Archive for 2011

Beeminder makes pretty graphs of your progress. But if that’s your only reason to use Beeminder you might find it frustrating when your graph freezes because you deviated a bit from your »

This is crossposted from the Quantified Self blog. Bethany Soule and Daniel Reeves have presented at New York City QS meetups (here and here) on a couple ideas that came together and turned into Beeminder, which they co-founded in 2010. Through much personal experimentation they’ve developed unique ideas on how best to visualize your... »

We’ve been using a simple Mac dashboard widget that esteemed co-founder Bethany hacked up to keep an eye on our Beeminder goals since before Beeminder was Beeminder. Here’s what it looks like on Dreeves’s computer: We mostly use it for TagTime-based goals, where the data is added automatically. For other... »

Today is one week before Thanksgiving in the US. One week is also Beeminder’s akrasia horizon. That means if you would like to stuff yourself silly a week from today, or slack off, or otherwise make your yellow brick road do the opposite of what it normally does, then now is the time to adjust your... »

Half a year ago, with Beeminder in its infancy, we committed to averaging one User-Visible Improvement (UVI) to Beeminder every day for at least the next six months. That contract has been insanely valuable to us. “Losing momentum is the most dangerous thing that can happen to a startup.” Lately it’s been a no-brainer (though still... »

Here’s a question that keeps coming up. To paraphrase, Beeminder is great for stuff that needs to happen every day, but for stuff that happens sporadically in large chunks of time, won’t I quickly run off Beeminder’s smooth daily ramp? Au contraire! Beeminder allows brilliantly for chunkiness of time. The key is to make sure... »

Failing to live a healthy lifestyle is or would be, for most of us, a classic failure of rationality — not acting in our own overall best interests. There certainly are people (including the terminally ill, but others as well) who are exceptions, for whom an unhealthy lifestyle is rational. For example, if you derive enough pleasure... »

Beeminder is now officially launched and open to the public. Invite all your loser friends who need a kick in the pants! If you’re just tuning in, here’s the three-sentence version of what Beeminder is: Beeminder is like StickK.com (cash commitment contracts to force yourself... »

There’s an old saying that the only person who ever changes you is your mother because she does two things: she always has a simple message (eat your vegetables, brush your teeth) and she keeps repeating that message over and over. When we set out with Beeminder to help people modify their behavior, we explicitly... »

Beeminder has existed in some form since February of 2008, when we made a rather ad hoc tool for a friend to track her weight. The main feature was automated reminders to reply with your number each day, so we called it Kibotzer, the kibitzing robot. We described it like so: Kibitzer, noun: Someone who chimes... »