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Habitica – A gamified habit-building and productivity app

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Re: Habitica – A gamified habit-building and productivity app

#81

Post by godelski »

There's an easy way to form habits that's a bit silly but all my friends and I have had great success with it. Essentially you break things down into the smallest task possible (not smallest meaningful task, smallest). Then you start with only that task.

Let's say that you want to floss every night. Start by just touching the floss when you brush your teeth. For me, after a few nights I got frustrated and just started flossing. On days I'm tired I still just touch the floss.

Too much? Break it down more:

Look at the floss

Touch the floss

Open the floss

Pull out a little

etc

The idea (I didn't come up with it but forgot the source) is that many of the tasks we are trying to get ourselves aren't that hard but it is overcoming that _mental_ hurdle. So by breaking down into micro-tasks you slowly raise your threshold. You are also trivializing the tasks. It isn't hard to go from "My hand is already on the floss, why don't I pick it up?" and so on. I find that I get frustrated with the micro task within a week and just end up doing the thing. (I've been flossing my teeth 90+% of days for the last 6 months)

Re: Habitica – A gamified habit-building and productivity app

#82

Post by arxpoetica »

Fun story. I remember meeting Tyler Renelle way back at a JS meetup when he first started developing it. Not 100% sure, but I think he originally built it off a framework called SocketStream[1], though I don't remember exactly (I was a contributor to SocketStream at the time). It might have actually been another of the similar frameworks[2] at the time that relied on sockets, realtime-app predecessors to React/Angular/Vue/Svelte.

I used Habitica early on, and it was fairly fun, but I could never (irony much) keep the habit of using it.

Update: looks like it was Derby: https://github.com/HabitRPG/habitica/search?o=desc&q=derby&s...

[1] https://github.com/socketstream/socketstream [2] The competitors were Derby https://derbyjs.com/ and...can't remember the other one off the top of my head.

Re: Habitica – A gamified habit-building and productivity app

#83

Post by godelski »

cardenasrjl wrote: post #11

I've tried many apps to track my actions and in long term it doesn't work.

They never worked for me. But what has worked for me is breaking things down into trivial tasks. I wrote a longer post here[0], but like you I have had 0 success rates with many of the popular ideas of how to build habits. Apps distract me more than help me in this respect.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24393304

Re: Habitica – A gamified habit-building and productivity app

#84

Post by graeme »

jbjbjbjb wrote: post #48

Habit trackers are great when you pair them with a smart watch and automations. I use an app called Streaks, Apple Watch and Shortcuts. Streaks can pick up health data and in Shortcuts I’ve set it up so it increments a counter in Streaks to keep track of when I open Instagram or Twitter. 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 th…

Oh goodness, how did I never think of using “open app” automations in shortcuts to track opens. I use many shortcuts, but never put two and two together.

Thank you!! And then do you have a negative habit in streaks, for example “no more than five instagram opens in a day”?

Re: Habitica – A gamified habit-building and productivity app

#85

Post by Kelamir »

cdiamand wrote: post #73

I've started building a browser plugin to help me increase productivity while on the internet. The plan is to have it play music, overlay a score, or give me some other positive feedback when I'm looking at productive tabs. Conversely it will reduce stimulation or give me some kind of negative feedback when I'm looking at non productive pages. I'd be interested to hear if this is something others would use..

That is an interesting idea! What kind of negative feedback do you think would do the trick, cdiamand?

Re: Habitica – A gamified habit-building and productivity app

#86

Post by war1025 »

bschne wrote: post #36

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…

May devolve into a troll war like it does every time, but this is really the essence of the "Systems vs Goals" [1] approach that Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame) advocates for.

[1] https://www.scottadamssays.com/2013/11/18/goals-vs-systems/

Re: Habitica – A gamified habit-building and productivity app

#87

Post by mjangle1985 »

miki123211 wrote: post #80

There's also the nuclear option, AKA beeminder.com. You set your goals, choose a financial punishment, and you get charged on failing. Works pretty great.

Why not just use a rubber band on your wrist and a sting each time? It provides the same conditioned response to not doing your work but you don't have to pay for it.

Re: Habitica – A gamified habit-building and productivity app

#88

Post by emerged »

I really like Habitica, but like so many productivity apps, you can't nest tasks into arbitrarily deep hierarchies. To me, that's a completely essential feature. You can have sub-tasks, if I recall correctly, but only one level deep. There are so many great task management related tools which are missing this one critical feature, not sure why it isn't more common.

Re: Habitica – A gamified habit-building and productivity app

#89

Post by Kelamir »

Habitica... straight to what I got from it:

1) girlfriend (she said 'Write: "met my gf there, 10/10 recommend" :derpy:')

2) a plenty of productive work done

3) friends!

Habitica is awesome used in collaboration with other people. It helps one's motivation drastically to have people for accountability, which gamifies whatever one has got to do.

I suggest you create or join a party that focuses on challenges and encourages cooperation. It has to have a handy medium for communication, like Discord.

For example, we once held a challenge with several teams in a D&D-like game. To make a move, you had to get two hours of work done(in pomodoros). It looked like this: https://imgur.com/a/VA9vrmN

It motivated everyone to get lots of work done. I remember I slept only a few hours on the day of the launch, and that day had managed to do a few moves!

Oh, the fun I had when I had stolen Zephyr Cape! It had increased my movement speed considerably, and as I had it, I had to use the power to its fullest, and was motivated to work more and more.

Right now I am looking for another group to have a similar experience. If you are interested, or you've a group where we could benefit from each other, hit me up, nickname's Kelamir.

Re: Habitica – A gamified habit-building and productivity app

#90

Post by throwaway123x2 »

war1025 wrote: post #86
bschne wrote: post #36

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…

May devolve into a troll war like it does every time, but this is really the essence of the "Systems vs Goals" [1] approach that Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame) advocates for. [1] https://www.scottadamssays.com/2013/11/18/goals-vs-systems/

This rang true for me. Systems are more powerful than goals.

One example I can cite is that I've always struggled to keep a diary until recently, when I finally got into a groove and did it for six months straight, not missing a day. Then my wife moved my desk, the habit died, and a week later I had missed too many days and lost the motivation to keep going.

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