Be honest OP you were making this to actually procrastinate on whatever it is you had to be actually doing at that time, didn't you? :P nah I'm just kidding, this looks like a wonderful site and congrats on completion and launch!
As a professional procrastinator I have no respekt for people finishing things while procrastinating. I am writing a book about how to procrastinate properly but I will start tomorrow…
This is excellent advice. Thanks for sharing. Also the cliche about doing it for 2 mins and if I don't feel like doing it after I can give up happily.. has always worked wonders for deprocrastination.
The good: I really appreciate that the free trial doesn't require a credit card/just freezes the features until an opt-in for a subscription.
The bad: i think there's a bit of a bootstrapping problem here...You want me to set up a system to make me do more stuff? I'll get started on that later ;)
The trick to counter the bad I've found is to do these setups when my brain is tired, and in "delusions of grandeur" mode - which is at 2-3AM. The Habit app on Android has really helped me stick to some tough good habits and give up some bad ones.
It's unreal how game features like quests can get us to play for hours to earn some gold (WoW dailies anyone?)
What if we use these hacks to do things that are good for us, like working out or reading a book?
That's why I created Habits Garden: To help you form habits while having fun.
How does it work?
1. Create your habits
2. Complete dailies to earn some gems
3. Buy flowers to grow a wonderful garden
4. Be consistent to unlock special/unique flowers
5. Visit your friends' gardens to see their progress (coming soon)
I hope it will work for you as well as it does for me and other users.
If you have any good or bad feedback, I have no ego, be straight-forward :)
Is there any good sources on why these things work?
Like I saw a condolences card that someone made for a colleague that lost his wordle streak. What's actually going on there in that person's brain, why do they view this as a loss to be mourned or a failure while happily ignoring other things that may be healthier options?
Streaks. I use a really good habit tracking app (not going to steal poster's thunder here again) which is based on streaks. Has helped me at least maintain and build habits due to the loss aversion of some arbitrary streaks!
It takes too much scrolling to see an end result of all the habits. Put a preview of someone's sick 6-months-in-the-works garden close to the top, that's what I'd sign up for.
Loot boxes you can buy with gems offering limited time flowers would be a hit I think
One month ago, I spent hours testing dozens of apps for "gamified todo list". I could not find any that would perfectly suits my needs (Habitica is too gamified for example).
Your app looks very promising. Polished UI. Intuitive. Unlimited habits. Simple "task -> award" principle without added complexity layers.
Something I'm having trouble finding in the apps I've tried is the distinction between "habit" and "task". An habit is something I want to do multiple time in a week. While a task is a one-shot TODO that I would like to execute at some point when I'm not procrastinating. Once done, I don't need to repeat it, but I like to be rewarded.
Your application seems to be more habit oriented. Is the notion of a one-time task something you could eventually incorporate?
I have been in the same boat of trying to gamify my to-do list. So far I have been working with progress bars and goals to try and find a way to motivate me to get things done.
I realized that the hardest thing is getting the long term goals to feel like a simple activity for today, bringing the 3+ month goal into a simple “read a few pages today” type of habit.
I also created a simple spreadsheet app that focuses specifically on the progress you made today in relation to your goal. The progress you make today is a different color. Instead of estimating how long it will take to complete the goal with your average, I use the amount done today. So after every addition page read you can see the amount of days left to finish the book go down.
I also added a little bit of motivation text that says “if you read X more pages you will be done Y days faster.
If you use the “MIT”(Most Important Task) type of system , then you could make it a daily habit to complete your top 2-3 MITs for the day.
Breaking one time tasks into small chunks that could become a habit to start on at specific times might be worth looking into. Similar to writers who write for an hour every day even when not motivated.
Really nice! I've been thinking of habit gamification like this for a long time but never got too far as.. well, procrastination. Hopefully I can stick with using this instead.
As you don't have mobile apps yet I have one far out suggestion that is easy to implement and in my tests worked much better than I ever though it would. It's possible to create two kind of menus in Telegram chats[0]. For my start of a habit tracker my bot sent me possible actions (as in habits) to our chat, and I could just click what I'd done and that's it. Works on both on mobile and desktop and just takes a second. It's possible to keep a permanent menu below the typing area and attach an inline menu on a message, so I kept my habits in permanent menu and possible follow-up actions (leave a note, cancel the action, stop taking time) in the reply to a confirmation of selected action. I know it's strange suggestion but I've been thinking and implementing different ways to make use of that menu system as I was blown away how it worked and with just a few lines of code.
$9 (or $6 if paid annually) per month is very expensive, especially for an app that should be a one time payment. I'll stick with my green square grid inside OneNote.
Amazon had a thing where they would send you a physical button to re-order subscription items. I wonder if you could do the same for this. I don't want to pull out my phone to tick a box. I want it to get ticked automatically when I do something.
The reason I don't get into these is that I want an API so that it can hook into other things. But I see why an app is easier to start with.
But maybe a programmer focused habit tracker with an API is a niche. Some kind of payment system where it takes a tiny payment every time you actually achieve a step towards your goal seems like it would align incentives too.
Also, if you can track sleep/exercise/happiness I'd wonder if you could demonstrate what makes an individual, or people in general happier. Big task I know, but I think Google Fit and that ring mounted mood tracker is aiming for something like this.
A large red button that you can slap with gusto seems appropriate, especially for finishing excercise, but anything that can be incorporated into the activity is good.
I don't believe this would work to fight procrastination for more than a few days. Just like all gamification systems, they are very limited and won't change your inner motivation.
In my experience as someone with adhd who is a perpetual procrastinator, gamification apps and any new shiny system to get me working last 1 to 3 months which, while not great, is better than nothing..
I really wish someone would make a generic open source Duolingo clone that works for any content. Basically something to replace Anki, which never really worked for me.
I think its fair to ask for payment, but I think it should be waaaay cheaper. I know a few maintainers of really good, productive open source software, and some of them earn about 4000-5000€ per month from it. I feel like 1€ per month would be a price that I'm both willing to pay and feels fair towards the developer. If they can get a few thousand users they could make this their only job, and it doesn't feel like this is a site that would require multiple employees.
Procrastination stems from a wide spectrum of underlying causes though, from serious depression to temporary boredom. I've experienced both extremes and one is much easier to manage than the other.
Changing your job may, sometimes, be the answer and, then again, it might not be?
I find it kind of funny these sorts of things give you points, to then waste your time planting or creating things. I'm curious if people who actually, consistently get all of their stuff done use these sort of things.
What if procastrination is recursive, you never exit it, and when you get back to work that's procastrinating away from your previous task. Your own company should ask you to work on project A instead of project B, so what you call "work" is a higher level of procastrination, that goes up to the whole objectives vs actual tasks of humankind. Procastrinate about it!
This seems nice - it blends the features of Habitica and Forest that I find useful, and it's always great to see more innovation in the anti-procrastination space.
Habitica has gotten so busy/complicated for my tastes. When it was HabitRPG it was a little leaner in a way that my ADHD really needed. Definitely going to try this one out and see if it’s better suited.
yup. also there is no real "competitive" nature to it.
I want to be able to beat it, beat someone else.
as for price. if it was around $2 a month I might pay for it. its quite likely I'd pay for it and not feel guilty about forgetting i've paid for it, which means i'd keep coming back to it after forgetting about it...
Nice work! These 'habit tracking' concepts/products always have my attention. I built one myself 10 years ago - only personal use, but still using it - and I had big plans.
I'm a bit cynical now, about habit apps. I think they act more like a coping mechanism, a stress center, a buffer, etc. I also thought about more gamification to make it easier. Now, I think that's a slippery slope. I mean, what is it: a tracking app, or a game!? To me, they are opposites now. Gaming is for fun, changing habits is not a fun process. It's a serious and important process, but not fun. Free kudos (basically pixels on a screen) are not going to change that, but maybe that's just my cynical side speaking.
What I did found out was that my app was perfect for tracking expenses and putting spent money in neat boxes. It became more of a personal finance app this way. It became a general tracking app, without the habit changing part.
Another thing that I found out: I used procrastination as a means to change some habits. I gave myself points for procrastinating that next cup of coffee, for example. So maybe the gamification angle can work, I still don't know.
Also, changing habits is an all-encompassing process. Change of environment, inner change, change of deeper layers (which might be the root cause of some habits), etc. I wondered a lot if a tracking app can be enough.
Then there's two important distinctions I found.
The distinction between an app for habits in general, and an app for specific habits. I see you also chose the general path, with a multitude of habits that one can track. I chose that direction too, and I noticed that there's too much of a difference between habits. Drinking alcohol for example is different than eating too much junk, although they might seem similar.
The distinction between habits that you want to quit, and the habits you want to do more. Completely different approach. Although I still think there's power in swapping one for the other. Eat an apple instead of smoking a cigarette. Go to the gym instead of hanging out and drinking beers. Etc.
And at last, what's a habit? Is someone smoking cigarettes a habit or an addiction? Is "read books" (as I saw on your homepage) a habit, or just an act that you do?
I don't want to discourage you or other people, these are just some thoughts I had that might be of value. Good luck!
P.S. One of the main takes I learned, was that some kind of external thing can really help with changing habits. I noticed people with Apple Watches who took there exercise/fitness way more serious because that device gave you rainbows, fireworks and other colorful pixels when you reached some walking target or something. The tracking is done for you, there's no work entering stuff yourself, so only the shiny rainbow at the end. I myself really liked entering the stuff, but the positive kudos are linked to the act of entering, not to the habit changing.
You're right in a sense. Everything is a game. I personally hate these discount games at commercial venues. Maybe the gamification might not work on everybody, and it might work better on people who also collect stamps for free coffee.
But are we talking 'transactional analysis' now? Or does 'gamification' still mean creating artificial challenges and rewards, like in computer games?
Habits are pretty personal, not some external thing like collecting stamps for a free something-something. And that, to me, is the hard part about habit tracking/changing apps. The motivation and rewards for change becomes offloaded on something else. Which might work for some use cases, for a while.
> Games are powerful for making us achieve things we don't necessarily want to do.
Parents are also pretty powerful for this goal, just as the rest of real life. ;)
Here's a habit I have gotten into: not paying $9/month for someone's code, in perpetuity, if the data are locked behind that payment.
And, for all that is holy, please stop trying to convince me to pay by using lines like "for less than two cups of coffee." Where I come from, that's as much as a family of four has for dinner, many days. It's what 85% of the world and 65% of the US have per day for non-mandatory spending. It's pretty damn privileged to worry about gamifying habit tracking and justifying it with $4.50 coffees.
Well then I have a great solution for you: don't pay for it. You're not in the market for this app. It's akin to crying because you can't afford an expensive car.
Yes, thus this advise is free: And no one should spend 4.50 on coffee. It's a bad habit - spending it on absolving oneself from procrastination is even worse. Better spend $10 on "Getting things done"
and reread it every month or so.
Different things work for different people and oftentimes the difficult part of habit forming is the accountability piece. If you're great at holding yourself accountable then maybe re-reading Getting Things Done every month will work for you, or you can just change things through sheer willpower. If you need something else to help keep yourself accountable then maybe $9 a month for an app that tries to make it into a game will work, or maybe another subscription would help because the payment makes it feel like you've put more skin in the game. Maybe you can afford $80 an hour for a weekly session with a professional coach!
One thing is for sure, beng judgmental about how people go about improving themselves is a sure-fire way to kill their motivation. To that extent, I don't think your post constitutes good advice and it wouldn't be worth much even if you did charge for it.
> One thing is for sure, beng judgmental about how people go about improving themselves is a sure-fire way to kill their motivation
Key concept here: motivation. Motivation is not your friend. Motivation is getting you hooked and leaves you cold turkey.
Become independent of motivation. Don't allow motivation to be your scapegoat or you master.
Put $9 a month into a jar and do whatever you want with it if you need it as motivation.
> If you're great at holding yourself accountable then maybe re-reading Getting Things Done every month will work for you, or you can just change things through sheer willpower
If you aren't or you don't have a lot of willpower, then you are lost to the grace of your motivation?
My next free advice: work on your willpower and self accountability. You brush your teeth every day, don't you? Why? Because you hold yourself accountabel. You don't need motivation for this, right? To simple an example? Yes, you are right. We all, myself included, fall apart on the big challenge. Why? Because they are challenging - and it is ok. Stand up and fail better. You aren't a quitter - how many hours of Eldenring are on your clock? Isn't it a damn frustrating game? Yes, until you fail better.
Sometimes failing better needs time, research and/or training.
Ok if you want to spend the money on ops game, more power to you, as long as it helps you to fail better, I give you that.
To conclude: go cold turkey on motivation, learn to hold yourself accountable, improve on willpower and avoid its drains, be kind to yourself. You will fail in all of the above but you have to fail better everytime, thus be kind to yourself, its hard and its hard for all of us. Even when you're thinking it's easy for somebody else, it's not he is just doing it longer.
And for Italians it should rather cost 2EUR/months jsut with smaller font size, for Germans it would rather be 6EUR , however you will need to accept cash.
There is this site I found a while back, wip.chat it's like a social-media/shared to-do list but you have to pay $20/mo to use it. Maybe there's mechanics on dropping money on something that makes you stick to it. I did not sign up for wip ha.
Maker of WIP here. Yes, many members note that having to pay $20 motivates them to be more consistent in using the tool which in turn helps them be consistently productive.
It also helps pay my bills so I continue improving the service :)
Wow, I'm impressed how grumpy one can seem in a few short sentences. Take an upvote for that alone.
GP has a certain - admittedly orthogonal - point. At what point does "just two coffees per month" translate into "too many coffees traded for services"?
If it's relevant, a fairly high-end black coffee made from medium-roasted in-house coffee beans - which I strongly enjoy - costs me $1.70 in my local economy.
So this costs me 5x coffees, or a work-week of coffee. And I'm a pretty well-paid foreigner living in a strange land.
If I were to take a charitable reading of the GP - with no expertise in economics on my side - I'd say they were pointing out that you are potentially losing a 65+% of your market for whom $9 is not "a couple of coffees".
That's not an indictment - maybe you don't care! Maybe 100x customers @ $9 = $900/month and the service pays for itself.
I am a big fan of what I think is Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) / Pay What You Can (PWYC), even though I see it pretty rarely.
I guess it depends on whether you want to provide your product/service to as many people it can benefit at once, versus the minimum number of people who can support your costs with a profit.
Neither position is inherently "wrong"/"privileged", they just seem to have different incentives and/or target markets.
The voice of a potential target market that is being excluded seems valuable to me - even if the revenue increase might be negligible per-user, perhaps it's worth considering the volume of potential users in that market :shrug:
(To re-iterate that I'm trying not to pick a side here: maybe it's not - maybe the business model is to target affluent consumers. That doesn't make criticism of the exclusionary nature of this approach "privileged", however, in my view. YMMV)
If I'll be accused of being grumpy for calling out some couch quarterback for bringing irrelevant arguments to squash down some developer's hopes and dreams, then so be it. You have to be really full of yourself to criticize someone's launch on HN so harshly. This community is famous for sharing kind feedback, with a few notable exceptions that now live in infamy (eg: Dropbox). A good question to ask yourself would be - "how did my Show HN post compare to this one?" If you haven't made one yet, then be extra kind and humble.
This is akin to having a hissy fit over marketing speak. It's like seeing a red car in a commercial but don't like red cars. Doesn't mean the product isn't targeting you. Just ignore it.
I respectfully disagree as I found the comment (1) insightful that upon terminating a subscription the data is no longer accessible, (2) that $9/month could be seen as a lot to many people [honestly did not cross my mind, I guess that’s a priviledge of mine] - it’s the same argument as “$9/mo is too expensive for me” using different words and (3) it did not come off as overly negative, especially compared to some comment sections on controversial topics.
> uses sloppy reasoning, and tells us a lot more about yourself than about the topic you’re commenting on.
An example of being overly negative in one’s comments.
