24 Months ⢠70 Weekly Updates ⢠26 Simultaneous Habits
âI failed hard with Beeminder, and subsequently life. I have been working as a cook at a childrenâs hospital for the past four years, and due to a contract ending, I was laid off last month. By the sheer grace of the universe, I landed a full-ride scholarship to a full-stack web development program.â
â Week 0: The Baseline, February 2020
In February 2020, I embarked on an ambitious experiment: could I use Beeminder to transform my scattered intentions into consistent action? After failing spectacularly in 2017, I came back with a new approachâradical transparency through weekly public updates.
What started as 5 simple goals grew into a comprehensive life-tracking system with 26 simultaneous habits. This is the story of that transformation, the metrics that prove it worked, and the framework you can use to replicate it.
Over 24 months of consistent tracking, I achieved metrics that seemed impossible at the start:
160,000+ words written at 450 words/day
700+ GitHub commits created
2.5M steps walked in one year
30+ audiobooks consumed
12,000 XP gained on Duolingo
70 consecutive weekly updates
đŻ The Ultimate Achievement: Going from someone who âfailed hard with Beeminder and subsequently lifeâ to maintaining 26 simultaneous positive habits while navigating a global pandemic, job loss, scholarship, moving, surgery recovery, and career transition.
âIn spite of everything else, Beeminder has made this year the most productive year Iâve ever had. Investing my time and really dedicating myself to this has paid off in tenfold.â
â Week 44, December 30, 2020
Success came from a set of counter-intuitive principles I developed through trial and error:
Start Small, Scale Gradually: I began with just 5 goals. The atomic habits approach prevented early burnout. âI know I have a habit of getting the initial rush of motivation to jump into things only for them to fizzle out.â
Public Accountability: 70 consecutive weekly blog posts created social pressure to maintain consistency. This was the secret sauceâit made being accountable fun.
Anti-Goal Framework: All systems designed for infinite continuation, no temporary goals. âAll of my beeminders will be tracking things I want to theoretically do for the rest of my life.â
Redundancy of Efforts: Single source of truth for planningâno scattered notebooks or apps. Everything lives in one place, backed up identically.
Meta-Accountability: Beeminding Beeminder itself through weekly check-ins and journaling. You have to track the tracking.
Automated Where Possible: RescueTime, Fitbit, GitHub, IFTTTâlet technology do the heavy lifting so you can focus on the doing.
One of the most surprising discoveries was the Hawthorne Effect in action:
âI donât really use Beeminder for the punishment consequence anyways, I just like the pretty graphs that are slowly builtâlike plants in a garden.â
â Week 28, August 11, 2020
Simply knowing I was tracking something made me do it more. The graphs became visual representations of my progressâeach data point a small victory. This visualization was more motivating than any punishment could be.
âEven if the website says Iâm back at 0, I still forever have my Beeminder graph recording my upward progress. I think thatâs why the whole âdonât break the chainâ mentality can sometimes be more unhelpful than helpful, and why Beeminder is such a great alternative to it!â
â Week 58, May 10, 2021
Breaking a Duolingo streak used to devastate me. With Beeminder, losing a streak meant nothingâthe graph showed my overall trajectory was still upward. This shift in perspective was liberating.
The most profound change wasnât any single metricâit was behavioral:
âI havenât really had to use Beeminder for my schoolwork. Iâve just been doing my assignments and research, at a reasonable daily pace instead of trying to do everything last-minute, which used to be my default.â
â Week 66, January 1, 2022
After internalizing these habits, productivity became automatic. The systems transformed my baseline behavior. I went from chronic procrastinator to someone who just⌠does the work. Daily. Without drama.
âThe daily habits that I do which Iâve trained myself with using Beeminder (and that are still ongoing) have changed how I interface with my work in general.â
â Week 66, January 1, 2022
This framework emerged from my experimentâ10 principles that form the foundation of a well-lived day:
Start today off right! Do good and be meaningfulâTry your best. Wake up early and make your bed as soon as you get up. Clean your room. Listen to upbeat music and visualize what youâll be doing for the day. Try to prepare as much the night prior, as well as make sure you have a healthy breakfast.
Meditate on Intentionality. Plan the day effectively and minimally. Prepare a to-do list of the most important tasks that need to get done today. View all long-term goals and make sure youâre making progress towards them. Section out different parts of the day for different activities. Donât waste time â itâs limited.
Generate ideas, research important topics, draft and edit good writing. Document how you feel and what your plans are for the day, as well as the progress being made. Research, draft, and publish articles and blog posts. Archive all work. Keep track of poetry, prose, and other creative work being written as well.
Focus on deep work, effective tasks, and self-education. Prioritize time to your most important tasks, namely learning and working. Ensure progress is being made in classes both online and in real life. Large amounts of time should be dedicated to tasks that make progress towards goals.
Be grateful for what you have, stop and breatheâTake stock of it all. Focus on the many good things in life, as well as contemplate where youâre able to do better and improve. Relax, slow down, breath in and out, and think of the bigger picture. Take time to recite morning and religious prayers, memorize them.
Eat Healthy and Eat LessâPractice veganism, sobriety, and OMAD. Be mindful of what youâre eating, and only eat at the dinner table. Look over cookbooks for inspiration and add items to your recipe box. Donât waste money or calories on junk food or eating out. Take time for spiritual fasting as well.
Keep yourself active, stand up as much as you can, work out often. Maintain physical fitness on a daily basis. Take some time out of your day to go for a jog, practice at-home routines. There are plenty of opportunities to get active.
Practice frugalityâYou already have everything that you need. Donât waste your money or your time, you have less of both than you think. Donât shop unless itâs essential, and donât do things that arenât essential to do, unless you enjoy doing them. Figure out ways to maximize both each day.
Archive everything meaningful and important into the Commonplace. Donât let the important and interesting slip away easily. Save everything you find throughout the day in one place, and categorize these things consistently.
Just Relax! Have fun and play. Donât just work all day. Donât forget to spend time on creative projects, as well as wind down at the end of the day. Spend as much time on analogue activities as you can. Wander aimlessly.
Start with 3-5 goals maximum. Choose things youâre already somewhat doing but want to do more consistently. Use automated tracking where possible (RescueTime, Fitbit, GitHub, etc.).
Create your accountability system. For me, this was weekly blog posts. For you, it might be sharing on social media, a Discord community, or weekly emails to a friend.
Add one new goal every 2-3 weeks. Only add when the previous goals feel automatic. Watch for the âHawthorne Effectââmeasurement alone improves behavior.
Implement safety valves. Use breaks, weekends off, and âmetaâ goals to prevent burnout.
Fine-tune your rates. Use auto-ratchet to prevent coasting. Archive goals that arenât working. Double down on what feels good.
Build supporting systems. Add daily check-ins, morning pages, gratitude practicesâmeta habits that support all others.
Maintain without overthinking. At this point, the habits should feel natural. The systems run themselves. Youâre no longer âtryingââyouâre just doing.
Join the Beeminder community and transform your intentions into action.
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This guide represents 24 months of daily effort, 70 weekly blog posts, and countless hours of self-experimentation. If you found value in these insights, consider supporting my work!
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