I’m so happy that this kind of brainstorming is happening here. And I’m not just saying that as preface to tearing the idea to shreds! This identifies a really important problem and even though I don’t like the specific solution of storing safety buffer I think this is pointing us in the right direction. So thank you! And keep the wild ideas coming!
The reason I don’t like the specific solution of storing safety buffer is that it’s sort of trying to trick yourself (“I’m in the orange but I’m not really in the orange”) which I believe backfires. I’ve been calling this Beeminder’s no-free-lunch theorem, or the power of bright lines, and I’m working on a blog post about it. Excerpt culled from an old email exchange with a user:
A few years ago when we were getting started, we experimented heavily with grace periods and 3-strikes policies and other ways to solve the problem that you’ve astutely identified. But we gradually came to the conclusion that such leniencies necessarily backfire. It’s like a No-Free-Lunch Theorem. The reason is that you have to spell out exactly what the leniency is — necessary when real money is at stake. But then once you’ve done that you’ve just defined a new edge to skate. Like maybe up to 3 misses per month are allowable. Well, I’m akratic, so I’m going to squander those 3 freebees early in the month and be right back where I started.
And worse, unless I understand exactly how the freebees work, I’m actually making it more likely I’ll derail because I’ll know there is leniency and I’ll push things as far as I can which means I can accidentally push them too far. So it turns out to be superior in every way to just make the road itself less steep but then hard-commit to staying on it, with no wiggle room. Another way to say it: the yellow brick road has to be a bright line.
Maybe the real question in your case is “how can I induce myself not to skate the edge so much?” Of course my answer is Moar Beeminding, though I haven’t had a ton of success with this myself. @pjh gave me the idea of beeminding eeplessness which has put a small dent in the problem. I’d like to do more of that, and for Beeminder to make things like that easier. I think that’s a better approach than complicating the core mechanism of the Yellow Brick Road, which is already plenty complicated with colors and lanes and safety buffer and ratcheting…
(Thanks again for proposing this! Huge value in this discussion whether or not we agree about the feature. Also don’t be shy about telling me I’m thinking of this wrong. I know @alice has some big disagreements with the way of thinking behind my bright-lines/no-free-lunch philosophy. This would be a fine place to debate all that!)