# Uncle button: workarounds and philosophizing **URL:** \ **Category:** Akrasia\ **Created:** [May 20, 2024, 12:00am UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/uncle-button-workarounds-and-philosophizing/11608 "2024-05-20T00:00:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![dreev](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.beeminder.com/dreev/32/4311_2.png) [@dreev](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/dreev)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2024, 12:00am UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/uncle-button-workarounds-and-philosophizing/11608/1 "2024-05-20T00:00:00Z")
The idea of an Uncle button is to be able to say, when about to derail, “just charge me now and get this over with”. We’ve been talking about this for literally years. I’m a little embarrassed that we still don’t have this feature! There are subtleties to it that I’d like to discuss in this thread. I also want to collect ideas for workarounds in the meantime, like this very imperfect one, courtesy of @rperce: > uncle-button-workaround test: I noticed `calendial` is red, which means I forgot to calendial last Sunday (confirmed by checking my thread), so I’m gonna let it derail. I could just wait 61 minutes, but instead I’m trying: > > 1. enter data of Yesterday, -1000, “calling uncle” > 2. ensure i got the “paying $5” email > 3. update data point back to Today, 0. > 4. see that the break-graph-segment automatically inserted by the derailment means my losedate string is now “-566 ending in 8 years”. > 5. use [graph.beeminder.com](http://graph.beeminder.com) to edit it back into shape ---
**Author:** ![dreev](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.beeminder.com/dreev/32/4311_2.png) [@dreev](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/dreev)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2024, 12:26am UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/uncle-button-workarounds-and-philosophizing/11608/2 "2024-05-20T00:26:38Z")
And a philosophical question (HT @theospears): Is it important that pressing the Uncle button charge you immediately, apply your chosen amount of [post-derail respite](https://help.beeminder.com/article/18-respite), and redraw your bright red line accordingly? Or would this perhaps more expedient implementation (we could call this a Silence button) suffice or even be preferable: 1. pressing the uncle button simply sets an uncle flag to true 2. [zenos](https://help.beeminder.com/article/101-reminders) don’t zeno if uncle=true 3. [urgency-sort](https://blog.beeminder.com/urgency) uses your post-derail respite as if it were the goal’s deadline 4. derailing clears the uncle flag I’m pretty grossed out by all those if-statements and am inclined to the “charge me and redraw the red line” version. ---
**Author:** ![theospears](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.beeminder.com/theospears/32/4692_2.png) [@theospears](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/theospears)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2024, 12:38am UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/uncle-button-workarounds-and-philosophizing/11608/3 "2024-05-20T00:38:45Z")
My intent was less to suggest the if-statement based implementation, and more to imply the shape of the bright red line tomorrow and going forward should look _exactly as if_ you had derailed at the end of the day through not adding data. ---
**Author:** ![dreev](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.beeminder.com/dreev/32/4311_2.png) [@dreev](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/dreev)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2024, 7:54pm UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/uncle-button-workarounds-and-philosophizing/11608/5 "2024-05-21T19:54:39Z")
As a preliminary step for hashing this out, it’s often helpful to first understand how it works (hypothetically for now) in [staircase world](https://blog.beeminder.com/staircase "AKA continuous beeminding"): First, post-derail respite is slightly different in staircase world. In today’s pre-staircase world, we say “zero respite” but we really mean 24 hours of respite. If you derail today, your next beemergency will be tomorrow. Your red line ends up shifted a day to the right – equivalent to an extra day of flat spot. (Literally zero respite isn’t a coherent concept. It’d be like a derailment singularity. Post-derail respite is the user’s answer to the question, “if you persist in doing nothing, how frequently should we charge you?” It’s a strictly positive amount of time.) So in staircase world, clicking the uncle button simply means – besides getting charged and marking the derailment on the graph – that we insert your post-derail respite as a flat spot on the bright red line starting Right Now. Think of it as **buying respite**. If your stakes are S dollars and your post-derail respite is D days, you’re paying $S to have D days of safety buffer inserted immediately in your bright red line. I think that in pre-staircase world, the same is true except (a) the red line discontinuously drops to your current datapoint) and (b) factoring in that drop it’s effectively D+1 days of buffer added. I agree with @theospears that what happens to the bright red line when you cry Uncle should be the same thing that would’ve happened to it if you’d ignored the goal and let it derail. ---
**Author:** ![dreev](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.beeminder.com/dreev/32/4311_2.png) [@dreev](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/dreev)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2024, 11:34pm UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/uncle-button-workarounds-and-philosophizing/11608/6 "2024-08-16T23:34:16Z")
Adding this compelling use case from @rperce from a while back in the Discord: > I wish i had an Uncle Button again today. I’ll be derailing on my `sleepyhead` goal shortly because I stayed up late last night watching the UT game, a trade-off I’m comfortable with, but I’ve had to look at the grumpy red goal all morning! I wish I could just bid it adieu… > > or at least a temporary zeno reminder shutoff button T\_T ---
**Author:** ![lambo](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.beeminder.com/lambo/32/5451_2.png) [@lambo](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/lambo)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2024, 12:39am UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/uncle-button-workarounds-and-philosophizing/11608/7 "2024-08-17T00:39:38Z")
Possible candidate for this – I have some goals (to do less / spend less time on some things) that happen twice a day. One of them is for whether or not I did something the previous night. (e.g. did not drink before 4 PM, did not drink last night) I used to have it at 2 AM to mark the night, but then I would find I would just stay up until 2 AM to push the thing to the next day. So I changed how I define it & use it so I will only mark it off the next morning. It would be nice to have an uncle button for the times when I consciously go “Yeah I am OK with this, I want to do this and pay for the privilege” so I don’t have it hanging over my head all night until the next morning. Not a big thing, I can live with it, but yeah that would make it feel more like a choice than a slipup. ---
**Author:** ![felixm](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.beeminder.com/felixm/32/4955_2.png) [@felixm](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/felixm)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2024, 2:06am UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/uncle-button-workarounds-and-philosophizing/11608/8 "2024-09-24T02:06:12Z")
k1rsty had a similar use case and I would also use this feature. (I’ve found this thread via the placeholder in the web interface.) > [@Beeminding by k1rsty](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/beeminding-by-k1rsty/10130/33): > > I would use that option too. I sometimes change old data-points to derail immediately and then return them to their previous values to emulate this behavior. ---
**Author:** ![napkin](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.beeminder.com/napkin/32/5403_2.png) [@napkin](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/napkin)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2024, 5:25pm UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/uncle-button-workarounds-and-philosophizing/11608/9 "2024-10-23T17:25:59Z")
I’ve been needing this button due to a nightowl goal that is perfectly fine/easier to complete late at night, yet on certain nights I want to go to bed early and give up on it, so a cry uncle is perfect for this one, since on those nights I go to bed early I don’t want to get kept up by notifications ! I will try to workaround of putting a -1 followed by editing the data… ---
**Author:** ![apolyton](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.beeminder.com/apolyton/32/1965_2.png) [@apolyton](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/apolyton)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2024, 8:16pm UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/uncle-button-workarounds-and-philosophizing/11608/10 "2024-11-09T20:16:42Z")
I want this button. You don’t need to complicate things. It can just mute all notifications about the derail until midnight. ---
**Author:** ![alys](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.beeminder.com/alys/32/4726_2.png) [@alys](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/alys)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2024, 4:30am UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/uncle-button-workarounds-and-philosophizing/11608/11 "2024-11-24T04:30:00Z")
I was able to simulate an uncle button effect by changing a goal’s deadline to a couple of minutes in the future. The goal derailed when that time arrived. The next morning I changed the deadline back to what it was previously (midnight). ---
**Author:** ![felixm](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.beeminder.com/felixm/32/4955_2.png) [@felixm](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/felixm)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2024, 5:22pm UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/uncle-button-workarounds-and-philosophizing/11608/12 "2024-12-23T17:22:05Z")
I’ve just used the new uncle button for the first time and it is probably the best feature since zzq’s collapse plug-in (and maybe the colorful dashboard update). ---
**Author:** ![philip](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.beeminder.com/philip/32/1505_2.png) [@philip](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/philip)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2024, 1:39pm UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/uncle-button-workarounds-and-philosophizing/11608/13 "2024-12-27T13:39:50Z")
Thanks to the Uncle! button, I’m slowly reenabling reminders on my goals, since there’s now always a positive action to take when my wrist buzzes, even if it’s to commit to not doing work on the goal today.