Beejournal

Sixty-six: Where I've Been

Sat, 01 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Hmm, well I guess the fact that I’ve gotten Beeminder permanently ingrained is a good enough reason to finally update my Beejournal. Which means it’s already doing a good job of being a commitment device unto its own, hah! Time for a long overdue diatribe.

I know I said multiple times throughout my journal that I never wanted to stop no matter what, but there are a few reasons that I did end up stopping anyways.

The biggest reason being I’ve reached a equilibrium with Beeminder, and don’t have anything meaningful to update, unlike shanaqui’s excellent Beeminder Journal. I haven’t added or changed any of my Beeminder goals since my last update, and just archived a few that weren’t working.

That leads to my second point, which is that I realized I was getting caught up with the aesthetic of being productive rather than actually being productive. Not to mention I’ve sort of exhausted all my thoughts on Beeminder and a layperson’s perspective on behavioral science.

Since I’ve last updated I’ve started university, and it’s been going really well! I finished my first semseter with a 3.8 GPA. The magic though, is that I haven’t really had to use Beeminder for my schoolwork. I’ve just been doing my assignments and research, at a reasonable daily pace instead of trying to do everything last-minute, which used to be my default. The daily habits that I do which I’ve trained myself with using Beeminder (and that are still ongoing) have changed how I interface with my work in general.

But now I am on break, and almost all my Beeminders are on break. And a new year is just around the corner. And my education is suddenly back online because of the Omicron variant, which means I need to hold myself more accountable again!

Now, getting my shit together doesn’t mean I need figure out productivity, it means I need to figure out meaningfulness. Our lives have such a large amount of forgetability when we’re not being aware of it.

I’m sure I’ll end up writing a new year’s list of resolutions in my next update.

Sixty-five: Necessary Recalibration

Fri, 11 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Week Sixty-five! I haven’t written in quite a while, and there are a few reasons for that. Trying to increase certain goals quickly has totally thrown off my momentum with everything. I’ve been so busy trying to keep up with the bare minimum that a lot has gone neglected.

This is great though that it’s on-topic with what I said in my last post, and with what @dreev’s replied with:

…somewhere in between is the optimum – where the value of what you get done minus the cost in derailments is maximized.

My biggest pratfall is my inability to find this balance, I think. Either I’m coasting or I’m overwhelming myself, the Goldilocks zone seems to always be on the other side.

Of course, the simple answer is to just slowly increase your rates on things that you’re doing easily. I made the mistake of thinking I could just leap amounts because I’ve been doing this for so long, now.

Going over the derailments I’ve had in the past two weeks because of this, /writing and /distraction for not being able to keep myself focused for long enough. As well as finally derailing on /sleep, though I’ve finally been able to start going to bed earlier and for longer. I also have plateaued on my /weight long enough for that to derail as well, but I think that’s a good reset.

Also derailing on /journalbar since I missed an entry last week, duh.

It’s easy to feel lousy and let yourself become complacent with how things are, but as long as you shake yourself out of it and get back on your horse (the sooner the better), then it isn’t really a big deal. A couple weeks of inactivity can feel like a lot if you’re just going by day-by-day, but it’s relatively small when looking over sixteen months and counting. I’m just going to reset my rates for everything for the time being then work my way back up.

I will have to admit though that one of the reasons I’ve been procrastinating writing this update is because I’m feeling a little burned out on the meta-Beeminding in general, the newest iteration of content around the forums has made it feel rather irrelevant.

Sixty-four: Mass Derailments

Sat, 29 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Week Sixty-four! Well, it finally happened. The consequences of constantly edge-skating with beemergencies caught up to me. On Wednesday, I had a small emergency (everything is fine now) that caused me to miss a good portion of my daily routine, and caused a bunch of derailments because of that:

/obsidian ($0)
/jobs ($1)
/prayer ($1)
/learning ($0)
/writing ($5)
/meditation ($10)
/french ($10)

I decided that it’d be much less of a hassle to just let them all go through and pay–it was a lot less money than I thought (less than $30 total), and I suppose that’s because I rarely derail normally. (Any goal that’s <$5 hasn’t derailed once.)

Now, you could make the argument that I’m not derailing enough, and that my goals are simply too easy to achieve, but there’s a bout of suspicion on my end that that sort of philosophy is partially money-motivated for Beeminder itself. 🤔

Regardless, it did bring down my morale for quite a bit. I didn’t bother going through each goal and ratcheting back to immediately start everything the next day. I instead let the default 7 days of respite go through and give myself a bit of an impromptu break. That was, though, a bad idea. As I’ve said before, inactivity begets inactivity, and I subsequently also derailed on /github and /productivity, yeesh.

But, I’m ratcheting everything tonight and starting my full daily routine again tomorrow. I can fail everything–even easy things, a million time–but so long as I keep bouncing back and continuing then that’s all that matters!

In other good news, I’m finally half-vaxxed today as well! And my area is fully reopening on July 1st, which I am cautiously optimistic about.

Sixty-three: Going Back

Mon, 24 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Week Sixty-three! I suppose it’s time to announce some news that I’ve been sitting on for awhile, now. After a lot of thought over the year, the pandemic has made me re-evaluate a lot, as I’m sure it has with many. And so I’ve decided to go back to school, and have recently been accepted into the university of my choice for Fall 2021 intake.

I’m rather excited, but also nervous going back as a mature student, now. In order to help myself prepare, I’ve bumped up a few systems. With /writing going from 450 words/day to 2,000, and a few more daily hours for /learning.

I expect to use Beeminder in different ways as a full-time academic student, and hopefully my journal can help me with the transition. I’m not sure what I’ll be adding (or removing) yet, but I’m very optimistic Beeminder will help me a lot with my education. :D

Of course, there were also quite a few derailments this week. First, /nutrition derailed simply because I’ve been forgetful about logging my meals, and not adding anything does cause an automatic derail. There’s more friction than there was when I was just recording with /foodlog, but I think the benefits outweigh it.

I also derailed on /morning-pages2, but on purpose. I’m finally archiving the goal, and actually starting the real morning pages goal with a starting deadline of 1pm to help me ease into it. I always feel more inspired and productive after I’ve started writing, but of course I put it off as long as possible. :P

And, I nearly derail on /sleep almost every night, I’m barely getting my minimum of 7.3 hours. Though, I don’t know if I’m actually just needing less sleep, or if my schedule is really terrible. I do feel sluggish with brain fog, etc. but I can think of a number of things that would be the cause of that.

Sixty-two: Counting Words

Mon, 17 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Week Sixty-two! Quite a few Beeminder-related things to talk about this week. First off, my failures: I derailed on both /distraction and /meditation a few days ago, which definitely was causation. Overall, I’ve been feeling distracted and disorganized.

I’ve had to adjust the deadlines for a couple of my OG goals that I started in 2017, since they’re starting to reach their default end after almost four years, which is wild. This caused a weird issue with /productivity which I think is fixed now.

Speaking of weird issues, /tweets says it can no longer track my Twitter account because I have my tweets protected, which is odd because the account has been protected this entire time and has been working just fine. However I’m fine with this, since I’ve been wanting to transition to a public Twitter account for awhile now. (I think I’ve figured out how to use it healthily–if that even is possible)

Also, a new system! I haven’t added one for a long time, now. So, /obsidian is going to track my word count in the app I’ve talked about before in my journal called Obsidian using this cool plug-in by kenzan100.

I know that I still need to start using Google Docs as well for my /morning-pages goal which I still have on the backburner. As well as set up the script so I can start tracking my chess playing as well. So many things to dooooo.

Also, totally unrelated, but This American Life’s episode this week was all about daily routines and rituals. One quote that stuck out to me was that “some days the ritual doesn’t matter much, some days it’s full of meaning. The important part is that it’s done everyday”–echoing the Bojack Horseman quote on top of my Bee Journal website.

Sixty-one: Longterm

Mon, 10 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Week Sixty-one! Just as late as last week, but that means there’s consistency at least, right?

I’ve been having trouble with /github recently (and subsequently, /learning), specifically trying to find a new project. Or perhaps more aptly, trying to motivate myself to continue on the projects I’ve been working on.

One thing I’ve noticed–that’s one of my biggest pain points–is that I cannot plan and then execute. I can do things with reckless abandon and no foresight, sure, which sometimes lets me compile that work into something that’s rather large and impressive (this Bee journal, maybe), but overall that’s super impractical.

As soon as I make an actual plan for myself, long-term goals, it all falls apart. The more important and substantial a task is, the more I’ll procrastinate and ignore doing it. This is what I need to be working on the most right now.

In better news, it’s really exciting people start using my open-source projects for their work! (1, 2)

Sympathising. I think the first time I ragequit Duolingo was a streak breakage, before they allowed you to freeze them. Even though streaks shouldn’t be the end goal, something about having one displayed and then losing it *breaks my brain. –@shanaqui

Yes, exactly! I use to be completely demoralized by stuff like this, but thankfully with Beeminder, it doesn’t seem to really affect me at all.

And I really think that’s because even if the website says I’m back at 0, I still forever have my Beeminder graph recording my upward progress. I think that’s why the whole “don’t break the chain” mentality can sometimes be more unhelpful than helpful, and why Beeminder is such a great alternative to it! :D

Sixty: Mayday

Mon, 03 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Week Sixty! I’m very late this week! I have been feeling pretty lazy, I thought I’d be alright after last entry, but that’s not the case I’m afraid. For starters, COVID-19 is surging in my area, and I don’t see myself being able to get a vaccine shot for another month or two.

Anyways, related to Beeminder, I derailed on both /french and /clozemaster this week, not because I skipped a lesson but because I didn’t gain enough XP, which wasn’t a big deal to me.

However, I made the major error of not updating the Respite number (also known as days of mercy–how much safety buffer you automatically get after derailing) to 0 from the default of a week. (Because of course I’d forget something like that.)

This meant that the day after I derailed, I completely forgot to practice my French–I didn’t realize that I’ve become accustomed to Beemergency notifications prompting me so heavily–and so I broke my streak on both apps. :’(

For Duolingo, it’s not a big deal because they have their cute “streak freeze” capability, however my 250-day streak on Clozemaster was gone completely.

I know it’s not really a big deal, and I just have to start over again, but it really demonstrates how one slip-up leads to another–spiralling downward the same way good work causes a virtuous cycle upward.

Perhaps not coincidentally, I also keep nearly derailing on /sleep, due to restlessness and messing up my circadian rhythm, which has also most likely been causing my poor mood.

When I get down like this, it’s easy to become disenfranchised with the whole idea of this–that I’m juts drinking the Kool-aid of the self-help industry, and that the work I’ve been doing have just been easy busywork to distract me from the more difficult tasks that I’ve convinced myself aren’t Beemindable.

Although I think it’s good to have that kind of self-awareness and criticality, I also realize that I more often than not don’t feel this way, and that I am just trying my best, and that Beeminder is helping me a lot with that genuinely.

And although I don’t think Beeminder is a crutch–as previously discussed in this journal–I do have to wonder if it contributes to an internal or external locus of control.

Fifty-Nine: Lackluster Efforts

Fri, 23 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Week Fifty-nine! Not really an entry this week, I’m afraid. I haven’t really been productive at all due to health reasons and have been feeling overall pretty demotivated. But I’m at the tail end of it and should be alright for next week. I really need to focus on addressing root causes and not symptoms.

It’s sometimes easy for me to forget what this is about: keeping myself accountable for my Beeminder goals. I get distracted easily with other things that are on my mind (and it’s a lot easier to just write whatever in these casual updates as opposed to an actual blog post or something).

And it’s also difficult at times to figure out what to exactly update on because things are largely the same. I’m happy with where my goals are and can do them all pretty well, it takes a lot of thought to figure out what to add next.

That being said, I think what I’m going to work on starting is a new beeminder goal for a specific repository (as opposed to /github which logs everything) where I’ll be housing my new website project.

As I’ve written about before, I’m attempting to create a place that I can put all of my stuff (coding projects, writing) while also being a place for daily journaling/microblogging. It’s not a technical issue, but rather a UI/design language one, which probably doesn’t make much sense.

Anyways, one good thing that I have done is create separate “productive” accounts on websites that are usually distracting for me (YouTube, Reddit, etc.) where I only consume helpful/educational material and let the magic of the algorithm continue to only provide me that sorta content. But, I do still need a separate “normal” account or else I’d end up being weasel-y and then the magic algo would no longer work as well!

Fifty-Eight: No Slippery Slopes

Fri, 16 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Week Fifty-eight! I’ve been largely working on the redesign of my personal website this week–and as I quoted Carl Sagan in entry #24, to make anything from scratch, you must first invent the universe. Which as been a little overwhelming for me. But I have finally begun to find my footing in the work.

I just have a bunch of little things and projects that are scattered across the Internet that I want to consolidate and unify in a pleasing manner that’s also speedy and accessible–which also parallels my non-digital life pretty well, too. I did set up a little site to show off all the open-source coding work I’ve been doing for the past year. :)

Anyways, specifically looking at Beeminder, I think I need to figure out a way to automate the tracking of /journalbar, because having it be a manual entry means I let myself write this past the deadlines at times. (Like right now, by three hours).

In all honesty, I don’t really consider it that grave of a sin, since it’s a weekly event and a few hours late is an insignificant amount of time relative to that. But I’m also acutely aware of how dangerous of a slippery slope that line of thinking is. Maybe I can figure out something with Integromat or the newer Zapier clone and confusingly-similarly named, Integrately. (Which someone should try out, by the way.)

While we’re on the meta, I’ve thought about making this project a newsletter, though I’m not sure if that’d be helpful. I really want to start a newsletter of some kind but I just don’t feel as though I have anything of import that could go out on a weekly basis. That might just be imposter syndrome, though.

Also, I think I have to look into adding more to /fitness or perhaps create a new system entirely. I’ve been having pain in my leg after sitting for extended periods (which is very much not good for you at all), and I haven’t really been able to find a solid solution for this–maybe a standing desk, though those are expensive.

Fifty-Seven: The Year Ahead

Fri, 09 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Week Fifty-seven! It has been an especially boring week for me. I’ve been doing perfectly fine on all my systems, no derailments or derailment-adjacent scares, and also nothing really feeling all too easy.

I’m mostly just taking time to do some reflecting–I have a blog post due soon that lines up with my annual birthday review, an idea I’ve borrowed from Buster Benson. I usually (attempt) to pick out a central theme to attempt to base my life around for that subsequent year, although I allow myself to get rather abstract with the idea.

This year, I have two central and contradicting ideas: 1) Apply Overwhelming Force, and 2) Embrace the Cozy.

As I’ve written before, I still feel as though there is so much more that I could be doing, so much more that I ought to be doing. But at the same time, I recognize how difficult and sometimes unbearable the last year has been, and figuring out how to incorporate more coziness in my life could be both important and fun.

Of course, this is largely due to COVID-19–I had thought just a few weeks prior to this that things were look up regarding the pandemic, however this is no longer the case. Canada is likely to exceed the U.S. infection rate in the coming days, and our vaccines per capita have been far lower. We are resuming lockdown as another third wave hits my local region.

Of course none of this has to do with Beeminder, so my apologies for being so off-topic. I will add though that having the daily habits of /meditation and /prayer have really helped me deal with my anxiety–and perhaps I need to figure out how to Beemind a method to help my energy levels so I can get more done throughout the day. 🤔

Katy Milkman, from that podcast, has a decent newsletter. The last one (If the Finish Line Is in Sight, Then So What? — Katy Milkman 2) had that Freakonomics interview in it, as well as some other things including a good discussion of the Goal Gradient Hypothesis. –@adamwolf

Thanks for the recommendation, I subscribed! (Also, @narthur mentioned Mailbrew in the discord server which is really cool as well.)