Beeminders
A Beeminder is 'a reminder with a sting'. Essentially, I have to make sure I stay above the red line, or I commit to paying the company a pledged amount (stupid, I know!). You can see a full list of what I'm committed to doing here. I've also linked to other people's interesting Beeminders further down the page.
Also tangentially related, I thought an honourable mention to TaskRatchet was deserved. It's a bit like Beeminder but for one-off tasks you keep putting off. I'm currently experimenting with it but it seems to be a bit unpolished and I've not yet figured out the exact sort of niche tasks it would work well for.
My Beeminders
Blog Posts
This makes sure that I publish (on average) one blog post per week. To stop me cheating, and to encourage me to write more, these blog posts must be at least 1,000 words long to count, hopefully aiming for 2,000. Blog posts are normally technical in nature, but might sometimes be about holidays or something else interesting. Data for this is published with the word count and the blog post.
Reading
I'm committed to reading at least five pages of a given book each day. This should hopefully help me build a habit of it, as I've always liked a good book but can never be bothered to sit down and read it.
Running
I don't often take my phone out running, so don't get an exact distance for all runs. Data for this is published with the distance if possible, and location/who I was with.
Video Edits
I'm really terrible at editing holiday videos with any sense of urgency, ergo, this goal. If you want to see these videos, check out the C&O Vlogs YouTube channel, or more occassionally, the Charlie Britton YouTube channel.
Previous Beeminders
I've found that these are particularly good for a sustained catch-up, where I have fallen behind on certain work. For example, I used one to catch up on a backlog of 46 lectures over the course of a few weeks. I've also used them to ensure consistent coursework efforts.
Other People's Beeminders
Several of my own Beeminders have been inspired by other people's. I'll admit this is mostly copying my brother with his goals, although there are a few other interesting people and goals:
- Olly Britton (ollybritton): my brother, copied his
runsone, and he copied myblog-postsone - Nathan Arthur (narthur): like the groceries one, digital devices off after 9pm, etc.
- Nicky Walters (shanaqui): the teeth goal looks like something I could do with. Lots of different goals.
Future Ideas
- Keeping up to date with academic research? Training?
- Professional development
- Git commits
- Brush teeth in morning, shower, tidy room, no snacking
- Lose weight
- Bodyweight fitness or some core strengthening, maybe a gym goal? See here for plank thing?