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I am a weasel.

Beeminder, Goal Settings

Given that this is Holy Week and I worked 4 10s so that I could be up in Dallas to see my brother, who I haven’t seen in years, this week’s article is going to be a bit shorter. Instead of exploring any new ideas, I want to follow my own tips from last week and I invite you to do the same.

Here’s a quick recap of those tips:

1. Pick one important thing you want to improve.
2. Sit down and make a generalized schedule of your current day-to-day.
3. Set up an accountability group.
4. Dedicate some of the free time you found in step 2 toward the desired improvement.
5. Find the things that prevent you and get around them.

There’s a step 6, but that’s not for another few months down the line. Without further ado, here’s my plan:

1. I need to dedicate more time to writing, full stop.
2. A very generalized view of my weekdays gives me the following:
   1. 
   2. These are my “immovable” items. Things are obviously different during weekends and during the summer, but this is a great place to start.
3. For a long time, I’ve had a dispersed bunch of accountability people, but never really anything resembling a group. Now I have you, my readers, who can blast me whenever they so desire. That’s still a bit nebulous, though, so I’m reaching out to a few close friends of mine as soon as I publish this to create a daily goals group. Plus, I’ll be adding something to the site, which I’ll discuss further below.
4. Holy crap, is that 5 hours of free time? Well, no, not in reality. The time I use for prayers and to hang out with the family isn’t scheduled, so it didn’t end up on the list. Still, there’s a LOT of time that needs to be put to use. Since I’m so rusty, I’ll keep it light to start and make my goal just one hour a day.
5. This is an ongoing thing, but I know right away that I am easily distracted. I’ve picked up a Surface to do all my writing on just because I know that every time I try and use my desktop, there are too many other things waiting to steal my time.

So, there we have it. An hour a day, every day, starting Monday (4/5). I’ll have my squad to keep me in line, but when that’s not enough, I’ve got one final trick up my sleeve. The ultimate tool for people like me.

Beeminder.

For the uninitiated, Beeminder is a habit tracking app with a kick. It’s got all the things a good habit tracker needs – reminders, charting, external app integration, a lot of math for nerds like myself – with one extra step. If you fall below a range of your goal, you have to pay them. Each time you fail, the penalty goes up. There are other apps that do this, but those let you pick a cause to donate toward and really, where’s the penalty in that?

If one thing really sold Beeminder to me, it was the “I am a weasel” option, which is specifically set if you’re the kind of person who would try and wiggle out of the goal right as you’re about to fail it, pushing cancellation out by several days. Really, I love these people.

Anyway, I’ll be setting this goal – an hour per day – on Beeminder and figuring out how to load the widget to this site for all to see, and using my accountability group as the people who get emailed if I’m faltering. Time to put my money where my mouth is. If you guys have had the chance to think about it, drop a comment about your goals and, if you want help with an accountability group, count me in.