-
Rocks and Pebbles
2023-12-13 • by dreevesThanks to Stephen Covey (of “7 habits” fame) for popularizing if not inventing this metaphor / concept handle, and to David Ernst (of Secure Internet Voting fame) for pointing that out. Also to Scott Alexander for the concept handle concept handle. If you’re failing to carve out time for something...
-
The Five Beeminder Goals I Wish I'd Had In College
2023-10-18 • by shanaquiWe’re slightly behind for the traditional September start date, but it’s not too late! The semester at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine started on 2nd October, and (thanks to Beeminder!) I got started back on my studies toward my distance learning MSc already. I don’t know about any of you, but whenever the new school year starts it feels like
-
Beeminder ♥ Readwise Reader
2023-09-27 • by Adam WolfReadwise Reader is a powerful tool for “power readers”. It’s like a supercharged read-it-later app, with first-class support for notes and highlights and tags. Now, you can keep track of your Readwise Reader items using Beeminder. You save things like web pages, PDFs, YouTube videos, Twitter threads, or aim it at an RSS feed or an
-
Beeminder ♥ trydeepwork.com
2023-05-25 • by bsouleWe’re excited to announce our official integration with trydeepwork.com! See also the announcement on the trydeepwork blog which is also a pretty brilliant introduction to Beeminder’s philosophy. Cal Newport’s classic book Deep Work is quite popular with Beeminder users [1], so we predict a lot of you will
-
Backlog Freshening For Humans
2022-03-31 • by shanaquiThis 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...
-
Backlog Freshening
2022-03-18 • by dreevesLast 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.
-
Control Systems For Backlogs
2022-03-05 • by dreevesSaying “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...
-
Nicky's Secret To Beeminding Studying: It's About Time
2021-11-12 • by shanaquiWe are overdue for a blog post about using Beeminder for school and studying. In the very early days of Beeminder, we had a brilliant guest post from Gandalf Saxe when he was a wee undergrad. Now he’s an engineer at Apple, working on Siri. We’re going to go ahead and take a chunk of credit for that. His...
-
Redqueening, Inbox Zero, Backlogs, and Fluid Dynamics
2019-10-23 • by dreevesIf you’re a fan of Mark Forster (as we certainly are) then this whole post amounts to giving a name — “redqueening” — to step 2 of his Backlog Method, which I summarize like so: (1) Isolate your backlog, (2) make sure you’re redqueening and not feeding that backlog, and (3) (bee)mind the backlog. There’s...
-
Startups Not Eating Each Other Like Cannibalistic Dogs
2019-05-18 • by dreevesHuge thanks to Malcolm Ocean, Christina Willner, and Sean Fellows for conversations that led to this post. PS: As for the startups used as examples in this post: Beeminder and Complice are BFFs and talk about each other all the time. (Really, allll the time.) Amazing Marvin is the newer kid on the...
-
Beeminder ♥ Toggl
2018-09-07 • by dreevesWe have so many opinions about time tracking! To start, there are three fundamental ways to track your time: Manually Passively Stochastically For passive tracking, you should install RescueTime (and hook it up to Beeminder of course). And, being passive, you might as well set that up in addition to...
-
Beeminder ♥ Todoist
2017-01-06 • by Lillian KarabaicPicking the right way to organize your to-do’s is a big decision. Paper & pencil, smartphone app, calendar, blank playing cards, or the old “in your head” method. A lot of folks use Todoist. While Todoist is fantastic for keeping track of your to-dos, if you combine it with Beeminder, you can use...
-
What Is Willpower?
2016-03-21 • by dreevesOur previous post, “Ego Depletion Depletion,” generated a lot of discussion and I found I was contradicting myself on the question of what willpower is exactly. First a recap, hopefully in plainer English, about what all the fuss is about. A big finding in psychology is that “willpower is like a muscle”....
-
Ego Depletion Depletion
2016-03-09 • by dreevesThis is crossposted on Mark Forster’s Get Everything Done blog. The big news in psychology this week is that Baumeister’s Ego Depletion model is bunk. At least it has failed to replicate. I’m trying not to gloat too much but I’ve been pooh-poohing Ego Depletion for years. My take has been, based on...
-
Get Things Done (Or Else!) With Beeminder and GTBee
2014-04-03 • by Andy BrettAt its core, Beeminder is a tool for getting yourself to do things using money as an incentive. Most goals on Beeminder focus on making steady progress over time. But some goals, and some people, work better with a different model. Let’s say you have to call someone by the end of the day today, and...
-
Beeminder ♥ Trello
2012-10-29 • by Andy BrettLately at Beeminder we’ve been using Trello for just about everything. We use it to stage blog posts and track bugs and new features on the Beeminder API and website. The Beeminder iPhone and Android apps each have their own board too. “We automatically track the number of cards in your Done list.”...
-
The One Must-Do Task Each Day
2012-10-03 • by alysThis is a guest post by Alice Harris. It is crossposted on Mark Forster’s Get Everything Done blog which we’re long time fans of. UPDATE 2020: This post has aged amazingly but if you’re here for a quick refresher, maybe you’ll like this handy quick start reference: Add an initial datapoint of 0...
-
Get Everything Done
2012-02-05 • by dreevesIf you’re a connoisseur of productivity porn then you probably already know about Mark Forster and his Get Everything Done blog. Or you might know his various time management books, the most well-known being “Do It Tomorrow”. He’s also the inventor of the AutoFocus system, which has been featured more...
About
Beeminder is goal-tracking with teeth. We plot your progress on a graph with a Bright Red Line (formerly Yellow Brick Road). If your datapoints cross that line, we take your money.
The Beeminder blog is a hodgepodge of productivity nerdery and behavioral economics written by the founders and various friends.
Start Here
Does Beeminder sound super crazypants? Just confusing? One of the first things you may want to check out is our User's Guide for New Bees. Check out other posts we're most proud of by clicking the "best-of" tag below. If you're a glutton for honey, the "bee-all" tag has everything we still think is worth reading. Other good ones are the "rationality" and "science" tags, if you're into that.
Tags
- bee-all (364)
- rationality (209)
- akrasia (190)
- navel-gazing (122)
- case studies (110)
- tips (101)
- best-of (92)
- meta (84)
- new features (82)
- FAQ (76)
- startups (70)
- nerdery (65)
- productivity porn (63)
- integrations (59)
- science (57)
- guest posts (51)
- quantified self (49)
- yellow brick road (48)
- PSA (47)
- dog food (46)
- ...and 180 more tags
Beeminder Community
Most of the action is in the Beeminder forum. Or if you want to be slightly social without risking getting distracted arguing on the internet, you can do pomodoros online in sync with other Beeminder users and productivity nerds in the Beeminder coworking room on Complice.
Akrasia
Akrasia (ancient Greek ἀκρασία, "lacking command over oneself"; adjective: "akratic") is the state of acting against one's better judgment, not doing what one genuinely wants to do. It encompasses procrastination, lack of self-control, lack of follow-through, and any kind of addictive behavior.