Tag Archive

A Funny Story About “Backing Up Your Website”

Wednesday, July 20th, 2022
A Funny Story About “Backing Up Your Website”

Huge thanks to Geoff Hubbard (aka insti) for a delightful meetup in Copenhagen, including board games and nerding out about Beeminder and other topics. We just got home and Beeminder wants us to publish a blog post.... »

Death To Weaselproofing; Announcing No-Excuses Mode

Tuesday, February 22nd, 2022
Death To Weaselproofing; Announcing No-Excuses Mode

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 »

Ice Cream Truck Loopholes

Thursday, December 3rd, 2020
Ice Cream Truck Loopholes

Sometimes Beeminder goals have loopholes, like you could dehydrate yourself to get your datapoint below the bright line on your weight-loss graph (please don’t!). There are plenty of things like that and I probably shouldn’t think too hard about more examples. Sometimes loopholes like that can ruin a goal. But other times, ironically, such loopholes... »

Schedule Breaks On All The Things!

Monday, April 20th, 2020
Schedule Breaks On All The Things!

There’s a huge irony in us shipping this feature during the coronavirus lockdown. Namely, none of us need it for the foreseeable future! Our calendars are like an infinite Euclidean half-plane covered in fresh snow. (Ok, fine, I floated that claim among some hardcore Beeminder users and they vehemently disagreed. Examples of why this is great during a pandemic... »

Dealing with Beemergencies in an Emergency

Sunday, April 19th, 2015
Dealing with Beemergencies in an Emergency

I recently had a highly disruptive event in my life. Overnight my priorities rapidly changed, and not all of my Beeminder goals made sense anymore. This is the story of how I dealt with my commitments during a period of stress. When real life changes suddenly, you deal with it. Your beemergency days are no longer relevant. When the first derailment happened, I... »

New Feature: Supporters

Saturday, May 3rd, 2014
New Feature: Supporters

Technically we deployed this feature over two months ago, but not very well so we didn’t have much fanfare. It was one of our »

The Road Dial and the Akrasia Horizon

Wednesday, August 31st, 2011
The Road Dial and the Akrasia Horizon

Previously on the Beeminder Blog… How can we set up a commitment contract with minimal risk that we’ll regret it? It’s a tricky balancing act. You want something solid enough that you’ve truly committed yourself to your goal and can’t weasel out whenever a friend bakes some brownies (or whatever). But... »

Force Majeure, Or Beeminder’s SOS Clause

Friday, July 1st, 2011
Force Majeure, Or Beeminder’s SOS Clause

[UPDATE 2015: We’ve learned that we don’t need to be this uptight or hard-nosed about derailments. Just reply to the email asking if the derailment was legit and say why you don’t consider it to be. We will believe you. If you want something closer to the original vision articulated in this old blog post... »