No, I don't understand the reasons why the common wisdom recommends goal-consciousness. Do you?
There are still things I'm not clear about, but I have around to understand a bit. I'm having forum discussion about personal development issues for around a decade. After years of arguing that SMART goals are bullshit I'm finally having them and using them on a daily basis.
If you want to have a room at a comfortable temperature you have to give the thermostat a target temperature. A thermostat is a quite basic cybernetic system and most cybernetic systems simply work that way.
I believe human weight regulation to be cybernetic in nature as well. Both the Hacker diet and Seth Roberts Shangri La diet build on that principle. I also know hypnotists who think that changing the internal set point for weight is very important.
Goals in human movement are also interesting. If you take away movement goal via hypnosis and just tell a person to try to move their arm they can't move their arm. Only when a goal of moving to position B comes into consciousness it's possible to move the arm from A to B. Getting clear about movement intentions is also very useful in Alexanders Method and Danis Bois perceptive pedagogy. It allow doing movements with much less tension.
I am making an experience based report with a sample size of 1 - something that may work at least for people who have some atypical feature similar to some of my atypical features.
A personal report about an approach to weight loss isn't worth much without the person actually speaking about their experience. How much weight was lost? Over what time frame?
Whether it works may depend on your upbringing. The Boss (higher self) is clearly a parental voice in my head. Also, lost my dad a year ago, and I made The Boss sub-agent only a month ago, it is quite possible that a parent needs to go from real living person to an idealized memory, and the way grieving works is that we simulate chunks of the deceased person in our mind, sometimes even converse with it (what would dad do etc.) and perhaps this all is a prerequisite for this.
In the case of "The Boss" the question is not only whether it works but whether it's worth paying the price. I'm not sure you understand the price you are paying.
1. Ignoring goals, tabooing / identifying with methods - the opposite of Beeminder, even the opposite of SMART
Suppose I want to lose weight. Have a general idea of how much and how fast, and decide on the method. Then I ignore the goal and focus on the method. I ignore both the long-term and short-term goal (no Beeminder), ignore the measurement (SMART), ignore all the common wisdom here. The reason I ignore them that I want to avoid constantly haggling with myself, using the soda example, "Surely this one glass will not set me back much?" and instead I identify with the method, such as, simply shaping my identity as a person who does not drink soda, period. Instead of being conscious of the goal, just focus on this new identity. Without a goal in mind, there is nothing to haggle about and that makes it work. So there is not that kind of "Perhaps, this is a special case because X so half a glass should be allowed..." instead, it is just taboo, because it violates my new sense of self of a person who just does not do that. The beauty of this solution that there is nothing to haggle about. It is a harnessing of the cognitive dissonance and protect-your-identity mechanisms, if the new self is the sort of person who just does not drink soda then the only way to not get dissonant and to preserve the identity is to not do so. This, so far, seems to be surprisingly easy for me. It is similar to religious taboos, like people who don't eat X because then they could no longer consider themselves a pious follower of religion Y and it would shake their identity. You could say it is a custom-made nanoreligion each time. Being pious by not violating self-made taboos, preserving the identity of the pious person, without having keep the goal in consciousness.
2. Don't fight The Boss
Someone casually dropped on stopdrinking.reddit.com "It is not about fighting your urges, it is about stopping to fight your better judgement." Precisely. There is a Higher Self (say, Superego) telling me to live healthy and a Lower Self (Ego, Id) telling me to indulge in urges and cravings. Identify with Higher Self, and it is a constant fight with the Lower Self. Identify with the Lower Self and all I need to do is to surrender to the commands of the Higher Self. It does not feel good, but in this case it is okay to not feel good. I call the Higher Self The Bos. It is like "I really want to do X but The Boss does not let me do so. It makes me feel depressed. It is okay. Just accept the feeling and don't fight The Boss. You can never beat The Boss. Just surrender and accept your fate." It is also a nano, well, in this case a microreligion because it is more consistent than the one-off taboos of nanoreligions. Identifying with Lower Self is a bit of an "I am a sinner" thing, and this surrender to The Boss feels a bit religious, a bit close to the AA and 12-step methods.