Yeah. Beeminder doesn’t work for me either—nor do most online punishment-based motivators.
My problem with it is that it doesn’t punish you for failing to do the thing you need to do. It punishes you for failing to record the fact that you did the thing you need to do.
So if you’re time-poor (like me) and still managed to do the thing… but didn’t have time to go online and tell beeminder that you did the thing… you still get punished. :(
Agreed that this is a problem! Thankfully there are a lot of integrations with Beeminder that automatically enter data. You can hook up hundreds of different applications to it through IFTTT or Zapier.
The beeminder team sends “legitimacy check” emails if you’ve derailed on your goal which explicitly asks if it was a case of forgetting to enter the data. I’ve written in once or twice when I’ve derailed on account of not entering the data on time and have had quick responses from them, and haven’t been punished. Were you unaware you could do this?
Kind of.
I was aware you could appeal the decision, but I felt that would be an imposition on some poor moderator… and given I’m pretty sure this would occur on a regular basis, decided I didn’t want to do that.
What would work for me, would be for a short “grace period” in which we could update the decision ourselves. Like I said—fitocracy gives you a week or so to back-date your past workouts.
Of course fitocracy doesn’t run with a monetary punishment so it’s not as bad for you to backdate...
Basically—I conclude that beeminder’s mechanic doesn’t fit well enough to my likely usage patterns to be worth it.
That still counts as going online to checkin. Other means of getting online aren’t the solution.
If it’s 11:30pm and I have to be in bed half an hour ago in order to be up in time for work tomorrow—it doesn’t matter how many avenues I could take to get online… I still can’t spare a minute to do it.
I prefer fitocracy’s approach—you can checkin for something you did within the week, but no further back.
For beeminder—even allowing for “actually I did do this yesterday” would be better than the current approach.
That’s an overestimate of the time it takes to submit data via the Android Beeminder app by about an order of magnitude, at least if your phone within reach of hand from your bed.
Yeah. Beeminder doesn’t work for me either—nor do most online punishment-based motivators.
My problem with it is that it doesn’t punish you for failing to do the thing you need to do. It punishes you for failing to record the fact that you did the thing you need to do.
So if you’re time-poor (like me) and still managed to do the thing… but didn’t have time to go online and tell beeminder that you did the thing… you still get punished. :(
Yeah, I have the same problem with it. When my productivity went up, I actually went off the road because I couldn’t be bothered to record it all.
Agreed that this is a problem! Thankfully there are a lot of integrations with Beeminder that automatically enter data. You can hook up hundreds of different applications to it through IFTTT or Zapier.
The beeminder team sends “legitimacy check” emails if you’ve derailed on your goal which explicitly asks if it was a case of forgetting to enter the data. I’ve written in once or twice when I’ve derailed on account of not entering the data on time and have had quick responses from them, and haven’t been punished. Were you unaware you could do this?
Kind of. I was aware you could appeal the decision, but I felt that would be an imposition on some poor moderator… and given I’m pretty sure this would occur on a regular basis, decided I didn’t want to do that.
What would work for me, would be for a short “grace period” in which we could update the decision ourselves. Like I said—fitocracy gives you a week or so to back-date your past workouts. Of course fitocracy doesn’t run with a monetary punishment so it’s not as bad for you to backdate...
Basically—I conclude that beeminder’s mechanic doesn’t fit well enough to my likely usage patterns to be worth it.
Have you checked out their Android and iPhone apps? Also, I think if you have a US cell phone number you can add data via SMS.
That still counts as going online to checkin. Other means of getting online aren’t the solution.
If it’s 11:30pm and I have to be in bed half an hour ago in order to be up in time for work tomorrow—it doesn’t matter how many avenues I could take to get online… I still can’t spare a minute to do it.
I prefer fitocracy’s approach—you can checkin for something you did within the week, but no further back. For beeminder—even allowing for “actually I did do this yesterday” would be better than the current approach.
That’s an overestimate of the time it takes to submit data via the Android Beeminder app by about an order of magnitude, at least if your phone within reach of hand from your bed.
No. It isn’t. Even when my iPad is on my bed.
Generally I must:
open my eyes (after my brain spits up the info that I’ve forgotten to do it)
grab the iPad
switch it on
swipe and type in my PIN
click the main button to get from my alarm-clock screen to the icon-menu
swipe through menus until I get to the app
load the app
then do the updating on the actual app
double-click the home button co I can:
close the app, then click back on my alarm-clock app
switch off.
put the iPad back in position on the bed
close my eyes
try and get back into the restful frame of mind for sleep that I was in before all this.
I count steps 1-13 as being roughly a minute of time. I reckon step 14 is the doozy…