Subject: weekly beemail: new blog post about how derailing is not failing
Here it is!
https://blog.beeminder.com/defail/
It’s a bit navel-gazey and Bee and Mary pointed out that what we really want is a “Derailing is not Failing” blog post that focuses on the user perspective.
Like what we talk about in http://blog.beeminder.com/seinfeld (“beeminding beats streak-minding”) and http://blog.beeminder.com/beenice (“it’s ok to treat yourself to a derailment if the cost ensures you do so sparingly”).
That sentence is from Bee and I debating this in the forum (follow the link at the end of the blog post) and that discussion has gotten super deep and fascinating. I think what’s changing my mind the most (not counting zedmango’s mathematical model, which I haven’t gotten my head around in time to comment on here) is narthur’s – http://www.nathanarthur.com/ – collection of use cases, most of which contradict my thesis:
(STRAW POLL: Got any to add to Nathan’s list? I’ve added #0 as the canonical one I roughly had in mind when writing the blog post, though I think several of these are compatible with my thesis.)
- I’m beeminding my life’s work and want to do as much as possible.
- I want something that will poke me on a daily basis, a reminder I can’t (safely) ignore (hygiene).
- I want to be motivated to do more on a goal than I normally would (exercise).
- I want to track data (health metrics, meta goals).
- I never want to have even the option of derailing (addictions, hard-core commitments).
- I want to have the option of derailing in unusual circumstances using a pledge bright line (work or study hours).
- I want to maintain a low commitment on something that I just don’t want to die (side projects).
- I want to make sure I don’t forget to do something that I only need to do every so often (check oil, check fire alarm batteries, etc).
- I want to have the freedom of doing an activity without risking a self-destructive binge; just need a guardrail (gaming, YouTube, social media).
- I want to actively eliminate an activity from my life (addictions, negative health behaviors).
- I just want something that will encourage me to put in the activation energy of starting, but will leave me free to do as much or as little as I want beyond that (side projects, exercise).
- I want to start my goal out very conservatively and not feel forced into ratcheting it up until I feel ready (scary goals, exercise, side projects, anything).
Huge thanks to everyone debating this with me! And, no, we don’t intend to limit this kind of flexibility.
PS: If you haven’t taken a peek at beeminder.com/changelog in a while, you should! For example, graphs are now beautiful svg images. This is one more prelude to actual interactive graphs…
PPS: I’m nervous to say so since it’s a little soon to be sure but revenue seems to be shooting up ($32k/mo now) since we erected the commitwall.
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