What is a legit derailment?

Our first answer is that if you want the brightest possible bright line, you can opt in to No-Excuses Mode! In that case, the answer is that every derailment is legit.

If you're not using No-Excuses Mode, the theoretical ideal is that we only charge you when you could have met the goal and didn't. For example, you saw our reminders, you decided that you really don't feel like going to the gym tonight, so your goal derailed, and then we charge you for it.

However, if you actually did go to the gym yesterday, but forgot to update your gym goal in time with, there are two schools of thought: some folks feel that isn't legit, because they did the thing, while others still want the sting as a reminder to get the data entered as well. It's up to you in that situation: if you feel it's non-legit, because the essence of the goal was complete, then you can choose to add the missing data and reply to the legitimacy check email to explain what happened.

Likewise, if you've contracted a highly infectious disease you don't want to spread, you are prevented from completing the goal even if you wanted to, so that's also generally considered not to be a legit derailment. Reply to the legitimacy check email to let us know, and we can cancel the charge.

It is generally up to you what qualifies as "not legit". We'll probably inquire about what happened, if you haven't given us much detail in your original email, or check in with you if it sounds like it might undermine your use of Beeminder in the future.

The important thing, we would say, is to be principled. Never think to yourself "just this once". Whatever excuse you may have for calling this derailment non-legit, you should endorse a general principle by which all similar excuses in the future should also count. If that would defeat the point of the commitment, better to accept the derailment this time. In the end, it's up to you and we'll believe the reasons you give us.

Keep in mind that you won't get value out of Beeminder if you're frequently derailing on goals and sending us weaselly excuses about it to avoid paying up. Calling not legit a lot means the real sting is diluted by all the times you decided not to get stung. That's okay, though — we're not the only game in town, and there might be an app out there that suits you better!

We have some more thoughts on the philosophy and utility of it all which you might find useful when deciding where to draw the lines:

• Derailing Is Not Failing
• Paying Is Not Punishment
• Derailing It Is Nailing It
• Beeminder As Your Personal Pigouvian Tax
• Maximal Motivation At Minimal Cost (in particular the sidebar linking to all the blog posts in what we call the "derailing is good-actually" series).

Bear in mind that our philosophy on all of this has evolved over time as we've discussed it with users, so older blog posts may skew a slightly different way. Feel free to join in the debate!

Keywords: legitimacy check, legit check, derailment notification, sick, ill, illness, can't do goal, yes-excuses mode, what counts as legit, derailing it is nailing it