Show HN: I gamified a habit tracker to fight procrastination
habitsgarden.com
habitsgarden.com
https://www.deprocrastination.co/blog/how-to-use-boredom-to-...
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 :)
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?
Can you train yourself to have an arbitrary tic like touching the top of a doorframe every time you walk through using the same system?
Habits Garden has also a streak counter per habit and you can achieve special quests for maintaining your streak for xyz days :)
Loot boxes you can buy with gems offering limited time flowers would be a hit I think
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 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.
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.
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.
The something can be logging the fact, displaying it, ... Your imagination is the limit.
A great product to stay with us Home Assistant (https://www.home-assistant.io/)
Habits Garden could see an API integration with Zapier, who knows?
Just curious, what would be the shape of that physical button you'd tap when you're done with a habit?
Changing your job may, sometimes, be the answer and, then again, it might not be?
*For Desktop https://habitica.com http://dontbreakthechain.com http://tdp.me * For Mobile https://www.lifehack.org/668261/best-habit-tracking-apps
Do I get your point correctly?
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...
I'm taking care of manually deleting accounts until the feature is available.
Give me a few hours :)
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.
Gaming isn't always fun. You play a game when you collect stamps on that restaurant's card to get a free coffee after 10 visits.
Games are powerful for making us achieve things we don't necessarily want to do.
At least, that's what I believe, and I hope it will work out for you too :)
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. ;)
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.
Thanks for your feedback :)
For EU customers data export has to be possible
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.
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.
Thanks for reading my blogpost.
It also helps pay my bills so I continue improving the service :)