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Show HN: A simple way to set goals you actually follow

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Re: Show HN: A simple way to set goals you actually follow

#41

Post by PaulKeeble »

toyg wrote: post #34
politicus1000 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is a streak-focused application?

This thing where you are supposed to take satisfaction from looking at a "chain" of repeated tasks on your calendar and feeling so bad for "breaking" the streak that you'll keep doing it. There are quite a few out there. The effect on me is typically to increase my self-loathing when inevitably the chain breaks, and the feeling of "oh no, doing it all again will take so long!" discourages from picking myself up.

Chains don't really work the moment they get broken. Instead the alternate view that habits take about a month to form at least and you can only really change about 1% of a day every month is a better system that allows gaps and adjustments and systems built around our errors and unreliability and rewarding that long term habit building without the chain effect are a lot more effective long term.

Re: Show HN: A simple way to set goals you actually follow

#42

Post by PaulKeeble »

superasn wrote: post #13

I would also like to add one more thing that helps you to achieve goals: "Make it fun". I don't like exercise but I love watching Netflix. Unfortunately, I don't get enough time to watch my favourite shows everyday. Solution: Put a treadmill in front of my TV. Now I happily take out half an hour everyday to do the treadmill just so I get the same 30 minutes to watch my show.

For quite a while I used the rule that my favourite TV show could only be watched in the gym on my tablet. So if I wanted to really watch the latest episode of breaking bad or whatever it was I had to go to the gym and work out. It compelled me to get to the gym and stay exercising for 30+ minutes. Then I would also typically push out some strength on top of that cardio. Surprisingly effective to tie the two together and build a habit of it over a few months, starting initially lightly it can get you a long way.

Re: Show HN: A simple way to set goals you actually follow

#43

Post by Hoasi »

lethologica wrote: post #30
gen220 wrote: post #23

I find the reminders app on my phone is good enough. I have a folder called "habits", with reminders that appear at chosen times of day and days of the week. I look at my phone frequently enough that I can't really ignore them. My memory is crap enough that I forget what they're going to be, so I scroll through them once in a while. It's mildly satisfying for me to "check" them at the end of the day, and to write my…

There was a comment posted on HN a while ago that has always stuck with me[0] that basically said that plain old pen, paper, and a system of rules was more than enough to start a business, organisation, or, as a follow up comment said, even Rome. This has rung true in my life many times over. I've tried complicated note and habit tracking apps that just do far more than I ever need and I tend to get stuck in the weed…

> This has rung true in my life many times over. I've tried complicated note and habit tracking apps that just do far more than I ever need and I tend to get stuck in the weeds, missing the forest for the trees with these types of platforms.

Exactly. Use something simple that works for you. Design a system yourself if you can. Here is a system that works for me, either on paper and with a simple text editor in Markdown. https://github.com/YJPL/personal-kanban

>[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21222150: "if you can't do it on paper first, you're not ready to computerize the problem."

So true.

Re: Show HN: A simple way to set goals you actually follow

#45

Post by marwen »

toyg wrote: post #25

$10 a month for yet another streak-focused app I’ll drop in two weeks... sorry, pass. I can see why the trial is 7 days though.

I totally agree on this, the pricing is not well thought, take HabitBull for example, the app is free for 5 goals and you can unlock the rest of features with unlimited goals for a one time purchase of $10.

That's a way better pricing model for this kind of apps in my opinion.

Re: Show HN: A simple way to set goals you actually follow

#46

Post by bloodorange »

learnstats2 wrote: post #36

"Don't break the chain" is the absolute worst system for me to form a habit. As soon as the chain is broken, I'm never going to pick it up again.

A system that relies on things being ideal is likely to fail indeed. An alternative that works better than "Don't break the chain" is "Start again with the smallest and easiest step you can think of".

Hypothetical example: If you were working on running 21km and worked your way up to 14km but stopped for some reason. You could get started again with a short walk or just getting dressed to go for a walk.

Re: Show HN: A simple way to set goals you actually follow

#47

Post by scns »

PaulKeeble wrote: post #40
francis-io wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buy a small NUC and run some docker containers. You might end up sinking 100 hours into it, but I have the same concerns and self hosting (with some cloud backups, but encrypted) is the solution for me. https://github.com/htpcBeginner/docker-traefik

What software would you run to do this? I have been looking for a good habit/exercise tracker for a while and currently use Habitica. It is free(ish) but also does a poor job in surfacing what you did and history but has a good habit and daily model. I haven't yet found a good piece of software like it that is self hosted.

Loop habit tracker from f-droid or playstore. Not self hosted but nice history analytics.

edit typo and more info

Re: Show HN: A simple way to set goals you actually follow

#48

Post by thotsBgone »

learnstats2 wrote: post #36

"Don't break the chain" is the absolute worst system for me to form a habit. As soon as the chain is broken, I'm never going to pick it up again.

For daily habits, I often deliberately exclude one day of the week so I have practice picking up the habit again after a missed day.

Re: Show HN: A simple way to set goals you actually follow

#49

Post by Hammershaft »

dimovich wrote: post #39

I have a feeling a better way to follow through your goals is to decouple tasks from the time it takes to do them. Divide your time in blocks, one tasks per block. The time doesn't depend on the task, and the task doesn't depend on which block you choose to do it. For me, 3 blocks per day is optimum.

Can you expand more on this idea? I'm interested. What do I do if the task takes longer or shorter than the block?

Re: Show HN: A simple way to set goals you actually follow

#50

Post by pbronez »

dimovich wrote: post #39

I have a feeling a better way to follow through your goals is to decouple tasks from the time it takes to do them. Divide your time in blocks, one tasks per block. The time doesn't depend on the task, and the task doesn't depend on which block you choose to do it. For me, 3 blocks per day is optimum.

Interesting idea. For me the hardest thing is carving time out to do deep work at all. It’s critical to protect that time and focus on applying to a specific thing.
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