Hello, this is my first time posting. I had an issue similar to this post by ffgm. Pretty much the issue is that there’s a way to circumvent tracking through IFTTT and instead opt for manual data entry. But I felt that this option led me to cheat so I wanted to share a solution using Trello that can circumvent this a bit and might help others .
I’ve previously created a workout goal in beeminder using IFTTT to create a beeminder data point every time I entered the gym. For the first couple of months, this went phenomenal and I was very consistent. But eventually I took advantage of this hack and stopped going to the gym.
So what’s the solution?
Well, it’s not perfect, but it has to do with the fact that you can’t change the data entry method for beeminder integrations with other software, with the exception of IFTTT, Zapier, and Make(integromat). For example, I can’t change data entry options for twitter, todoist, habitica, trello, etc.
With that in mind, we can make beeminder track one of these software integrations instead of making IFTTT send a datapoint to beeminder. I initially wanted to use twitter to do this, where a tweet would be automatically made if I enter the gym. Unfortunately, all 3 (IFTTT, Zapier, and Make) needed me to purchase their subscription plans to do this because twitter’s API is very expensive. I tried doing this through tasker and the authentication was very difficult, and so I gave up on twitter.
Trello, on the other hand, makes it easier to track nearly any task and force yourself to do the task. I’ll assume we all know what trello is, but if you don’t, it’s pretty much a tool that uses boards, lists, and cards to organize tasks. Kinda like an advanced to do list. Beeminder will track one of the lists and check if it’s growing, if it’s not it will charge us.
So the way I do it is, whenever I enter the gym (based on location or nearby wifi) my phone will automatically send an API call to trello in order to create a card in a list that beeminder is watching. Now if you’re not familiar with APIs and webhooks or you don’t have an android, you can achieve the exact same effect using IFTTT and Zapier (not sure about Make). I did this the API way using tasker because it’s very customizable and I already bought it, but it’s probably much easier to do with IFTTT or Zapier, but I haven’t tried it though.
Unfortunately, some sacrifices have to be made. There is nothing stopping you from just creating a card in the list and calling it a day. Therefore, this solution will only be viable if you create a new trello account only for tracking habits, create a very hard to remember password, and tell someone else to store the password but also hide it from you. I asked my little sister to hold onto my trello password. While you could try to find an accountability partner in this community, you have to make sure that none of the information on your trello account is identifiable to you, i.e. use a fake name, a fake birthday, a fake email address, etc.
I’m thinking of also using this method for codewars to improve my programming skills.
It’s not the perfect solution, but at least for me, it makes it very hard to circumvent and cheat. Let me know your thoughts on this.
