A few years ago, I was working on hacking up something like what @phi is describing with the Beeminder API and D3. I kind of dropped it when I learned about cross domain scripting restrictions and realized I needed to code a backend. (I was jumping into D3 without having properly learned JS.) It’s sitting around somewhere.
The purpose of my thing was more specific, though. Back then I had several time input goals, and I wanted to have a dashboard that could warn me before things saturated. I was planning on visualizing the time amounts due for each goal, and due for all timey of goals of similar units on the timeline as well.
Nothing mentioned in this thread did that kind of calculation for me, and my schedule at the time was not amenable to arranging the goals in a waterfall.
This is an interesting way of constructing goals. I have gotten used to thinking about a red goal as mandatory for today. Red doesn’t necessarily mean not okay, it just indicates a priority class.
If I understand @phi correctly, you could have a goal you only really want to begin worrying about at a certain time.
There is a general related question that comes up for me: “Given multiple commitments, including Beeminder goals and things not in Beeminder, when should I start doing any particular thing?” And “When is my last chance to get started on this before moving on to something else I can do?”
This would require more abstractions than Beeminder
I’ve been thinking about getting back into D3 and vis. If I weren’t in the middle of a job/internship search right now, I would be happy to dig up my old code and prototype an unofficial UI for this. I also have promised to contribute a blog post toward the end of the summer, so after I do that, I can give it a shot if folks are still interested.
As a side note, I think the reminder side of the goals problem-space that Beeminder is tackling is much harder than the commitment side. I think that’s because it’s kind of edging into the problem space of Planning. There are certain ways of using Beeminder (like Waterfall, or @mary’s use Beeminder for everything) that let you avoid some of the problems, but there are so many different combinations of goals that have a high demand for planning and management.