7 ms·

I've tried beeminder and other self-binding contracts, but after some time something in my life (moving, breakup, etc) pops up and I just can't fulfill the goal

I've tried beeminder and other self-binding contracts, but after some time something in my life (moving, breakup, etc) pops up and I just can't fulfill the goal for 1-2 weeks. After I let it slip for a bit, I find it harder to come back and it feels that the contract loses some meaning. For any system I've tried, it consistently falls after 3-4 months of use (this is beeminder, spreadsheets, text files, among others). Does anyone have suggestions for how to keep going after a setback?

dreeves 6y ago
First question: did you know that with Beeminder you can schedule arbitrary breaks in your commitment/graph? They do have to be scheduled with a week of lead time. (Of course you can also take the hit and get, by default, a week of respite after derailing. Our most hardcore users find that worthwhile sometimes and explains how Beeminder makes money even (especially) from our most successful users. I know that seems ironic or paradoxical for those first encountering Beeminder!)
- lambdaloop 6y ago
  Yes, when I was using beeminder, I both set scheduled breaks and also got hit and got a break. I'd say the issue would be 50/50 planned/unplanned, but I didn't always plan appropriately so I got hit more often than scheduled. I did use beeminder for 3-4 months at a time, with great benefit! But looking back at every goal I set, it starts slipping past the 3-4 month mark. I got similar results with other systems (like the Lights spreadsheet from ultraworking or keeping a journal in text files), although without the nice beeminder charts.. I'm not sure, do other people see these patterns with their goals? Are there any tricks for fighting this late slippage?
  - dreeves 6y ago
    I think there are a million tricks and my top meta-trick would be to ask that question in the Beeminder forum. Just asking it will get you engaged with the community there and serve as additional motivation to stay on the wagon. Analytics-wise it seems that if you stick around for 9 months to a year you become markedly more likely to stick around indefinitely. Another possible source of tips: http://blog.beeminder.com/burnout http://blog.beeminder.com/burnout -- about not getting overzealous about beeminding all-the-things right off the bat.
DoreenMichele 6y ago
What are some examples of goals you set and couldn't follow through on? I think specific examples might help get better answers.
- lambdaloop 6y ago
  Sure, a couple of examples of tasks that ended up lapsing on beeminder (certainly plus points for beeminder for allowing me to see my behavior in charts!) https://www.beeminder.com/lambdaloop/mustdo https://www.beeminder.com/lambdaloop/mustdo - doing 1 admin task per day (slowed down after 3 months, stopped after 6 months) https://www.beeminder.com/lambdaloop/anki https://www.beeminder.com/lambdaloop/anki - reviewing some number of anki cards each day (lapsed after ~2 months, recovered but lapsed after 2 months again and stopped) (goal was private when archived, but yah similar trajectory) - doing weekly reviews (lapsed after ~5 months)
  - DoreenMichele 6y ago
    Did you ever set larger goals? What was the purpose of doing those things? Did it build towards something? What were the milestones you were measuring or overarching purpose? I would probably die of boredom and give up too after a while if it was "Some seemingly pointless small task repeated daily with no larger goal to work towards as a means to measure when I had done enough or keep me motivated and clear why I should continue to do this."
    - lambdaloop 6y ago
      I suppose each of the habits that I tried to build generally improved my life, but I'm not sure that I've setup clear milestones to work towards. That's something that has worked well in personal projects, so I'll give it a shot for habits as well! Thank you for the feedback! It's hard to answer about overarching purpose. The habits I highlighted each help towards some purpose (organizing my life, learning languages), but only form some portion of that goal.
      - 6y ago
agumonkey 6y ago
work I kid you not, there's no better mechanism than that. In a job you suddenly are part of a whole, the motivation is regular and smooth (somehow). On your own, unless you have everything in check (rare I assume since we're all here to talk about our struggles), it will be a long uphill battle.
- plutonorm 6y ago
  Work has never "worked" for me like that. I don't want to be part of a whole that exists purely to make money. I also don't like someone being my boss, who the fuck do they think they are to tell me what to do? Unless I respect them and their opinions - but in 20 years of work that's happened 0 times.
  - agumonkey 6y ago
    I can understand. Quite a lot. But in my experience, going lone wolf has been twice harder and had very nasty health consequences. I should have been more precise, a job that is 'good enough' (good spirit, good goals, good management). Otherwise yeah it's another form of hell.
_huayra_ 6y ago
This is not a systems problem, but an emotional pattern. To break down that "setback" feeling: it often feels like one must "make up for" that setback, i.e. to get back where one "should" be. This causes one to move the goal posts further and further in order to save one's ego. Inevitably, the goals to "save" one's ego become more outlandish and impossible, further setting one up for feelings of failure. These failure feelings often cause one to retreat to the passive, short-term pleasurable / long-term destructive habits (e.g. procrastination, substances, video games, etc). That stuck feeling happens because it feels really hard to let go of that narrative, which causes these Emotional Phugoids [0] that ultimately lead to further inaction. There are various things that have worked for me, but most of it is around acceptance and recognition of this pattern. Meditation helps too, to recognize that voice that says "in order to make up for pissing away 2 days tweaking your Emacs config when you need to write that unit test, you must finish the project by the end of the week!". In addition to meditation, practicing boredom has been enormously helpful. If you can step away from that feeling of always needing to use every second of your time to the max (e.g. catching up on twitter while using the bathroom), it can help close those mental open loops. When one frantically is trying to listen to podcasts at 2x speed while reading a tech blog post while getting jostled around on Caltrain (at least when we used to do that...), your brain just lobs these open problems at you and it's easy to get overwhelmed. I find these self-binding contracts to be a smaller portion of the equation for making progress in life. I know people who have one note on their phone with their TODOs that are successful and people who have email auto-responders, a bunch of accountability buddies / apps, and a mindmap / Zettelkasten / Roam / Notion account that looks like the graph of sites on the internet, yet they accomplish nothing. Relying on a system of any sort without changing your brain through emotional work is attempting to build a house without the foundation. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phugoid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phugoid
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  > Relying on a system of any sort without changing your brain through emotional work is attempting to build a house without the foundation. Would be great if someone figured some roadmap for self-help on that, because the standard advice of "go see a therapist" is not actionable for many, for various reasons, ranging from contextual (e.g. you live in a small city, no relevant therapist anywhere in range that you could make work with your schedule) to personal (for some problems, if you could just go and see a therapist, you wouldn't need one in the first place!). > To break down that "setback" feeling: it often feels like one must "make up for" that setback, i.e. to get back where one "should" be. This causes one to move the goal posts further and further in order to save one's ego. Not sure why, but it made me think of windup in feedback control[0]. In controllers it usually involves overshooting the target, but you can imagine physical limits preventing you from closing to your target in the first place[1]. Stress levels about tasks seem to work similarly - they seem to integrate your distance from "done". So if you're not making progress, you can get so wound up that stress response dominates all your thinking about the task, which can prevent you from reaching it and/or force you to abort it entirely. The analogy isn't in any way perfect, but going with it, I wish you could apply the same mitigation strategies to your stress levels that are applied to PID controllers to prevent windup. -- [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_windup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_windup - Basically, the Integral part of a PID controller tracks the integral of the error. If you stray too far from target and for too long, that integral of error will grow so large as to dominate the output of the controller. It's usually a problem in terms of overshooting - a wound up controller will shoot you past your target and keep pushing you away, until the error integral "unwinds" and the Proportional and Derivative parts of the controller will regain their influence. [1] - Perhaps the windup grows faster than the controlled device can act; e.g. a valve cannot be more than 100% open, no matter how strongly the controller is asking.
savanaly 6y ago
What someone told me that was very helpful was to not become convinced that just because I had fallen into this pattern over and over I would continue to do so. Recognizing the pattern is the first step to breaking it, but there's no magic bullet to break it. It's honestly sort of a leap of faith but the key is to just try again and try harder not to fall into the same pattern. Then when you fail try again. And again. And again. In my twenties I went through the pattern of starting a side project and abandoning it because of akrasia over and over. Now in my late twenties I find the pattern continues to happen but taking an honest account of the whole decade there has been marked improvement. In the last six months I've brought two projects to a degree of semi-completion that I wouldn't have thought possible six years ago. I don't want to be overly sunny: tons of people do go their whole lives repeating the negative patterns of akrasia and never get done what they want to get done. I feel for them it's an unfortunate combination of the tendencies manifesting stronger in them, giving up on trying to break the pattern, and inability to recognize the patterns. For you at least I have a lot of hope because in this comment you show you recognize the patterns.

dreeves 6y ago

First question: did you know that with Beeminder you can schedule arbitrary breaks in your commitment/graph? They do have to be scheduled with a week of lead time. (Of course you can also take the hit and get, by default, a week of respite after derailing. Our most hardcore users find that worthwhile sometimes and explains how Beeminder makes money even (especially) from our most successful users. I know that seems ironic or paradoxical for those first encountering Beeminder!)

lambdaloop 6y ago
Yes, when I was using beeminder, I both set scheduled breaks and also got hit and got a break. I'd say the issue would be 50/50 planned/unplanned, but I didn't always plan appropriately so I got hit more often than scheduled. I did use beeminder for 3-4 months at a time, with great benefit! But looking back at every goal I set, it starts slipping past the 3-4 month mark. I got similar results with other systems (like the Lights spreadsheet from ultraworking or keeping a journal in text files), although without the nice beeminder charts.. I'm not sure, do other people see these patterns with their goals? Are there any tricks for fighting this late slippage?
- dreeves 6y ago
  I think there are a million tricks and my top meta-trick would be to ask that question in the Beeminder forum. Just asking it will get you engaged with the community there and serve as additional motivation to stay on the wagon. Analytics-wise it seems that if you stick around for 9 months to a year you become markedly more likely to stick around indefinitely. Another possible source of tips: http://blog.beeminder.com/burnout http://blog.beeminder.com/burnout -- about not getting overzealous about beeminding all-the-things right off the bat.

DoreenMichele 6y ago

What are some examples of goals you set and couldn't follow through on? I think specific examples might help get better answers.

lambdaloop 6y ago
Sure, a couple of examples of tasks that ended up lapsing on beeminder (certainly plus points for beeminder for allowing me to see my behavior in charts!) https://www.beeminder.com/lambdaloop/mustdo https://www.beeminder.com/lambdaloop/mustdo - doing 1 admin task per day (slowed down after 3 months, stopped after 6 months) https://www.beeminder.com/lambdaloop/anki https://www.beeminder.com/lambdaloop/anki - reviewing some number of anki cards each day (lapsed after ~2 months, recovered but lapsed after 2 months again and stopped) (goal was private when archived, but yah similar trajectory) - doing weekly reviews (lapsed after ~5 months)
- DoreenMichele 6y ago
  Did you ever set larger goals? What was the purpose of doing those things? Did it build towards something? What were the milestones you were measuring or overarching purpose? I would probably die of boredom and give up too after a while if it was "Some seemingly pointless small task repeated daily with no larger goal to work towards as a means to measure when I had done enough or keep me motivated and clear why I should continue to do this."
  - lambdaloop 6y ago
    I suppose each of the habits that I tried to build generally improved my life, but I'm not sure that I've setup clear milestones to work towards. That's something that has worked well in personal projects, so I'll give it a shot for habits as well! Thank you for the feedback! It's hard to answer about overarching purpose. The habits I highlighted each help towards some purpose (organizing my life, learning languages), but only form some portion of that goal.
    - 6y ago

agumonkey 6y ago

work I kid you not, there's no better mechanism than that. In a job you suddenly are part of a whole, the motivation is regular and smooth (somehow). On your own, unless you have everything in check (rare I assume since we're all here to talk about our struggles), it will be a long uphill battle.

plutonorm 6y ago
Work has never "worked" for me like that. I don't want to be part of a whole that exists purely to make money. I also don't like someone being my boss, who the fuck do they think they are to tell me what to do? Unless I respect them and their opinions - but in 20 years of work that's happened 0 times.
- agumonkey 6y ago
  I can understand. Quite a lot. But in my experience, going lone wolf has been twice harder and had very nasty health consequences. I should have been more precise, a job that is 'good enough' (good spirit, good goals, good management). Otherwise yeah it's another form of hell.

_huayra_ 6y ago

This is not a systems problem, but an emotional pattern. To break down that "setback" feeling: it often feels like one must "make up for" that setback, i.e. to get back where one "should" be. This causes one to move the goal posts further and further in order to save one's ego. Inevitably, the goals to "save" one's ego become more outlandish and impossible, further setting one up for feelings of failure. These failure feelings often cause one to retreat to the passive, short-term pleasurable / long-term destructive habits (e.g. procrastination, substances, video games, etc). That stuck feeling happens because it feels really hard to let go of that narrative, which causes these Emotional Phugoids [0] that ultimately lead to further inaction. There are various things that have worked for me, but most of it is around acceptance and recognition of this pattern. Meditation helps too, to recognize that voice that says "in order to make up for pissing away 2 days tweaking your Emacs config when you need to write that unit test, you must finish the project by the end of the week!". In addition to meditation, practicing boredom has been enormously helpful. If you can step away from that feeling of always needing to use every second of your time to the max (e.g. catching up on twitter while using the bathroom), it can help close those mental open loops. When one frantically is trying to listen to podcasts at 2x speed while reading a tech blog post while getting jostled around on Caltrain (at least when we used to do that...), your brain just lobs these open problems at you and it's easy to get overwhelmed. I find these self-binding contracts to be a smaller portion of the equation for making progress in life. I know people who have one note on their phone with their TODOs that are successful and people who have email auto-responders, a bunch of accountability buddies / apps, and a mindmap / Zettelkasten / Roam / Notion account that looks like the graph of sites on the internet, yet they accomplish nothing. Relying on a system of any sort without changing your brain through emotional work is attempting to build a house without the foundation. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phugoid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phugoid

TeMPOraL 6y ago
> Relying on a system of any sort without changing your brain through emotional work is attempting to build a house without the foundation. Would be great if someone figured some roadmap for self-help on that, because the standard advice of "go see a therapist" is not actionable for many, for various reasons, ranging from contextual (e.g. you live in a small city, no relevant therapist anywhere in range that you could make work with your schedule) to personal (for some problems, if you could just go and see a therapist, you wouldn't need one in the first place!). > To break down that "setback" feeling: it often feels like one must "make up for" that setback, i.e. to get back where one "should" be. This causes one to move the goal posts further and further in order to save one's ego. Not sure why, but it made me think of windup in feedback control[0]. In controllers it usually involves overshooting the target, but you can imagine physical limits preventing you from closing to your target in the first place[1]. Stress levels about tasks seem to work similarly - they seem to integrate your distance from "done". So if you're not making progress, you can get so wound up that stress response dominates all your thinking about the task, which can prevent you from reaching it and/or force you to abort it entirely. The analogy isn't in any way perfect, but going with it, I wish you could apply the same mitigation strategies to your stress levels that are applied to PID controllers to prevent windup. -- [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_windup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_windup - Basically, the Integral part of a PID controller tracks the integral of the error. If you stray too far from target and for too long, that integral of error will grow so large as to dominate the output of the controller. It's usually a problem in terms of overshooting - a wound up controller will shoot you past your target and keep pushing you away, until the error integral "unwinds" and the Proportional and Derivative parts of the controller will regain their influence. [1] - Perhaps the windup grows faster than the controlled device can act; e.g. a valve cannot be more than 100% open, no matter how strongly the controller is asking.

savanaly 6y ago

What someone told me that was very helpful was to not become convinced that just because I had fallen into this pattern over and over I would continue to do so. Recognizing the pattern is the first step to breaking it, but there's no magic bullet to break it. It's honestly sort of a leap of faith but the key is to just try again and try harder not to fall into the same pattern. Then when you fail try again. And again. And again. In my twenties I went through the pattern of starting a side project and abandoning it because of akrasia over and over. Now in my late twenties I find the pattern continues to happen but taking an honest account of the whole decade there has been marked improvement. In the last six months I've brought two projects to a degree of semi-completion that I wouldn't have thought possible six years ago. I don't want to be overly sunny: tons of people do go their whole lives repeating the negative patterns of akrasia and never get done what they want to get done. I feel for them it's an unfortunate combination of the tendencies manifesting stronger in them, giving up on trying to break the pattern, and inability to recognize the patterns. For you at least I have a lot of hope because in this comment you show you recognize the patterns.