I have installed the Skill Tree app, but it will probably take a few days to make an opinion on it.
In general, thank you for exploring this area; it sounds potentially useful. I like that you list the pros and cons.
I think an ideal solution would be fully customizable, but also with reasonable defaults. The defaults because if you want to use it to overcome procrastination, “choosing your goals” sounds like a perfect thing to think about endlessly. Fully customizable because if there is one thing that rubs you the wrong way, it can ruin the entire experience. Optionally sharing habits with your friends would be extra motivating, but would need to find the right balance between “too inflexible” and “too difficult to configure” (because you would need to specify who your friends are, maybe only share some goals with some of them, is everyone allowed to edit the shared goals or only the person who created them, etc.).
In my experience… motivational systems are cool at the beginning, then get boring. The system I use currently (the last two years) is a printed calendar with four check-boxes every day corresponding to four things that are my long-term problems, such as exercising regularly and getting enough sleep. This is to minimize the maintenance; every day I just need to check the respective boxes (and twice a year I need to print a new page). I don’t even do any evaluation, it’s just that checking a box makes me feel a bit better at the moment, and looking at a sequence of days with no boxes checked motivates me to do something to break the empty line. I imagine this could be more motivating as a smartphone widget? Or maybe not, because on paper I immediate see the recent trends. Maybe the widget should contain the actions as buttons to be clicked, but also show recent history. (It is important to be a widget, not an app. The app requires an extra step of starting it.)
I have installed the Skill Tree app, but it will probably take a few days to make an opinion on it.
In general, thank you for exploring this area; it sounds potentially useful. I like that you list the pros and cons.
I think an ideal solution would be fully customizable, but also with reasonable defaults. The defaults because if you want to use it to overcome procrastination, “choosing your goals” sounds like a perfect thing to think about endlessly. Fully customizable because if there is one thing that rubs you the wrong way, it can ruin the entire experience. Optionally sharing habits with your friends would be extra motivating, but would need to find the right balance between “too inflexible” and “too difficult to configure” (because you would need to specify who your friends are, maybe only share some goals with some of them, is everyone allowed to edit the shared goals or only the person who created them, etc.).
In my experience… motivational systems are cool at the beginning, then get boring. The system I use currently (the last two years) is a printed calendar with four check-boxes every day corresponding to four things that are my long-term problems, such as exercising regularly and getting enough sleep. This is to minimize the maintenance; every day I just need to check the respective boxes (and twice a year I need to print a new page). I don’t even do any evaluation, it’s just that checking a box makes me feel a bit better at the moment, and looking at a sequence of days with no boxes checked motivates me to do something to break the empty line. I imagine this could be more motivating as a smartphone widget? Or maybe not, because on paper I immediate see the recent trends. Maybe the widget should contain the actions as buttons to be clicked, but also show recent history. (It is important to be a widget, not an app. The app requires an extra step of starting it.)
Sorry, the app was somewhat slow and required registration on the second day, so I uninstalled it. Too bad, it seemed nice.