If I understand you correctly, this is a pain point I deal with a lot since I’ve had a lot of these “do N hours of X” goals, where N varies from day-to-day. The fact that Beeminder isn’t smart about knowing what the effective deadline is means that it’s a lot harder to keep on top of these types of goals. Derails happen because it wasn’t clear when things needed to happen, not because I made a decision to derail.