Don't let a single day pass without doing something towards your goal
nonzeroday.com
nonzeroday.com
So, I found something better: the accumulation method. I have a intermediate goal of, say, 10,000 push-ups. If I'll do only 10 push-ups a day, it will take me 1000 days to reach this goal — almost 3 years. Or I can do more — then I'll get to it faster. There is no frustration, I can skip any days I want, but if I want to reach this goal, I have to move forward.
Another thing: the goal should be quite bold, bigger than you'd think first (something you can think of reaching in 2-3 years; don't worry, it will be faster). Some examples: do 10,000 push-ups. Save $100,000 (or give $100,000 to charity, whatever suits you best). Run 2,000 kilometers. You start slow, but your progress accumulates, and then accelerates.
Especially useful in diets.
Regardless, I like having end points on these projects because they give you a sense of relief at the end. It also helps to aim for low frequency with each goal so that your daily schedule isn't rigid - a 15 minutes per day investment is actually quite a lot.
If I walk 20 miles and my ultimate goal is to get to 10,000 miles, then 20 miles of effort translates into 20 miles of distance covered. It's a linear one-to-one no frills relationship. The units don't even change.
But if I'm doing push ups, my goal of 10,000 is actually a proxy goal for things like upper body strength and physical well being. In that context, the biological impact of 20 push ups x 3 days ≠ 60 push ups x 1 day, and no push ups the next two days.
Requiring myself to do it every day with no flexibility works for me only until the first day I miss, and then it's basically all over except for the death throes. YMMV.
That was my experience with calorie tracking in MyFitnessPal. Did it for months, had a solid streak, then skipped a couple of days while traveling. I've done it on and off since then, but never got reliably back on the tracking wagon.
Instead, you need to make a goal where "work towards that goal" is not concretely defined so that you can do work towards that goal under virtually any circumstance. For example, if your goal is to get a certain time in a 10k race, then you can read books about race strategies or training methods on your flight and count it as progress towards your goal. If you're recovering from a broken hip, you can mark physical therapy or diet decisions as progress towards your goal.
For years I tried to keep a chain of exercising every day. It would work wonderfully for 8 months or so, and then inevitably every summer the chain would break when I was up for several days partying. Then I would start thinking "what's another skipped day" and end up with months of no exercise. After a few cycles of this, I redefined my chain as exercising every time I wake up. This works nicely for me, because my primary reason for initial breaking was that I was exhausted. I've managed to keep this new chain unbroken for years.
Babysteps! http://i.imgur.com/wfHCoSA.jpg
It could be much better if the user has to choose a charity that money goes to, I understand that you also have costs for running this app, but I think I will write my own app and besides that, it's not always about workouts, it might be about reading , FOSS, self development, or whatever of that things, would love if it had something like that.
Edit: For reference, the original comment I responded to stated "If you charge towards the charity then a user doesn't feel bad when he/she fails."
Give me a break.
StickK's list of 23 anti-charities (their anti-ness, of course, being in the eye of each goal-setting beholder) includes: The George W. Bush Presidential Library, the William Jefferson Clinton Presidential Library, the NRA, the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence, and various fan clubs of opposing sports teams.
Put another way: you would say that wouldn't you.
If you prefer donating to a charity (or anti-charity) on slip-ups: stickk.com
I personally like beeminder.com for its graphs.
EDIT: Wait, what? He never said this at all? https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1ujvrg/jerry_seinfeld...
The latter doesn't require an account, lets you log some additional data and is of course absolute beta. I really didn't plan to publish it yet, but I haven't done anything else to reach my goal today.
The comment above brought me my first 36 potential test users.
Please drop me a line with suggestions, questions or feature requests! https://markmyday.net/imprint.html
Also, in case you see some promise in the app, be sure to bookmark it or add it to your homescreen (adjust the title first). Thanks!
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1ujvrg/jerry_seinfeld...
Any tips for reaching it?
Some people have not reached the goal, which is why I asked.
Also, it's probably a good idea for people to establish a bare minimum as to what constitutes progress for them. Chronic procrastinators will simply pass off even the most miniscule items as progress (I know; I am one). Granted, that's not necessarily a bad thing if they're escaping the throes of depression, but in normal situations such justifications may constitute slacking.
I once heard a really smart marketer say that self-help is the best niche to target because perfection is impossible, so once you get a customer, you have one for life.
In reality though, any app or service that the business interests are misaligned with the users best interests, can't keep users forever. The users who benefit wont make you any money and the ones that fail will resent the service and leave.
While I see where you are coming from, this is an extremely shortsighted monetization strategy.
A better strategy would be gentle push reminders to not let the day go to waste, tools to make it easier to see progress, and monetize with premium add-ons.
For me, just the thought of leaving my gym creates all sorts of anxiety of dealing with jumping through hoops to cancel and finding a good replacement gym. Just not worth the hassle.
Bottom line, a gym that charges more for using the gym less is a not business thats model entirely depends on their members failing. It is just helped along by the reality. (Its actually quite clever because no one signs up to a join without plans to go regularly,and once you sign up, cancelling is a huge pain.)
In short, our interests and our customers' interests turn out to be highly aligned, even though it seems prima facie perverse.
Another way of arguing the point: a manufacturer of physical goods has the perverse incentive to make pieces of crap that last just long enough to make it out of the store. Ok, maybe that's commonplace enough that I'm totally not helping my case with that analogy! :)
Ok, better argument! Beeminder has been around 4.5 years which probably wouldn't happen if we were myopically making people fail to get their money.
Edit: cool app btw, gonna give it a try :)
So we'd be super grateful to hear about things you find confusing/frustrating/offputting as you try setting up some goals.
Thanks again for trying us out!
Dropping your streak for a day or two won't hurt, as long as you hop back on.
Plus, apps like these can end up being counter-productive if they force us to make some kind of token contribution (just to meet our "quota") but which may actually move the project forward (and by jiggling context, may actually move it backward).
"Hey, pay us in escrow while you're still motivated and inspired, then we'll rake ya when you falter. Bwahahaaaaaaaa!" (in a humorous way)
All of the links to sign up just popped up a "Just kidding! April Fools!" link. My google-fu is weak, apparently... Not finding it now...
For example, I'd like to track how many days I studied during the year.
Reading the comments I found:
- http://dontbreakthechain.com/
Are there any fancier apps?
(That post also includes a link to what we think is the best Don't Break The Chain app, if you decide the complexity of Beeminder's graphing -- not to mention the whole commitment device angle -- is too much.)
I use it to keep reading, walk more, work on side projects, etc.
Free and works well.
IMHO being able to firewall e.g. a three-day trip with the family from other concerns is worth far more than putting in a token 10 minutes in service of an abstraction like this.
I would myself take more pride in not having e.g. looked at a screen for three days, than having checked off three more boxes.
I can think of literally nothing in my life for which this strategy would be relevant: nothing significant enough to be classified as a primary goal in life, such that it would be worth making a special effort to schedule my time around it, which is still somehow trivial enough that routine daily action would provide meaningful progress toward achieving it. The things I imagine as goals for my life aren't generally things one can measure in the first place, much less count as having definitively achieved or not achieved.
Career-wise, it would feel good to have contributed significantly to some piece of systems infrastructure that serves to distribute power over information away from big industry or government organizations and toward individual people. Pursuing this goal has generally conflicted with the goal of living a happy life, and I don't know whether that is merely happenstance or due to some intrinsic conflict in these goals. Perhaps I simply haven't found my moment yet; perhaps I never will. I'm going to keep my eyes open for opportunities in this direction but I don't know whether I will ever be able to realize this goal. It isn't really about me, it's about the world around me and whether other people want to do what I think we'd all be happier doing.
(We're genuinely delighted to have more competitors! Check out the "Sushi and Green Fields" section of that blog post.)
There is no magic pill for procrastination that will fix everyone's problems even if you follow every productive hack out there.
It's a very fine line though and can become a good excuse not to get things done or let circumstance drive us around. But I for one do not believe in working on a goal every day. Just most days.