For any given goal, think about which fields have carefully chosen values:
- none: pure quantified self
- just rate: endlessly striving, e.g. my goal to test my glucose often enough
- just date: “after this date I won’t care about this anymore” (e.g. a goal to visit your favorite spots again before you move away from a city)
- just total: “I need to finish this eventually”
- rate + total: like rate, but with a checkup each N achieved; or like total, but with teeth
- rate + date: like rate, but with a checkup every so often (seems more useful to me than rate + total, at least for goals that are likely to be restarted)
- total + date: a traditional deadline
- rate + date + total: better hope the numbers line up!
My personal default is rate + date, not just rate, because I use the goal date as a chance to reassess the goal, and I allow myself to decrease the pledge then. I still usually recommit.
When I use total, it’s because there is an actual total, after which the goal will be over. Any time I’ve manually set total, it’s nonsense for Beeminder to change the total for any reason (including derails, ratchets, take-a-break, etc.) other than me telling it specifically that I want the total to change.
I actually kind of like the idea of being able to start a goal with just a total, or even no numeric choices at all, and have it start out as pure QS (rate of 0) but then Beeminder slowly, conservatively dials the rate up based on the data I’ve entered. If it has a total, it could give me a projected end date, which I could edit if that seemed too far away (or too close!) and it would determine a new rate for me. It would solve a problem I’ve had a few times of not creating a goal because I didn’t know a reasonable rate to start at (yes, I could do what I described manually, but it’s obnoxious and I’d probably decide not to bother).