The akrasia limit should be removed for quitting goals.
If I want to quit a goal, it’s because I want to quit it now.
If I want to quit a goal I won’t care about falsifying the last week of data, to make sure I don’t derail.
If I have a goal I complete earlier than expected, I still need to enter fake data for 7 days to not derail.
Perhaps you can query the beeminder database and find out what percentage of archived goals have derailed during the archive akrasia period?
Counterpoint! (In my last response I was playing devil’s advocate but this one I really do disagree with.)
Keeping you on the hook for a one-week horizon is fundamental to Beeminder. I’m unswayed by the fact that you can cheat with fake data because serious beeminder users know that fake data is anathema to the whole concept and is a slippery slope to destroying Beeminder’s power. Also, with most autodata goals you can’t cheat so easily so the one-week delay is especially meaningful.
PS: If you complete a goal early, email support@beeminder.com and ask us to move up the goal date. I know that seems annoying but we’d sure prefer it to fake data, which gives me the heebie-jeebies just to talk about! (:
PPS: Click the heart on @insti’s suggestion if you agree that immediate quitting should be possible without going through support, otherwise click the heart here.
I just checked the numbers on this. Derailed goals make up 20% of all archived goals. It looks like ~6% of archived goals derailed within a week of the archive date [1] – (i.e. while waiting for the archive to actually happen).
[1] We don’t explicitly store the date the goal was archived, so I’m approximating that with the last updated_at timestamp for the goal.
As a starting point, can we agree that the Akrasia limit isn’t relevant if the goal completed?
I recently completed https://www.beeminder.com/dsernst/goals/gmailzero & it was really bugging me that I had to wait a week after hitting Archive, before I felt like it was “really done”. It left a feeling of being out of control, when unnecessary.
I just ran into this problem again with a completed goal.
It makes even less sense to have a 7 day countdown on completed goals.
Where do archived goals go?
There’s an archived goals link underneath your picture in your goals gallery. Out of sight, but referenceable and ressurrectable if needed.
I’m definitely in the “but not being able to archive goals immediately is the whole point” camp. What would keep me on the hook if I had a button that just let me say “ah fuck it this is too hard”?
There are definitely circumstances where I’d like to be able to archive a goal immediately, but it’s mostly when the goal is safe to leave flat for a week and I know I’m not going to do anything towards it in the meantime.
As a random idea which I’m not even sure if I actually like, how about being able to pay half the amount you’re on the hook for to archive immediately?
Beeminder would be worthless if I could just archive a goal that was about to derail - and no I would never add fake data to a goal just to prevent a derail and neither should you.
That said yes it is annoying when you don’t know when a goal completes - I have that issue right now because there isn’t going to be that many weeks left on my udacity goal but exactly how much time is left is sorta difficult to guess - and I hate bugging support because every moment I am bugging them is a moment they can’t spend improving beeminder so I end up feeling like I harm the community.
That said why can’t we have some community that I can appeal to? Like I make my case and if it gets at least $SUM_OF_VOTES with at least $MAJORITY_PERCENTAGE of concurs the goal is archived right away? If the reason is kinda private I can always mail support but this would solve 90%+ of issues and I know GymPact does this for their eat vegetable goal*.
*Also that particular community sucks, but that is a different point.
I promise I’m being sincere when I say that bugging us is how we know what to improve! Like in this case, having a better sense of how goal end date confusion causes problems is very helpful as we work on fixing the messes with goal dates (both approaching them and restarting after you’ve hit them – not to mention the problem that most people don’t intend to have end dates on their goals at all).