What if I only want to do something once a month?

Or once a quarter, or even once a year? Or you want to finish something by a certain date, but you don't necessarily need to start it immediately?

Most Beeminder goals are things people want to do pretty often (daily or weekly), but these sorts of so-called chunky goals can be managed as well! When creating the goal, make sure to tick the box to "start with extra leeway" and set your goal rate accordingly. All rates are set in terms of units per day, so don't forget to take that into account!

It's basically the same principle as for weekly goals, just with a bigger timescale. It's easier to understand with an example, so let's say I want to make a goal to attend one event per quarter, but my next scheduled one isn't for another two months. I'd make a Beeminder goal to attend 4 events per year (that's 4/365 per day) and start my goal with 30 days of leeway (the max that the goal creation interface allows).

Once the goal's created, I can use the schedule-a-break feature in the STOP/PAUSE tab below the graph to extend my initial leeway to 60 days.

That gives me some safety buffer, so my goal won't derail before I can attend my first conference. After I attend it, I enter a 1 to my goal, and Beeminder will start counting down about 90 more days before I need to attend my second!

If I can't arrange something in time, I can add an extra break to carry me over to the next event, using that same schedule-a-break feature as before. The only limitation on that is that I must do at least seven days before I need it to kick in.

The same principles can be applied for goals with other frequencies. For example, for a goal you want to do roughly once a month, you'd set a goal of 1/30 units per day, and safety buffer of however many days until the next time you need to do the task.

Keywords: chunky time, newbee confusion