[dreeves]

Good observation! Yes, you need a simple, graphable metric that's a good proxy for the underlying goal you care about. We've written about that a bit at http://blog.beeminder.com/whattomind

Beeminder encourages you to define and refine your metric to make sure it doesn't fall prey to Goodhart's Law. Of course it's your own goal and so it's much less susceptible to Goodhart's Law. You actually care about the underlying goal!