It's been just over a week since I deleted all my corporate social media accounts and, honestly? I've been loving the quiet and lack of notifications and decreased screen time. I'm sure I'm missing out on things, but those are not things I care about. What I care about is writing here, for you! This is exactly what I was talking about when I was writing about figuring out what juice is worth the squeeze in life.

But then the question arises: what do I do with all this newfound free time in the heat of these dog days of summer? There are many options, the most sensible being to just do more of the work I've been slacking on, such as craft.wang or folk.zone.

But why be sensible when I can procrastinate in other, more interesting ways instead? (I jest, as what I'm going to explain will actually make me far more productive in the long-run, don't worry.)

Productivity that Stings!

Most of you probably aren't aware, but I'm a Beeminder superuser. I've been using the site for many years, and wrote two guest blog posts for the company all the way back in... 2017. Nine years ago? Oh goodness. I also have a Beeminder tattoo, if you needed more proof I'm unhinged.

Actually, I'm probably getting ahead of myself here. What even is Beeminder? Well, it's a commitment tool—a platform that allows you to externalize your willpower so you do the tasks you know you ought to do. They use the term Akrasia, which can be understood as the want to want. You want to be the kind of person that effortlessly wants to do the hard but necessary work, but you know reality differs.

The way Beeminder pushes you to do the hard but necessary work is simple: you're charged money if you fail to complete the tasks you set.

Now, this is where I instantly lose nearly everyone I talk to about Beeminder. I'm often asked the same questions: The company is paid by your failures, isn't that kind of evil? Why wouldn't you just do a chargeback anytime you failed?

And I can understand the initial visceral reaction and counterargument here. Beeminder is for a particular kind of person: Somebody who is not motivated enough by small rewards or self-discipline alone, yet also somebody who is still not satisfied with living a life lacking hard work.

For me, personally, Beeminder has been the only thing that's worked. Here's my testimonial. It has been a Godsend for me to get my shit together and ingrain good habits. The only reason I'm here able to write thousands of words each day is because I originally began with Beeminder.

The height of my use was when I started a coding bootcamp at the start of 2020, which coincidentally meant the lockdowns and start of the COVID-19 pandemic as well. I kept a weekly Beejournal during this time, writing updates about the state of my tasks and goals and life in general.

When I enrolled in university in English Honours in autumn of 2021, my Beeminder usage went down by a lot. I found myself disciplined enough to simply do the damn work after a year and a half of extensive use. I maintained a 3.8 GPA for my undergrad, independently published multiple books, all while also running a creative writing collective during these four years. I am more than happy with my academic career.

While I still use Beeminder, it's become something humming along in the background rather than a tool I check-in with on a daily basis. But I want to return to that. I think it would do me a world of good, especially now that I have more free time. It is the Year of the Horse, after all. Time to climb back on it!

How Does Beeminder Work?

(Apologies if I'm burying the lede here.) The real magic of Beeminder for me is its incredible, robust amount of integration options which pull datapoints automatically. This means I'm not manually adding, for example, how many pages of a book I've read each day—which would be tedious and also tempt me to simply add false data to avoid being charged.

Here is the current running list of all the Beeminder goals/systems I have in place:

Personal Development

• /gratitude 🙏 Tracking things that I'm grateful for to increase my overall happiness. Rate: ~1 gratitude entry/day. Data added manually.
• /meditation 🧘 Tracking the minutes I meditate to help encourage my mindfulness. Rate: ~8 min/day. Data added via Apple Health and Insight Timer.
• /sleep 😴 Tracking the hours I sleep per night to improve my overall sleep hygiene. Rate: ~7 hrs/day. Data added via Fitbit.
• /fitness 🏃 Tracking the steps I take per day in order to improve my overall fitness. Rate: ~2,000 steps/day. Data added via Fitbit.

Learning & Growth

• /reading 📖 Tracking the amount of pages I read to encourage me to read more books! Rate: 20 pages/day. Data added via The StoryGraph.
• /french 🇫🇷 Tracking XP I gain on Duolingo to encourage my language learning in French. Rate: ~20 XP/day. Data added via Duolingo.
• /clozemaster 💬 Tracking points I gain on ClozeMaster to encourage my language learning in French. Rate: ~50 pts/day. Data added via Clozemaster.
• /chess ♟️ Tracking the rapid games of chess I play in order to improve my performance! Rate: 1 game/day. Data added via Lichess.

Creative Work

• /poetry 🖊 Tracking my poetry uploads to encourage me to post more often. Rate: ~1 poem/week. Data added via IFTTT and Tumblr.
• /blogging 📝 Tracking posts I publish to encourage me to write publicly more often. Rate: 1 blog post/week. Data added via IFTTT and Medium.
• /writing ✏️ Tracking my daily writing to encourage ideation and consistent work. Rate: 750 words/day. Data added via Bearminder.
• /github 💻 Tracking the amount of commits I push to my digital garden to maintain my learning habit! Rate: 1 commit/day. Data added via GitHub (Gitminder), tracking the brennanbrown/brennan.click repo, which is my upcoming digital garden.

Productivity & Focus

• /tasks 🎯 Tracking the todos I do daily to hold myself accountable! Rate: 1 task per day. Data added via Todoist.
• /productivity ✅ Tracking productive time I've accomplished per day to encourage me to do what's important. Rate: ~2 hrs/day (14 hrs/week). Data added via RescueTime.
• /coding 💾 Tracking the amount of time I spend in IDEs to encourage my programming! Rate: ~1 hr/day (7 hrs/week). Data added via WakaTime.
• /distraction ❌ Tracking the number of hours of distracting (unproductive) time I've had per day to encourage me to not neglect what's important. Rate: capped at ~1.2 hrs/day (8.4 hrs/week). Data added via RescueTime.

Social & Communication

• /tweets 🐦 Tracking tweets I post as a way to record daily thoughts and progress. Rate: 1 skeet/day. Data added via IFTTT and Bluesky.

Further Reading

I've written quite a few blog posts about Beeminder, all from many years ago! Have a look:

• The Tao of Bees: How I use Beeminder
• The Sting of Work: How I Use Beeminder, Part Two
• Goal Failure: A post-capitalist critique on boiling frogs, minimum-happiness, harmful-easy things, and lists.
• Goal Success: Getting back on your horse, no matter how many times you’ve fallen off.
• Tracking Every Aspect of My Life for a Year: Success with Beeminder