What types of things have y’all successfully beeminded?
I tried increasing the number of consecutive push-ups I could do, eventually got sick and failed. Beeminder isn’t very forgiving in such situations. I tried forcing myself to write every day and managed to fail that despite putting up an actual pledge and setting a really low bar for what counts as writing. I love the idea of beeminder and it has actually helped me in the sense that it worked for a while in each previous attempt, which is better than not working at all. I’ve even read Nick Winter’s The Motivation Hacker yet I can’t seem to find goals in my life that it makes sense to beemind.
So, to return to the question, what things have you successfully beeminded?
If I understand it correctly, much of the power in Beeminder comes from the threat of losing money when you fail. How many times did you fail at writing before giving up? I have not used BM in a while, but I did successfully use it for writing.
(Number of consecutive push-ups doesn’t seem like a good thing to Beemind. If your body doesn’t have 50 push-ups in it, wanting it really bad isn’t going to help much. Tracking number of push-ups done in a given amount of time would probably work better, which would naturally increase consecutive pushups.)
I very much agree with the parenthetical about pushups. I beemind 30 pushups per day—http://beeminder.com/d/push—with the idea that I’ll gradually ramp that up as my max reps increases. Except I’m failing to ever do that and have been at 30/day forever. If I cared more I’d ramp it up though. Right now I’m just happy to be forced to maintain some semblance of baseline upper-body strength.
The general point: beemind inputs, not outputs. Ie, things you have total control over.
PS: The Beeminder android app has a pushup counter built in, where you put your phone on the floor and touch your nose to it on each pushup and it tallies them for you.
As far as pushups are concerned, they’ve been successful in the sense that I’ve
been doing pushups regularly for two years and am still going, but—due to my
genes and my current choice not to expend a huge amount of mana
points on this goal—I’ve been
plateaued at 12 to 16 consecutive pushups for a year or more. I second
Daniel’s recommendation [edit: Daniel being dreeves; also, jetm made
the same point] to set a goal that’s under the control of you, not of
your body’s ability to increase its strength.
I have lost money to Beeminder a few times. I think the money helps motivation,
though maintaining the graph and “not breaking the chain” are powerful on their
own.
Long answer: Anything I want to repeat, with reminders, that is measurable (the enforcement is nice, but actually much less important than the reminders, tracking and ease of entering data for me).
My beeminder results are generally bad. The only three successful goals were: making pictures for my textbook, doing sit-ups, and running.
I guess the difference was mostly that my successful attempts were short-termed. I can motivate myself to do something for 30 days. For a longer period, after some time I start hating doing the thing. It is a bug I should fix somehow, but beeminder wasn’t any help in fixing that bug.
What types of things have y’all successfully beeminded?
I tried increasing the number of consecutive push-ups I could do, eventually got sick and failed. Beeminder isn’t very forgiving in such situations. I tried forcing myself to write every day and managed to fail that despite putting up an actual pledge and setting a really low bar for what counts as writing. I love the idea of beeminder and it has actually helped me in the sense that it worked for a while in each previous attempt, which is better than not working at all. I’ve even read Nick Winter’s The Motivation Hacker yet I can’t seem to find goals in my life that it makes sense to beemind.
So, to return to the question, what things have you successfully beeminded?
If I understand it correctly, much of the power in Beeminder comes from the threat of losing money when you fail. How many times did you fail at writing before giving up? I have not used BM in a while, but I did successfully use it for writing.
(Number of consecutive push-ups doesn’t seem like a good thing to Beemind. If your body doesn’t have 50 push-ups in it, wanting it really bad isn’t going to help much. Tracking number of push-ups done in a given amount of time would probably work better, which would naturally increase consecutive pushups.)
I very much agree with the parenthetical about pushups. I beemind 30 pushups per day—http://beeminder.com/d/push—with the idea that I’ll gradually ramp that up as my max reps increases. Except I’m failing to ever do that and have been at 30/day forever. If I cared more I’d ramp it up though. Right now I’m just happy to be forced to maintain some semblance of baseline upper-body strength.
The general point: beemind inputs, not outputs. Ie, things you have total control over.
PS: The Beeminder android app has a pushup counter built in, where you put your phone on the floor and touch your nose to it on each pushup and it tallies them for you.
Beeminded successfully:
Anki.
Exercise, including pushups. I was also successful doing pushups with the Seinfeld method for about a year before Beeminder.
Beeminded with middling success or unsuccessfully (not totally sure why, but I think these are just harder goals for me):
Hours worked (that I get paid for).
GTD/Remember the Milk tasks.
Hours spent on personal programming projects.
As far as pushups are concerned, they’ve been successful in the sense that I’ve been doing pushups regularly for two years and am still going, but—due to my genes and my current choice not to expend a huge amount of mana points on this goal—I’ve been plateaued at 12 to 16 consecutive pushups for a year or more. I second Daniel’s recommendation [edit: Daniel being dreeves; also, jetm made the same point] to set a goal that’s under the control of you, not of your body’s ability to increase its strength.
I have lost money to Beeminder a few times. I think the money helps motivation, though maintaining the graph and “not breaking the chain” are powerful on their own.
Short answer: https://www.beeminder.com/illuminosity
Long answer: Anything I want to repeat, with reminders, that is measurable (the enforcement is nice, but actually much less important than the reminders, tracking and ease of entering data for me).
My beeminder results are generally bad. The only three successful goals were: making pictures for my textbook, doing sit-ups, and running.
I guess the difference was mostly that my successful attempts were short-termed. I can motivate myself to do something for 30 days. For a longer period, after some time I start hating doing the thing. It is a bug I should fix somehow, but beeminder wasn’t any help in fixing that bug.