Kyle and Dan have given me very thoughtful feedback about my system proposal. It is clear to me that there are serious problems with it. Here are some of the problems that I've realized or have had pointed out:

1. There's no objective basis for scoring: Dan wanted to make it so that whatever system we use has some objective criteria for awarding points. This makes sense to me. The subjectivity of scoring is a weakness with the current system as well as with the one that I proposed.
2. The 1s 2s and 3s don't really make sense with a daily rating scheme: I realized this problem today. Some goals are spread out, and require small steps everyday. Each step might warrant a 1, but the overall accomplishment of the goal should warrant more than a series of 1s. Should the score correspond to the effect/time ratio, with a higher ratio being better? So say your goal was to earn 100$, and one way you do it is by working, and another way you do it is by investing money wisely so that you make 100$ without ever having to do anything--would the first yield a 1 and the second a 2 or 3? Is it about shrewdness, and accomplishing a lot in a small amount of time. That seems to measure shrewdness only, which is part, but not whole. Or should the numbers be something more abstract, like pure magnitude. Say your goal was to learn a language. Studyng for 2 hours would warrant a 1, 3 hours a 2, and 4 hours a 3, something like that, so that the score is a function of time spent doing the activity. Is it absolute time or time efficiency? Or maybe it should be purely based on accomplishment without considering time, but it's rare that activities that occupy a single day can be distinguished as quantatively more or less virtuous. Ugh...my writing here is sloppy, and I feel like I shouldn't spend too long revising because it takes away from time actually doing things, but then I end up with poorly expressed ideas.
3. Ethics is important and I think that the system should reflect the ethical integrity of the day.
4. Some goals can't be given a negative score with the system, such as reading a book. If you're not reading you get a 0, if you do read you get a 1-3, but you can't negative read. I guess you could ram your head against a wall and get stupider. But seriously, the fact that the system just reduces 1-5 down to 1-3 for some tasks doesn't help at all.
5. Mundane shit like organizing mail and brushing your teeth is important, I believe, and while it may or may not fall within the sphere of ethics, regardless, I feel like the system should give incentive to do those types of things as well as more consequential things. The proposed system doesn't include these types of activities.

Things I I like about the proposed system that I would want a good system to have:
1. The key thing is that I feel like actual, concrete progress should be stressed. I can get up at 7, brush my teeth, shave, and shower by 7:15, dress and eat breakfast by 7:30, get to work by 8, work hard from 8-4:30, come home, read a periodical, read a bit of a book, go online, make dinner, eat dinner, read some more, and listen to some music, and overall, my day would not have brought me closer to a higher life than my present one. In other words, theoretically, barring pay raises or budgeting, after 10 years of that you would still be living in the same place, with the same overall impact on the world (which is not much at the jobs we have, from what I understand), with the same standar of living. Each day under the old system you would get a 2 or a 3, but you haven't accomplished much at all. That is unnacceptable, because I want to live in a beautiful house in a lovely neighborhood in Philadelphia, with a stocked kitchen, an extensive library, a nice wardrobe, good physical condition, a clean, well running car, a good computer, surrouded by good people, having good relationships with them, and doing work on a daily basis that is significant and virtuous. Right now I'm living in a lame town, with an ok kitchen, no personal library, dressed like a riff-raff, in somewhat shameful physical condition, no car, a piece of shit computer, and working a job that is virtuous but not very significant (the only thing that I have from my dream list is good friends and good relationships with them). How to get from where I am now to where I want to be? I'll need money, personal work and creations, like a written book, education, and possibly an improved character. Basically I want to demand from myself that I work everyday to bring myself closer to my ideal.

Maybe we could use Ben Franklin's system. We could report how many marks we have each day in the various ethics categories (marks being bad). Like, today I did well, but I have to give myself two marks in the temperance category, because I ate to dulness both at lunch and at dinner. Two of the categories, resolution and industry, might do what I tried to do with my proposed system. Industry requires that we do meaningful work, and resolution requires that we follow through with our ideas. So if I didn't write for my book, I'd be failing resolution, and if I didn't do anything useful at all, I'd be failing in industry. Actually, the more I'm writing this, the more I'm liking the idea. Let me know what you guys think.

I just read the discussion about the system proposal. Here are some examples of things that would warrant negative scores:

Goal: End each month with a 300$ surplus from my income.
Say you calculate things and figure out that you'll have enough discretionary money to go out to eat twice a week, at a cheap restaurant. The first time you do it, it wouldn't affect the score. The second time it wouldn't affect it either. The third time you'd give yourself a minus, and if you did it so much that you actually ended the month with less money than you started the month, you'd get a -3

Goal: Learn language X
This is the type of goal that you could easily regress with. Say you invested two weeks of solid effort starting a program. Then you stopped for two weeks, then when you picked up again, you were as good as you were when you started. Well, you'd have to give yourself as many minus points as you did plus points.

Goal: Get girl X to go out with me
Day 1-you're macking on girl x, and she flirts back, and gives you her phone number...this would warrant a plus score
Day 2-you can girl x and lose it and act like an idiot on the phone and she hangs up on you, or becomes lukewarm..this would warrant a negative score.

Goal: Build a hut in the woods
Week 1-you rock it like Thoreau, nail some boards, etc.
Over the next few weeks-the weather forcast says snow, you figure you should throw a tarp over your shit, but you get lazy. It snows, and you let it pile up and sit there without cleaning it off. Weeks later, when the snow melts, you discover that the boards started to rot and fell apart. This would warrant negative points.

Basically, I feel like some goals are one step, clearly accomplished or not type things, like going to the bank. A task like this would not affect your score. There are some tasks that you can only move forward in, like reading a book. That would get you a positive if you did it, but a zero if you didn't. Then there are tasks that are a continuum, and you move up the continuum until you achieve the goal. In these, when it's possible to slide back down, that's where the negative score comes in. My whole thinking behind this was that I wanted to emphasize actual change in the real conditions of your life. In the fall, I'd get a 2 or a 3 or a 4, and honestly, nothing seemed to be accomplished after all of it. Those scores seemed to reflect discipine, which is good, and it's essential to achieving what you want, but discipline on its own isn't worth much, other than aesthetics. So you could wake up right at x oclock, right on the dot, finish breakfast etc in 15 minutes sharp, kick ass at work, but then slack after work, and that would earn a 2 or 3 in the current system. Supposing your kicking ass at work didn't affect your pay, nor did it do anything to improve anyone else's condition in the world, you really haven't changed your life, just lived within the prior existing paradigm. If I get a positive score, I have to be able to point to something at least fairly concrete that I can show is worth something that I generated during the day. If I undermined something that was worth something during the day, I'm doing worse.

A word of clarification about my proposed system. It has nothing to do with ethics in the sense that I think people normally mean ethics. It's about being effective--applying your will to making things happen. Hitler's rise to power in Germany would have earned him straight 2s and 3s. So obviously, especially with that example, I want to say that this system is not meant to score everything that's important in life. Overall, I think ethics is the most important thing. If you don't have ethics, you don't have shit. You could decide that becoming more ethical is one of your goals, in which case you would be grading ethics, but the fact that it's ethics would only be incidental to the fact that it's a goal. I feel like Dan and I, at least, are struggling to execute our will, make dreams reality. This is a difficult thing, and encouraging this is what I had in mind when conceiving the new system.
Score for 1/10: 1
I did everything I wanted to do today in order to advance myself. I worked out for a while, wrote two pages in my book... also, I got a lot done in terms of planning and preparation for making Eva's birthday cool. Once I start budgeting I can count working as an advancement since I will know that my money will be accumulating.

I'd like to propose a new rating system, one which I've already described to Dan. It would be a number system, like the current one, but the score would reflect the extent to which you've used the day to actualize your ideal vision of your life. The worst rating would be a -3, and the best rating would be a 3. Negatives in this system mean that you've actually regressed, or moved your life further away from how you'd like it to be. 0 means that your life will basically be the same tomorrow. Say one of the things that you'd like to happen would be to lose weight, to pick an easy example. If you lost weight during that day, you would get a positive score, if nothing happened you would get a zero, and if you gained weight you would get a negative. The absolute values of the scores just represents three basic degrees--slightly, moderately, extremely (i.e., 1 or -1 indicates a slight shift, 2 or -2 indicates a moderate shift, and 3 or -3 indicates an extreme shift). I'd like to hear feedback from the other participants about this proposed system.
Rating for 1/9: 0
Today I worked, cleaned, cooked dinner, straightened up my room, and started planning. I gave myself a zero because I basically kept myself afloat, but didn't progress. Hopefully my planning today will translate into forward movement starting tomorrow. I drew up plans for myself to accomplish two goals: one is to write my novel, the other is to get down to 175 lbs. A third goal for which I'll soon create a plan is to become financially independent. This third goal would only be achieved in the distant future, but I can start making it happen today, mainly be budgeting, creating a monthly income surplus, and, once I've saved enough money, I can begin investing it. My first two goals are more immediate, and have scheduled activities for tomorrow. I plan to spend 2 hours writing tomorrow, and my goal is to write one single spaced page (i'm trying to keep my goals reasonable so that I don't get overwhelmed and say fuck it). I also plan to do calisthenics tomorrow for 45 minutes. I want to have a draft of my novel by May 1st, and a polished manuscript by June 1st. I need to write 20 pages per week, allowing myself a full week of days off between now and then. For my weight loss, my goal is to lose 1 lb each week for the next three weeks, then 2 lbs a week for the next 4 weeks, then 3lbs a week after that, and each goal shift corresponds to an increase in scheduled workouts.
No more talking. Starting now, it's all about applying the will to see the eventual actualization of my dream version of my life.