41–50 of 104 posts
I've tried many apps to track my actions and in long term it doesn't work.
Sometimes it even doesn’t work in the short term: I downloaded this app last month and used it... once.
It is weird how we have normalized the fact we need an app to remind us to drink water, or work for one hour. I don't see how this can help one make substantial and long changes to one's life and habits.
How is this any different from written daily routines, to do lists, and journals, all of which have been around for centuries/millennia?
I don't know how justified those feelings are but at a certain point I think it's worth sitting down and asking whether the app makes you feel worse about the mistakes than the mistakes themselves.
See also Ben Kuhn's "Make your habits zero-effort" - https://www.benkuhn.net/zero/ "Life hacks abound: Tell your friends about your plan so you’ll be embarrassed if you fail! Make sure you keep an unbroken streak! Charge yourself money if you don’t stick to it! Donate the money to your least favorite charity! Forget donations, how about electric shocks? The escalating absurdity should tell you that this problem is un…
One thing I do is put sites I want to spend less time on into my hosts file. That way I have to edit a file, which means leaving the context of my web browser, before I can access the site.
Another habit I want to build is quick journaling first thing in the morning, so I made my browser start page a Google docs, and I automatically open the browser on start. So when I turn on my laptop, the first thing I'm presented with is a blank sheet. I can then copy whatever I write into my notes folder.
Tracking time with an app sounds interesting. I checked the Rescue Time app, but the pricing information is really well hidden on their website. I had to Google it. Sure enough, it's $9 a month - that's $108 a year!! For a time tracking app!
I really dislike this trend of small apps switching to a subscription model, and I will not support it. Does anyone know a similar app that is more reasonably priced?
I've tried many apps to track my actions and in long term it doesn't work.
I have had much more success printing out spreadsheets (day along the long axis, habits across the short) and using a pen. The interface to generate graphs sucks, but otherwise it’s fantastic.
My conclusion, after a good year of testing these apps, is that they don't help me build habits. Only I can do that. If anything, they distract me.
For those using taskwarrior, there is karmawarrior for lightweight gamification https://gitlab.com/BlackEdder/karmawarrior
I would use something that looks like an actual habit tracker [1] but with elements of gamification, than a game with elements of tracker, which seems to care more about being fancy pixel art, than a tool to help people track habits. [1] https://loophabits.org
I’m not sure it gives me enough motivation to do something I don’t want to. But it does help me stay on track and not forget the things I want to do.
See also Ben Kuhn's "Make your habits zero-effort" - https://www.benkuhn.net/zero/ "Life hacks abound: Tell your friends about your plan so you’ll be embarrassed if you fail! Make sure you keep an unbroken streak! Charge yourself money if you don’t stick to it! Donate the money to your least favorite charity! Forget donations, how about electric shocks? The escalating absurdity should tell you that this problem is un…
That's cool, I haven't seen this idea summed up so well. Do you have any examples of this? One thing I do is put sites I want to spend less time on into my hosts file. That way I have to edit a file, which means leaving the context of my web browser, before I can access the site. Another habit I want to build is quick journaling first thing in the morning, so I made my browser start page a Google docs, and I automati…
Personally I've been surprised how well setting up contexts for intended outcomes ahead of time works - e.g. if I want to study X, I close everything else on my computer the night before and only open the textbook and my reading notes; If I want to get up on time and go for a run I put my running gear in one place all ready to put on, etc. More generally I try to prepare a daily note on my computer the night before with the most important few things I'd like to focus on.
But what works and doesn't it's highly personal, e.g. the hosts file thing has never lasted more than a day or two for me :)
What I ended with is a daily Evernote checklist (any plaintext editor would work). Ticking is a reward on its own, while the overhead is minimal. A low-tech version of that is a Bullet Journal - a thing that actually works for quite a few of my friends (my Evernote is sort of a BJ, just electronic).