Imagine a world where children grow up with Beeminder as a way of life. Well we created Beeminder when our kids were babies so here in Portland (at least in our house) that world exists, as a reality. Here to tell you about that is Beeminder’s presumably youngest user, Faire Soule-Reeves.
Hi! I am Faire Soule-Reeves. I am 8 years old. I am the daughter of Daniel Reeves and Bethany Soule. They are the founders of Beeminder. I use Beeminder and I am here to tell you about it.
Beeminder helps people get motivated to do things they weren’t motivated to do before.
Here is a booklet I made in first grade (I am now in third grade):
Here I am explaining Beeminder to my little brother who is actually 5 in the video:
Here are the things I’m currently beeminding:
Duolingo (German)
I was in Germany for two weeks this August. I used Duolingo to prepare for my arrival in Berlin. Duolingo is definitely not the best language learner, because it just teaches you random words and sentences. Although if you use it for a long time, the things Duolingo teaches you can sometimes be handy. Your progress gets entered automatically from Duolingo to Beeminder which is nice. I still use Duolingo to improve my German and get more fluent. I wouldn’t do Duolingo without Beeminder, and I can prove it because I am usually rushing to do it right before my bedtime. If it weren’t for Beeminder telling me that I would derail, I would just go to bed and forget about it.
Sugar
I beemind my sugar. Of course it is a Do Less goal. The story to this one is that it’s annoying when I’m like: “Mom, can I have sugar? Dad, can I have sugar? Mom, can I have sugar? Dad, can I have sugar?” Now I can just check my phone and the Beeminder app tells me how much sugar I can have.
Screen time
I use Beeminder to track screen time so I won’t become like Jimmy Jet and his television set.
My friend Alice Tiffany and I saw each other this summer and we were talking about what games we had on our phones. I said “I have Crossy Road and Geometry Dash. And you?”
“My mom took all the games off my phone because I played them too much,” said Alice.
“That is a great reason to use Beeminder!!” said me and my dad at the same time.
“What’s Beeminder?” asked Alice.
So me and my dad explained Beeminder to Alice…
How I keep track of things on my screen time goal is via RescueTime. My parents have been trying to program it so you can beemind more than one game or app on one graph.
Must Dos
I was inspired by my parents to make a must-do goal even though they didn’t think it was a good idea. My parents weren’t sure about it because it can be hard to remember to enter data, which it is. Sometimes it is fun to do my must-dos, because if I have been feeling sad lately or have had an unpleasant feeling, I will make my must-do something SILLY or ExCiTiNg!!!
Pushups
Pushups are just pushups. They make me stronger. MUSCLES!!! Something interesting is that you can lay your phone on the ground and touch your nose to the phone to count your pushups. (That’s part of the Beeminder Android app.)
Weight (just for tracking)
I also have a weight graph, but that is just because my parents have a Withings scale at our house. When I step on it and all the data is collected, then it will automatically enter to Beeminder.
Reading
I read like crazy nowadays because I am doing Oregon Battle of the Books [1], and just generally love reading. I have finished seven of the sixteen books and everyone has to January or Febuary to finish all sixteen. Also I forgot to mention that you only have to read three or four books twice, but I am doing all of them since I am at a little higher reading level than third through fifth grade. Those are the reading level of the sixteen books.
When I beemind reading, I track it by minutes. I sometimes use my watch or the timer that’s part of the Beeminder app on my phone.
Other things I could beemind
My dad threw out some ideas including: practicing piano, playing CodeCombat (learn to code by playing a game), or tracking steps. He thought that these might be good ideas for me or other kids who might want to try out Beeminder. I would be up for making a steps goal (I have the Misfit app on my Pebble watch) but I am not really excited about beeminding CodeCombat and piano even though I enjoy doing them in my free time.
Also since I enjoyed writing this blog post, but me and my dad put it off for a few months since starting it, that could be a reason to make a writing goal.
I have derailed a lot and my mom lends me her credit card to pay for derailments. But then I do owe my mom back. Then I earn money by doing chores and I earned $120.00 from my parents just for typing this! [2] I’m also always happy to get my parents new users, by telling people about Beeminder!
Footnotes
[1] Oregon Battle of the Books is an organization for kids where the kids read sixteen books and go to tournaments. You organize a team of four or five kids and have battles answering questions about the books. Then you get points if you answer them correctly. There is also a regionals battle and the US championship.
[2] Before I started editing and perfecting this, I had to have an auction with my mom whether or not I could stay up late. I had to pay $10.00 to get to stay up way past my bedtime to edit this.