Way back in 2014 we blogged about how people who wanted to mind both sides of the red line (called the Yellow Brick Road in those days) were all wrong to want that. We’re still pretty opiniated and still aren’t adding this as a feature, but we thought we’d give a more nuanced answer and some more practical...

We’re pretty enamored with integrating with learn-to-code tools. Most recently CodeCombat and Project Euler. Before that was Code School, back when that was a thing. And of course we have our GitHub integration, aka Gitminder. Today we’re excited to announce our partnership with freeCodeCamp! As...

Want to hear my latest weirdo approach to diet? Probably you do, out of morbid curiosity at least. My goal in concocting this was to implement something a bit like intermittent fasting as a weight management strategy, and also to nudge my eating in a healthier direction. Also I like alliteration. More...

This is a sequel to the previous post on Backlog Freshening. It’s been gratifying to hear testimonials from you all about how valuable you’ve found this — for tasks in TaskWarrior, songs in one’s piano repertoire, and of course issues in GitHub. By popular demand, here’s Support Czar Nicky with the...

Last time we talked about the control systems approach to backlogs. Quick recap: make a manual do-more goal where you add a +1 for completing something and keep adjusting the slope of the bright red line such that the backlog keeps steadily shrinking. This works not just for clearing a backlog but for winning the red queen race — dispatching things at roughly the rate they're coming in at and preventing another backlog from accumulating.

Saying “control system” makes this sound fancier than it is. We mean it in the simplest sense, like how your thermostat is a control system. The temperature dropping makes your heater turn on, which makes the temperature rise, which makes your heater turn off. Slightly fancier is if the heater dials...

Previously on the blog, we pitched a particular framing of Beeminder in which paying is not punishment. People seem into it! Which is good because it was setting the stage for this announcement: We’ve killed the old weaselproofing feature and replaced it with something we think is much better: No-Excuses...

UPDATE: See follow-up post announcing No-Excuses Mode. An under-appreciated fact about Beeminder is that it doesn’t force you to do anything. It just puts prices on things and you continue to do whatever you feel like doing, factoring in those prices. Just like you might buy a box of cookies if the...

This is still pie-in-the-sky philosophical navel-gazing but it makes me very happy. Not just because I love pie-in-the-sky philosophical navel-gazing (we could say Product Vision if we wanted to sound more respectable) but because a couple years ago this sounded preposterously theoretical and fantastical...

Announcement! Beeminder and Focusmate are officially integration partners! Beeminder’s Support Czar, Nicky, is here to tell you about it! See also the announcement on Focusmate’s blog as well as the Beeminder Community group on Focusmate. Being a big fan of both Beeminder (obviously!) and Focusmate,...