What is "safety buffer" or leeway?

Safety buffer, also sometimes referred to as "leeway" refers to the number of days before you will derail on your goal, if you do absolutely nothing else between now and then. This is usually the number of days left in the countdown above your goal. In the image below, the countdown ends in 2 days, 12 hours, and 51 minutes, so we'd say this user has 2 days of safety buffer on it.

When you create a new goal, you get the option to start it with some additional leeway. That basically allows you to decide the date by which you want to have made progress on the goal: if that's today, then you'd enter 0 to make the goal due today; if that's the day after tomorrow, you'd enter 2, to make the goal due in two days. By default, you start out with data due tomorrow.

But what if you don't want safety buffer, once you've got used to your goal or overachieved for a bit? We've got you covered! Check out our article on how to remove extra safety buffer.

A caveat for Do Less, Whittle Down, and weight goals

On these goal types, we show you your hard cap for today only.

In this example, any fastfood would derail me today.

The highlighted number will tell you exactly how many cookies you can eat today, or the highest weight you can report today, before you get on the wrong side of the bright red line. If you stay below this, you'll be safe no matter what, even though your number of safe days may bounce around from day to day.

If you want to plan ahead, the "Hard Cap By Day" table viewable in your goal's Statistics can help:

For example, could I have fastfood on Monday, if I don't eat any from now until then? Yes: the delta on that day allows +1. But if I wanted fastfood today or tomorrow, that'd derail me: the allowed delta is +0.

The example is a Do Less goal, but more or less the same logic applies with Whittle Down and Weight goals. In those cases it can be easiest to look at the "Total" column in order to see the amount that's allowed today, so you know what number would be safe to add (or not).

Keywords: number of safe days, amount of buffer, how long till you derail