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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

#91

Post by nullandvoid »

esperent wrote: post #44
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…

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…

I've been using cold turkey. Has a one off cost and manages applications and websites block lists, on a time block basis if you wish. Also includes a built in time tracker

One of the best purchases I've made. No affiliation just a happy customer

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

#92

Post by Wronnay »

emerged wrote: post #88

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.

This. I try to use Kanboard for everything but the level of limited hierarchies makes complex projects very hard to manage.

It's good for little projects but really big ones need multiple hierarchies or being broke down into smaller projects (but with lot's of smaller projects you don't have a good overview if your software doesn't allow multiple hierarchies).

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

#93

Post by sireat »

throwaway123x2 wrote: post #90
war1025 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Then again a wrong system leading to a habit that does not align with your inner heart is worse than useless.

As anecdata I had a 400+ day chain going on https://750words.com/ ( a nice single person startup btw) but once I missed a few days I felt tremendously happy.

I realized that I was not getting anywhere (my writing still stinks to high heaven) and that my goals did not match with the habit.

Life is too short to make wrong habits.

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

#94

Post by cdiamand »

Kelamir wrote: post #85
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?

Well, i think you could just take away all the enjoyable stimulus you provide (music, points, etc) for positive tabs. Turn down the music and subtract points. I think playing harsh noises or something like that would be over the top though

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

#95

Post by esperent »

Cyphase wrote: post #76
esperent wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. I use the LeeckBlock extension in Firefox. I have it set to block a bunch of sites 24/7. It has an override option; I have it set to override the block for 2 minutes when I activate it. As I'm typing these words, I have ~20 seco…

Leechblock is good, but it's too easy to get around. I have several browsers installed since I do web dev, so it's an easy matter to just open a different one, or use private browsing, or disable the extension.

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

#96

Post by esperent »

egypturnash wrote: post #64
esperent wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If you’re on a Mac I can recommend Time Sink. $5, paid once, every few years there’s an update and I think it might be paid too, I dunno, it’s been feature complete for ages and it really just needs occasional “new OS broke something” fixes. https://manytricks.com/timesink/

Thanks for the suggestion, looks good. I'm on windows and android mostly, though.

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

#97

Post by esperent »

stared wrote: post #60
esperent wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Add tracking - I had a love & hate relationship with Rescue Time. Just because one can track something does not mean it is easy to change behaviour. Diagnosis is not (yet) a treatment. I've found a way to hack Rescue Time to to the job - by wiring the newly open browser tabs to it. Now it actually changes my behaviour, and there is not friction (I don't need an extra task on "check RT sometimes"). More in "ADHD tech…

Thanks, that's a great writeup.

One thing I noticed:

> Side note: why do ALL time-tracking pieces of software assume that the day starts at midnight? (Midnight does not seem to be anywhere near to the average of sleep time.)

This is off-topic. I used to feel the same way, but over the past year I have fixed my sleep patterns so I now (mostly) go to bed at 10pm, sleep by 11, wake at 6am. It's been an absolute game changer for my mental health, physical health, productivity, and lots more. My social life has suffered somewhat though. If I manage to keep this pattern for a week or more, the difference in my thought patterns and sense of inner piece is amazing. The only way I have learned to force this pattern is to set an alarm for my wake up time. If my goal is 6am, but I currently wake at 10am, I will for two night set an alarm for 8am, then 7:30 two nights, and so on.

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

#98

Post by Cyphase »

esperent wrote: post #95
Cyphase wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I use the LeeckBlock extension in Firefox. I have it set to block a bunch of sites 24/7. It has an override option; I have it set to override the block for 2 minutes when I activate it. As I'm typing these words, I have ~20 seco…

Leechblock is good, but it's too easy to get around. I have several browsers installed since I do web dev, so it's an easy matter to just open a different one, or use private browsing, or disable the extension.

Well sure; but isn't editing the hosts file easy as well? Unless you lock yourself out of root and would have to boot from a live image. :D

LeechBlock has been enough for me, because I mostly just need a reminder to get in the way of my autopilot, not something that strongly prevents access. If my autopilot gets smarter, I can turn up the friction. LeechBlock has an option that requires you to enter a password to override it or get into the settings; either a user-specified password, or even worse/better, a 32/64/128 character random password.

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

#99

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…

Actually, do you find the counter reliable? It hasn’t been working so well for me with the Tally app.

Edit: worked well with streaks. I think tally’s shortcuts integration is poor, whereas Streaks’ is excellent

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

#100

Post by dector »

LrQSs8Dq wrote: post #13

Why does this need to be an online app? Why do I need to run my own instance if I want control over my data? An offline app would work just fine, no? After all this is nothing more than a glorified todo list.

Actually you can self-host it: https://github.com/HabitRPG/habitica
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