I use a program I wrote over the last couple of months to improve my productivity and enforce habits in myself via conditioning. Whenever I hear of an interesting productivity trick or a useful habit, I add it to the program. So far, I think it’s working, but there is so much overhead because of the sheer quantity of near-useless tricks that it will take some pruning before it actually becomes a strong net win.
There is a levelling system. Every minute of work gives one experience point, with a bonus if it was done with the pomodoro technique. The program also contains a Todo list, which I use for everything. In this list, there is a section on habits. This section is filled with repeating tasks. Each evening, I tick off all the habits I kept that day. For each habit I don’t tick off, I get a small experience drain the next morning. This encourages me to keep every habit, so that I can keep the daily experience drain to a minimum. Avoiding this negative reinforcement works very well as a motivator, and seeing the number for tomorrow’s experience drain go down whenever I tick off a task also serves as positive reinforcement as well.
Sounds similar to HabitRPG—missing out on daily/weekly habits there lose you ‘health’ and doing them/doing your to-dos/habits such as a certain amount of work you get experience, which lets you level up.
Yes, it’s pretty similar. I think their idea of making the punishment affect a separate health bar rather than reducing the experience directly may actually be better. I should try that out some time.
Unlike HabitRPG (I think?) my program is also a todo list, though. I use it for organizing my tasks and any task that I don’t finish in time costs experience, just like failing a habit. This helps to prevent procrastination.
Yep, although it hasn’t yet implemented losing health if you don’t meet it by a deadline—it’s on the list of improvements to come, though. @Florian_Dietz, if you were interested in using what HabitRPG already has and implementing that functionality there, I’m sure a lot of people would be very grateful!
I’m not sure I understand what you mean. Implement what functionality where? I don’t think I’m going to start working for that company just because this feature is interesting :-)
As for my own program, I changed it to use a health bar today, but that is of no use to anyone else, since the program is not designed to be easily usable by other people.
I always find it terrible to consider that large companies have so many interdependencies that they take months to implement (and verify and test) what took an hour for my primitive program.
HabitRPG is completely open-source, and has very little actual staff (I think about 3 currently). Contributing to HabitRPG has more info (scroll down to ‘Coders: Web and Mobile’) - basically the philosophy is ‘if you want something changed, go in and change it’. I thought you might like the app in general, and by adding that feature be able to get everything out of it you do with your own app, while helping lots of other people at the same time.
Fair enough—it does require more testing, and if you’ve got one going that works for you that’s great :-)
I use a program I wrote over the last couple of months to improve my productivity and enforce habits in myself via conditioning. Whenever I hear of an interesting productivity trick or a useful habit, I add it to the program. So far, I think it’s working, but there is so much overhead because of the sheer quantity of near-useless tricks that it will take some pruning before it actually becomes a strong net win.
I wonder in which way you add the tricks. Could you give an example?
I started an Anki deck for habits and tricks which reminds me of the tricks (cloze-style).
There is a levelling system. Every minute of work gives one experience point, with a bonus if it was done with the pomodoro technique. The program also contains a Todo list, which I use for everything. In this list, there is a section on habits. This section is filled with repeating tasks. Each evening, I tick off all the habits I kept that day. For each habit I don’t tick off, I get a small experience drain the next morning. This encourages me to keep every habit, so that I can keep the daily experience drain to a minimum. Avoiding this negative reinforcement works very well as a motivator, and seeing the number for tomorrow’s experience drain go down whenever I tick off a task also serves as positive reinforcement as well.
Sounds similar to HabitRPG—missing out on daily/weekly habits there lose you ‘health’ and doing them/doing your to-dos/habits such as a certain amount of work you get experience, which lets you level up.
Yes, it’s pretty similar. I think their idea of making the punishment affect a separate health bar rather than reducing the experience directly may actually be better. I should try that out some time. Unlike HabitRPG (I think?) my program is also a todo list, though. I use it for organizing my tasks and any task that I don’t finish in time costs experience, just like failing a habit. This helps to prevent procrastination.
HabitRPG can also work as a todo list.
Yep, although it hasn’t yet implemented losing health if you don’t meet it by a deadline—it’s on the list of improvements to come, though. @Florian_Dietz, if you were interested in using what HabitRPG already has and implementing that functionality there, I’m sure a lot of people would be very grateful!
I’m not sure I understand what you mean. Implement what functionality where? I don’t think I’m going to start working for that company just because this feature is interesting :-) As for my own program, I changed it to use a health bar today, but that is of no use to anyone else, since the program is not designed to be easily usable by other people. I always find it terrible to consider that large companies have so many interdependencies that they take months to implement (and verify and test) what took an hour for my primitive program.
HabitRPG is completely open-source, and has very little actual staff (I think about 3 currently). Contributing to HabitRPG has more info (scroll down to ‘Coders: Web and Mobile’) - basically the philosophy is ‘if you want something changed, go in and change it’. I thought you might like the app in general, and by adding that feature be able to get everything out of it you do with your own app, while helping lots of other people at the same time.
Fair enough—it does require more testing, and if you’ve got one going that works for you that’s great :-)