do with a script, custom deadline, or use IFTTT or something! Or just make another goal, or use the beeminder-beeminder integration!

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Alas, I am kind of allergic to scripting, don’t want to pay for IFTTT premium to handle this, and metaminding and custom deadlines don’t work on these integrations in particular.

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Then why not just make a manual goal with deadline 9am?

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I’m way too weasely for manual goals on important things :confused:

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Well you should probably fix that!

So what exactly happens? Do you enter data even when you didn’t do it? Do you email support calling non-legit for being sick?

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It never really occurs to me that being sick would be non-legit. Idk my important goals are all autodata right now, but probably if I had a manual Headspace goal, I would be like “Well I sat staring at a wall for 10 mins so that’s baaaaasically meditation” and put that in as an entry, which is so lazy and far away from my actual goal that I would say it’s fake data.

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oh, I mean saying you’re sick when you’re not.

staring at a wall is basically how zazen meditation works, so that seems perfectly legit to me!

what’s your actual meditation goal?

I think you should try a manual goal! just set a deadline of 9am and make a clear definition, like setting a timer and intending to start a workout/meditation!

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