In fact, it's probably better not to set goals that you are not going to keep in the first place, then to get in the habit of ignoring them.

True, but when something like exercise is important to your mental and physical health you can only ignore it for so long before things start mattering. Something like an alarm clock is there to make me get to work on time but my laziness kicks in anyway. No tricky alarm clock can overcome that. (Except maybe that one that turns on and starts rolling around underneath the bed.)

Personally, I find it easier to set the alarm clock on Saturday so my body/mind begins forming the habit of getting up at the same time. If I sleep in on Saturday it knows and on Monday will be whining, "But on Saturday I slept until noon!"

I think this is another area where we need to be careful of other-optimizing. I say what works for me, you can say what works for you, and between all of us hopefully the next person in line gets just the right tip.

This is something I've noticed, too. In my GTD system for a long time I let past due actions sit, on the theory that eventually I would do all these things that went past due because I would feel the pressure. Didn't work. What does seem to work, though, is negotiating realistic due dates with myself. If I set a date by which I want to do something and it doesn't get done by that date, then either I need to do it right now or it was something that really could have waited until later, so I renegotiate the due date with myself. I'm not a total expert at this yet, since I tend to do a lot of renegotiation, a task which should in theory be rare, but so far it seems to provide a real help in that I'm not constantly looking at things that don't actually need to be done right away.