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.