I read the entry in the docs and I understood that it is possible to decrease the units buffer of do less goals I have. The buffer gets to its original value when I make the day. Is there any way to ratchet the time? Right now I need do not do more than my buffer for 2 days instead of 1 and this is really impossible for my specific goal. maybe I am just confused by it and everything is alright but it is somehow strange
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it is still annoying that I haven’t found a solution.
It would be really great if the time period would be tomorrow and not in 3 days.
Hi! Sorry I never saw this post originally. 
Not sure why.
Maybe it helps if you think about it more like this: your goal isn’t safe for 2d 23h no matter what you do; if you entered +8 right now, you’d be on the edge of derailing, even though there’s 2d 23h to go before you add any data. Same goes if you ratchet away some of your units of buffer: the time you’re safe for will change.
Generally, I think the time you’re safe for is the wrong way to think about the goal anyway – it’s generally misleading, because the time will decrease as your amount of buffer decreases, even without time actually passing.
Without being able to see the goal and understand the whole situation, it’s hard to figure out exactly how to explain things, but perhaps it’s enough just to understand that “limit +8 safe for 2d 23h” doesn’t mean you can’t derail until that date. You’ll still derail if you add more than +8, right now, today.
If you’re gaining more buffer than you want, then I’d think in terms of how much buffer you want to be allowed each day. Set your rate accordingly, and then ratchet your goal to have that number of units left today.
Buffer can accumulate over time, of course, if you’re not using it. In that case, ratchet back to the number of units you want to be allowed today, and you’re back on track.
thank you! I think I understand the buffer now. But how do I ratchet the time? It isn’t possible for me to only do +8 for more than 2 days. I really want my time to decrease so the goal fulfills its purpose
Hmm, I don’t seem to have explained very well, unfortunately, because I was trying to make it clear that that isn’t something you can do (and it isn’t something that makes sense to do). You can only ratchet the numbers of units you have remaining – and that will affect the time to derail. The time is almost meaningless; all that matters is the number of units. If you have more units than you want, you can ratchet those away. If you have fewer units than you want, then you’ve used them up, and/or your rate is set wrongly.
The way a Do Less goal works is that each day moved across on the x-axis gives you another day’s worth of buffer. If your goal is 2/day and you have 2 units of buffer available, and you don’t use them, tomorrow you’ll have 4. If you don’t use those up, the day after you’ll have 6, and so on.
You can also check how much you’ll be allowed on each day in the next week if you add no data, via the table in the “statistics” tab of your goal. You can see there it will increase by your daily rate each day. After adding new data, you can refresh and see how that affects it.
Does that help at all?
So I understand that one could cheat if this feature would be there. It is just really annoying that when you create a goal beeminder for some reason chooses min. 1d time but only when I choose 0 days as leeway safety buffer. Usually I get 2 days when I disable leeway safety buffer which I don’t understand as I choose max. unit per day and not per 2 days. Maybe one wants to make it extra difficult for the user when one starts the goal to really try to don’t do a thing for a while. That could maybe be really effective to get abstinent on some things. Ok
After the first day is gone is it really always per day or does the time also add up over time so I have to be clean for more than 1 day at some time?
Hmm, I’m sorry, I don’t really understand this feedback, but it sounds like it’d be useful for us to understand a bit more! The blocker here is that it seems like you’re still quite focused on the “safe for x days”, even though what I’m trying to explain is that that’s totally irrelevant for these purposes. Maybe it’d help if I go through an example, to illustrate what I’m saying? That’ll make it a bit less abstract. 
So say you set up a goal and you check the button saying you don’t get extra leeway. It gets set up giving you just today’s leeway. If your rate is 3/day, as in my example, then you get an allowance of +3 for today, and nothing extra. That looks like this:
I.e. it says “safe for 2d 12h 24m”, and you have a buffer of +3 today (your daily rate). You can also see this from the “hard cap by day” table under statistics:
You can see from the delta column that today I can add +3. Tomorrow I’ll get another +3 allowed; if I add no data between now and then, I’ll have 6 units available. So yes, if I don’t use my buffer up, it will add up over time.
Though it says “safe for 2d” at the top, that doesn’t actually mean you have multiple days worth of buffer, or that you can’t derail for 2 days. Here’s what happens if I use up my day’s buffer by adding three units:
Assuming no more data added, I’m safe until tomorrow. What has that done to the “hard cap by day” table?
So today I can’t add anything, and tomorrow I just get +3 allowance, as I wanted (since that’s my daily rate).
What if I added +4 units in total? Now I’m in the red, and will derail today:
Ultimately, your “hard cap by day” table is your best ally here: it will tell you the exact amount you can add today to be safe, and also project for you how much buffer you’ll have in future days assuming you add no data today. Once you add data, refresh and it will update to show you how that’s affected your future buffer. As long as your bright red line is sloping upwards, you’ll always get additional buffer each day at that rate.
Does that perhaps make more sense of things now?
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