I’d like to do a specific goal every day of the week (so weekly rate = 7). However for each new month I would like a freebie (meaning a day off), i.e. 12 freebies per year, but distributed every month.
The best thing I can come up with is to set the weekly goal as (365-12)/365 = 0.9671232877 for non-leap years and (366-12)/365 = 0.9698630137 for leap years. Then I should get my get a freebie roughly once every new month, but not exactly.
This seems like an acceptable solution to me, but I’d like to know if there is an even better (possibly build-in?) solution that would allow me to get the freebie exactly on the 1st every new month.
On the advanced settings tab, you can change the visible rate-units from weekly (the default) to monthly (among other values). This has no effect on functionality, because behind the scenes Beeminder does pretty much exactly what you describe to turn every slope into a daily rate.
Best advice I can give is this: don’t stress over exactness. As soon as you derail or take a break or whatever, the beautiful pattern you’ve set up at the outset will be disrupted.
I think it’s an excellent plan to set a slope at slightly-less-than-seven times per week. It lets you ‘earn back’ the occasional missed day.
Thanks for your reply. But doesn’t a monthly goal make it even less accurate? Because the months have 28, 29, 30 or 31 days, you might as well take a weekly goal as (365-12)/365 or something? Or am I missing something?
It has exactly zero impact on accuracy, because it’s all the same under the hood. Entirely up to you whether you want to see that slope as .965 per day, 6.75 per week, or 29.4 per month.
The only way I know of to give yourself exactly one day off every month is to specify a slope of 1 per day and then schedule a one day break each calendar month. It’d be up to you whether to take that actual day off, or just keep it for a rainy day.
