What's the difference between the goal types?

Each of the six main goal types works differently from the other five, sometimes in subtle ways. Each is best suited to a particular type of objective and requires data to be entered a certain way. Between them, they cover a lot of the use-cases that we've seen people use Beeminder for.

Do More and Weight goals are the only options available for manual data entry for users who don't have premium subscriptions, but goals set up with integrations automatically utilise the other goal types as appropriate for the metric you choose.

Here's a quick rundown of the main goal types:

• Do More: something I want to do more of, where you enter today's amount, e.g. “times I go to the gym” (enter +1 when complete)
• Do Less: something I want to do less of, where you enter today's amount, e.g. “number of chicken nuggets eaten“ (enter +1 for each chicken nugget eaten)
• Odometer: something I want to have more of, where you enter a running total amount, e.g. “pages of War and Peace I have read so far” (enter your current page number)
• Whittle Down: something I want to have less of, where you enter a running total amount, e.g. “emails currently in my inbox flagged as urgent” (enter the number of emails)
• Lose Weight: track weight-like metrics, which you want to decrease, e.g. (enter current weight)
• Gain Weight: track your weight, which you want to increase (enter current weight)
• Custom: you can switch all the settings yourself and create crazy mashups of the other 6 goal types, or totally new goal types

Each goal type is described in much more detail on the linked pages!

NB: Only Bee Plus and Beemium subscribers have access to custom goals, which enable more settings for user configuration and let you create very specific behaviour... but are also trickier and best for people who know exactly what they're doing. The standard goal types are very powerful and totally sufficient for most use-cases. If you're not sure how to set up a particular goal, the Beeminder forum is a great place to discuss that kind of thing. Workerbees and other users can chip in and share their ideas!

Keywords: goal types, goal fields, goal parameters, types of goals