Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Simple tool to make a habit of exercising

workoutbff.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 94 posts

Re: Show HN: Simple tool to make a habit of exercising

#21

Post by IanCal »

WA wrote: post #16
thekyle wrote: post #10

One critique I have is that it seems like it's binary whether you complete a task on any given day which doesn't work well if you only partially complete something. For example, lets say I set a goal to walk for 1 hour per day. But then I only walk for 30 minutes, how would the app handle that situation?

See, this is where technology can’t help. Weaseling around with half-done tasks won’t cut it. Why did you want to track the goal in the first place? This is probably the most important question. Why didn’t you set the goal to 30 minutes, if there are days where it’s likely that you miss your more ambitious goal? If you set the goal to walk an hour per day and you just walk 30 minutes, you obviously failed to reach th…

> Why didn’t you set the goal to 30 minutes, if there are days where it’s likely that you miss your more ambitious goal?

Because the goal is still an hour, but there are different levels of failing. A simple binary "pass/fail" means the record shows the same difference between lying in bed all day Vs running a marathon and walking 59 minutes Vs 61. If I'm 2 grams above my goal weight at Christmas is that a simple "fail"?

You are right that setting a goal aligned with what you want to change is the important question, but you want you achieve may not well fit into a clear pass/fail.

Re: Show HN: Simple tool to make a habit of exercising

#22

Post by choward »

dominotw wrote: post #6
smitty1e wrote: post #2

I drank the Samsung kool-aid, with the Galaxy Sx phone, Gear Active watch, and the Level headphones. The Health App has been a win. Tracking meals and what have you is straightforward. But the real win is the gamification of the Global Challenge. While completely meaningless in any real-world sense, somehow keeping the step score and all of the silly achievements and missions help to quantify and motivate. Recently,…

This is exactly why duolingo owl has so much power over me. Can't lose my 235 day streak and can't drop out of to a lower league after working so hard to get to that league.

I've used Duolingo a few times and each time I quit it was because a steak ended.

Re: Show HN: Simple tool to make a habit of exercising

#23

Post by appleiigs »

ptm wrote: post #8
dominotw wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly why duolingo owl has so much power over me. Can't lose my 235 day streak and can't drop out of to a lower league after working so hard to get to that league.

> duolingo owl has so much power over me. I use duolingo as well - and one of the saddest days was when I lost a 100+ day streak. It's funny how a meaningless number can have so much power.

I don't remember perfectly, but the creator of Lodash (javascript library) had something like a 365 day streak of coding everyday. But it was broken because he committed late a night and the cutoff was on a different timezone. He was so bothered by it, he contacted GitHub to fix it for him.

Re: Show HN: Simple tool to make a habit of exercising

#25

Post by appleiigs »

peterwwillis wrote: post #18

The thing that helps me exercise is not habit, it's goals. I used to work out 5x a week, but other things fill my time now, so I need a reason to work out. Lately it's indulging in food/drink, going on a long trip, a weekend at the beach, etc. If it weren't for the goals I'd probably never go.

Yeah, thinking about the long term goal, the result, is what keeps you going. Imagining how good you'll look if you lost 20 lbs makes you want to exercise or eat healthy today.

Maintaining a streak has more of a negative feeling, where you are committed to it but don't really want to do it. Also, what happens if you lose the streak. If you missed 1 day, now the streak and motivation is gone. 1 day turns into 2, etc.

Re: Show HN: Simple tool to make a habit of exercising

#26

Post by deepprocess »

ptm wrote: post #4
anewguy9000 wrote: post #3

internal service error :(

Sorry for the bug. I think you logged-in before "trying out". I have fixed the bug now.

I'm getting an error 500 and I did not log in. Just hit try. And the error trace back is visible w/paths etc.

Re: Show HN: Simple tool to make a habit of exercising

#27

Post by rapind »

thekyle wrote: post #10

One critique I have is that it seems like it's binary whether you complete a task on any given day which doesn't work well if you only partially complete something. For example, lets say I set a goal to walk for 1 hour per day. But then I only walk for 30 minutes, how would the app handle that situation?

To me that would be a fail and is part of the premise. It's basically "Don't break the chain". I don't want half credit or it would encourage me to accept half-assing it in the future.

Re: Show HN: Simple tool to make a habit of exercising

#28

Post by rapind »

peterwwillis wrote: post #18

The thing that helps me exercise is not habit, it's goals. I used to work out 5x a week, but other things fill my time now, so I need a reason to work out. Lately it's indulging in food/drink, going on a long trip, a weekend at the beach, etc. If it weren't for the goals I'd probably never go.

What keeps me going is that I like the soreness that follows a day or two after a good workout. So that's the goal, to get sore.

Sounds masochistic but it's like a good sore if that makes any sense.

Post reply on HN