Frequently Asked Questions
What is "Team Chat"?
Team Chat is a way to communicate with your teammates on the Pentathlon, and receive announcements about the state of competition from the Pentathlon bot. It works great and the teams that use chat the most typically wind up winning — as well as getting much higher individual performances. We'll get you set up on the Team Chat on the Opening Call on Saturday.
How can I update my profile photo?
We pull profile photos directly from gravatar.com. That's from the same company that runs Wordpress. All you have to do is:
- Go to https://en.gravatar.com/
- Click "Create Your Own Gravatar" (or "Sign In" if you already have an account)
- Add the email that you're currently registered with for your Pentathlon account
That's it!
How does scoring work?
You're scored each day on five categories: Sleep/Wake Schedule, Most Important Work (scored twice, for both Consistency and Depth), Physical Fitness, Nutrition, and Planning.
Sleep/Wake, Fitness, Nutrition, and Planning are all binary — you get 100 points if you did them, and 0 points if you did not. Most Important Work is a little different — you get 100 points for doing at least 10 minutes of your MIW to help you stay consistent, and 1 point per minute spent on MIW up to a maximum of 100 points for 100 minutes. That's just a little more than an hour and a half, but that's way more than the average person does in a normal day on their Most Important Work.
What if I miss a day? Can I update previous days' entries?
You can update your entries from yesterday on the next day. So if you went to the gym at 4PM on Tuesday and didn't mark that you went it down yet, you can still mark it yes on Wednesday. After 2 days, you can't update old entries. Keep those entries current!
What if my team and I are in different timezones?
By default, the Pentathlon bot will try to find the best overlap of everyone's timezones for messages. This should work out-of-the-box for most teams.
However, if you're in Vancouver and your best friend and teammate is in Switzerland... well... no amount of fancy math is going to help. Talk it over with your team and drop Kai a message at [email protected] with a more preferred timeframe for messages.
What if I'm traveling across timezones during the Pentathlon?
If you need to adjust your goals in the tech around sleep/wake, let us know at [email protected] and we'll do that for you. Travel is notoriously hard for having perfect habits and routines, but do your best. We've had people during crazy travel spans attend the Pentathlon and they reported it really helped keep them on track.
I... *gulp*... missed the onboarding call. What now?
Oh man, really? Really? Okay. You'll be behind on two important things — first, you'll need to ensure you're registered on the app with your profile and targets filled out. Second and more importantly, you won't have met your team yet — be cool and respectful, and go out of your way on team chat to get to know everyone and get filled in. If you haven't gotten fully underway by the first Sunday, though, you're out.
I forgot my login details. What do I do?
Email [email protected] and he'll sort you out.
I have an idea / suggestion / bug report! Who do I contact?
Kai's your man. [email protected] — you can also write to [email protected] and both Sebastian and Kai will get it.
I am really excited for the Pentathlon.
We are too. Thanks so much for joining in.
But that wasn't a question?
Nevertheless, we remain really excited. Onwards!