61–70 of 634 posts
> the crosshair briefly changes to confirm the hit, damage numbers pop up above the enemy, sound effects, enemy death animations, a progress bar filling up, a new skill unlocked, random reward and more...
I wonder if we can gamify todo apps in the same way, most are too boring and too corporate. It should implement all gaming bells and whistles for ensuring you complete your tasks.
> Modern games provide much stronger feedback. Now, when you hit an enemy, you might see: > the crosshair briefly changes to confirm the hit, damage numbers pop up above the enemy, sound effects, enemy death animations, a progress bar filling up, a new skill unlocked, random reward and more... I wonder if we can gamify todo apps in the same way, most are too boring and too corporate. It should implement all gaming be…
I am working on an app!
It's increasingly strange how psychologically different something is when it's physically in front of you vs a representation of that exact same thing on a particular sort of display, especially given apparently some representations of activities on the display are addictive, while others become repulsive. As I mentioned yesterday I'm hearing more from people that attempt to avoid screens as much as possible, and thi…
It's not the skeumorphism but this: I might have 5 virtual desktops and 3 different web browsers and each of those has 4 windows open and each window has 20 tabs. Never mind the terminal windows which themselves participate. Conventional thinking is that if you can't find things you need to download and install some new program, maybe one that splits your tabs into "subtabs" or maybe one that organizes your virtual d…
Isn't it just reflective of the fact that you are more disciplined about tidying up your physical world than the virtual one? (And this might be the basis for why the hack works).
OK I got a bit triggered by this sentence. Not at TFA, but sharing my own experience: Games are fun. And I don't mean Type 1 vs Type 2 fun and the email is somehow type 2 fun. I mean that the stimulation / "hit" from a game is just higher than 90-99%% of work tasks (writing a new CLI or optimizer excluded!!). We pile on much stimulation to the work to get it to hit harder: Working by others (social/peer), snacks (biological rewards), free caffeine, money (sometimes lots), etc. And physical trinkets.
We have studied this to death in other parts of our own biology, like food. Unhealthy food/drink is fun. It's a pleasurable reward sometimes, but if it forms the basis for your diet you are going to have a lot of trouble enjoying healthy stuff. You can't outrun a bad diet. You can't add a kale salad after a bowl of ice cream and expect your insulin levels to go down. You have to treat the underlying problem: A hugely stimulating / rewarding thing is displacing the healthy stuff. Almost every piece of sane health advice after 1900 has focused on removing unhealthy factors first.
Work/hobby is no different. When I'm obsessed with factorio (it happened a lot once or twice), I find it harder to focus on work. When I "fast" from those "treats", work takes on new enjoy-ability. Dopamine diet is probably the wrong technical term, but it nails the practical effects well.
I'm sure phones are just as stimulating for some. We all have our vices.
> Modern games provide much stronger feedback. Now, when you hit an enemy, you might see: > the crosshair briefly changes to confirm the hit, damage numbers pop up above the enemy, sound effects, enemy death animations, a progress bar filling up, a new skill unlocked, random reward and more... I wonder if we can gamify todo apps in the same way, most are too boring and too corporate. It should implement all gaming be…
I feel like you could increase the visceral satisfaction of task completion by getting one of those old desk spikes to spear each task receipt onto when you’re done with it.
Author here. It’s my first article. I’m a bit nervous but excited to get your feedback. If you deal with procrastination too, I hope this method helps you like it helped me.
What's been working for me lately is carrying a Field Notes notebook everywhere with me combined with some of the ideas you talk about here (breaking down tasks into smaller and smaller pieces). It's the perfect size for me to carry around every day.
It's also been helpful as I've been defaulting to opening up my notebook as my basic distraction device as opposed to opening up my phone.
I'm going to try and see if this works better for me. The daily printout of "things that need to happen today" is a fun idea, especially if I could keep it by my bed and have it print off when my alarm goes off. Are there any receipt-style printers that can directly print some kind of sticky note? I feel like that would be even more useful since you don't have to keep pins around, though I can see the running cost ge…
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