yup, pretty much! i’ve tried a few meta goals along the lines of @insti , but they haven’t worked great for me so far either. love the idea of automating it. half of my resistance is that i don’t want to send beeminder 4 datapoints every time i weigh in or whatever. it’s almost certainly just a matter of finding the right incentive/goal setup, and i haven’t yet. i might try the pledge stepdown of @pjh, that’s an interesting idea i hadn’t thought of.
i think i disagree that the stored buffer is leniency, though. i earned the buffer; it wasn’t given to me freely because i decided i want 3 days off/month [1]. the rules would be 100% clear - you earn buffer, you have buffer, you can store buffer (if you want) and hide it from yourself. i do agree that i want to trick myself, but i want to trick myself into walking more than i have to. i think i’m just more excited for orange → blue → green than 4 days → 5 days → 6 days, for whatever reason.
[1] nor did i pay for it. i briefly imagined a world where you could pay half your pledge to postpone your derailment 24 hours. but if you weren’t on track again 24 hours later, no mercy – you’re paying the postpone fee + your pledge. a fun idea that would surely fail spectacularly.