using URLminder to track recurring [language] practices

so i had an idea that i’ll probably start trying out soon-ish, for an URLminder integration. i’ve never used one before, and i don’t know if it’ll work well for what i want, but i figured i’d share it anyway. maybe it’ll be useful for others, maybe it’ll end up in a “this absolutely didn’t work for me and here are the reasons why” post. we shall see!

some background info:

  • for reasons, i want to intensify my japanese practice.
  • i have way too many apps for that purpose on my phone. (i’m decently happy with all of them. i also don’t think that learning the same thing in two or more different places would be a bad thing, ideally it’ll help me remember it more quickly.)
  • i already have three goals for daily practice:
    • my duolingo goal, dj – enbee – beeminder, which makes sure that i take advantage of the morning and evening xp boosts.
    • my skritter goal, skritter – enbee – beeminder, which i honestly only started because there’s a beeminder integration for it. autodata goals are :purple_heart::purple_heart:! (i don’t yet have a subscription, but will surely end up getting one, once i run out of free decks to study.)
    • my jalup goal, jalup – enbee – beeminder, which is the only non-autodata one of the three, and the newest as well (i created it literally an hour or so ago). this is also intended for daily practice, but for a really minimal one, of just a minimum of 5 reviewed or learned cards per day.
  • i have four more japanese/language learning apps on my phone, which i also want to use, albeit not all of them every single day as well. (duolingo and skritter have kind of been my morning routine for a while now, and i won’t have trouble squeezing a few minutes of jalup in every day as well, but additionally sequeezing in 5+ minutes or so of 4 other apps every single day would be too much for me and would just burn me out.)
    • the apps are memrise, kanji study, kanji tree, and renshuu, if anyone’s interested.

URLminder plans:

  • create an URLminder goal with a rate of 4 words per day
  • make note of my alternating practice there every day, like so:
    • month day: app: type_of_practice—so, for example:
      june 6th: renshuu: quickdraw
  • profit‽

i figure it will be good to have a record of what i do each day, which would also help me implement random rules that i wouldn’t have to do mental gymnastics to enforce. (like “don’t do the same type of practice twice in a row” or “regularly alternate the apps without changing their order,” or whatever.)

i hope that i will be able to find a way to make data entry for this as frictionless as possible on phone and laptop. (google doc? i’ll have to check if there’s a way to set a widget/shortcut for a specific document.) this is probably the biggest hurdle, but on the other hand, writing four words each day seems as low effort as one can get without an app-to-beeminder-directly-autodata-goal.

if this works well, i might create a second goal like this, for my korean practice. i don’t yet have any korean study apps on my phone, but it’s not improbable that i might end up using more than two (disregarding duolingo) in the future, and this feels like a slightly better option compared to creating separate manual goals. but we’ll see!
i’ll update whenever i will have created the URLminder goal and/or when there’s something noteworthy to report.

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