My main anti-akrasia tool nowadays is Beeminder. I have two Beeminder goals at the moment, one for RTM items and one for Pomodoros. Most of my RTM items are repeating items along the lines of “deal with Gmail inbox” and “exercise,” and lumping them together into one goal helps me keep up routines while giving me a choice about which routines I want to keep up on a given day. The Pomodoro goal helps me chunk up the time I spend working on various projects, which combats ugh fields that otherwise tend to form.
Other Pomodoro users on the CFAR alumni mailing list have reported having some trouble with goals that they’re frequently close to derailing on, since derailing happens at midnight and preventing a derail can get in the way of other things you might want to do before midnight, e.g. spending time with a partner. One fix is to change your time zone in Beeminder so derailing happens at some other time: right now I have it set so that derails happen at 11pm instead.
Overall, +8. I can’t claim not to have akrasia problems, but I have a system and it generally works.
My main anti-akrasia tool nowadays is Beeminder. I have two Beeminder goals at the moment, one for RTM items and one for Pomodoros. Most of my RTM items are repeating items along the lines of “deal with Gmail inbox” and “exercise,” and lumping them together into one goal helps me keep up routines while giving me a choice about which routines I want to keep up on a given day. The Pomodoro goal helps me chunk up the time I spend working on various projects, which combats ugh fields that otherwise tend to form.
Other Pomodoro users on the CFAR alumni mailing list have reported having some trouble with goals that they’re frequently close to derailing on, since derailing happens at midnight and preventing a derail can get in the way of other things you might want to do before midnight, e.g. spending time with a partner. One fix is to change your time zone in Beeminder so derailing happens at some other time: right now I have it set so that derails happen at 11pm instead.
Overall, +8. I can’t claim not to have akrasia problems, but I have a system and it generally works.