Remember that Lifehacker post about Seinfeld's productivity secret? I made a small site based on it. | Hacker News Reader

Remember that Lifehacker post about Seinfeld's productivity secret? I made a small site based on it.

dontbreakthechain.com

43 pointsbrett42 comments

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The post: http://lifehacker.com/software/motivation/jerry-seinfelds-pr...

I tried a paper calendar on my wall for a few days after I read that. Then I decided this was a good chance to do something in python which I've been looking to learn.

Looks like palish is working on something based on the same post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45374

Nice.

Feature request: could you offer more than one chain? Chains that aren't daily (e.g. if you're in sales, it wouldn't make much sense to expect the same quota for Wednesday as for Sunday)?

Yeah. I've been thinking about how to best add more than one chain since I started. My main concern is making sure that at any time you can single click on a day with an unambiguous result (viz. it toggles color). So far I'm thinking some sort of tabbish view where you only see one chain at a time.

Adding non daily chains is something to think about.

I've been using Apple iCal for chains!

Implement it like Apple's iCal. Have a menu at the right side where you can display, hide, pick color, add new chains etc. (chain is equivalent to subscribing to a new calendar in iCal). Can't beat the iCal usability.

Multiple chains concept sounds cool. In the shower this morning I thought of a dozen "chains" I want to start!

Brett,

Here's a suggestion for non-daily chains: say I want to work out twice a week. I can set that property (somehow) in the chain name, and when I work out on Monday and market it on the calendar on Monday, it will have mon-wed marked off. Obviously, there's a problem with fractions, but it should work.

Oh snap. You sneaky sneaky. We might just have to launch tonight instead of tomorrow. Well played!

I really like how you've kept it drop-dead simple. Our site offers a little more social-wise, so I'm sure there will be plenty of people who prefer your application. Great design!

Thanks. And thanks for inspiring me to get it out. I look forward to seeing what you are working on.

http://www.cha1n.com

Me too, and I had to rush mine out the door also :)

http://www.habitstarter.com/

".. 500 - Error Opps broke the chain Whoops. Looks like something actually did get broken. ..."

Damn... I broke it. Nice error message though ~ http://flickr.com/photos/bootload/1218317738/

 - created user account
 - logged in 
 - clicked on 2 successive days after today
 - they went red
 - clicked 'last 4 weeks'
 - barfed
 - now 500 on every login

Nice. Thanks. Should be fixed now.

I kept thinking that I should disable being able to toggle days after today because it did not provide any utility. It could have helped out in this case.

"... Nice. Thanks. Should be fixed now. ..."

Thanks brett, checked it, works.

"... I kept thinking that I should disable being able to toggle days after today because it did not provide any utility ..."

so I shouldn't have been able to click the days after today? Oh also found another PIA which is going to require a bit of a login detail. I'm Aus and close to the date line. Today, now is 2007AUG241154 meaning I'm working yesterday.

Any chance of making the default time format GMT, UTC ? Should allow everyone to be on the same page OR you'll have to (probably have to anyway) modify users time by selecting location then adjusting the date-time to the user location.

"so I shouldn't have been able to click the days after today?"

No, I did not get to that. I just fixed it so that if all the days you've clicked are after today (PST) then it does not try to calculate the streak of days between today and the beginning of time.

And yeah, I was just lazy to not include timezones. I should fix that.

I have no idea if this is possible, but what about trying to read the timezone settings in the host computer with Javascript, rather than asking the user to set that?

"... I have no idea if this is possible, ..."

Either do I but it would be just as easy to add a login, select timezone & store that, but then if you take a plane from foo to bar and your zones change you have to change it again.

This is a good idea btw. And I have looked at calendar apps in the past. The big PIA is time-syncing in with where you are at the moment.

Okay. It should now pick up your timezone via js. Unfortunately right now you won't notice it until the second request. I could have js refresh the page when it detects that the tz needs to be set/changed, but I don't want to do that until I am totally certain it cannot end up in an infinite refresh loop.

"... The big PIA is time-syncing in with where you are at the moment ..."

Though I was thinking this fails if your machine has the wrong time.

"... It should now pick up your timezone via js ..."

and you can use this to check against user preferences in TZ. I'll be checking the src how you do this. Difficult to find out how?

JSTZ_OFFSET gets set by the backend from the session:

 var offset = new Date().getTimezoneOffset() / 60
 if(offset != parseInt(JSTZ_OFFSET)){
   new Ajax.Request("/jstz/" + offset);
 }

thanks for the code sample. didn't know JS had a date object. then again there are lot of things I don't know ...

If I understand it right, you are sending the timezone info back to the server? If so, why does the server need to know at all? Just use that info to set the background of the 'today' calendar cell in the client side.

To determine which range of dates gets shown and to calculate the number of days in your current streak. I guess could do the latter on the client, but what if it's Aug 31st in CA and Sept 1st in MA and the user is in month view? I'm not yet ready to go all js.

Pretty nifty, I must have missed the initial post. Now I have something to motivate me to workout daily. And something to haunt me when I consider marking my alcohol intake (in this case, you don't want to start a chain).

That's awesome! Wow.

I have a new home/start page in my browser, and I NEVER normally use a start page!

Please keep it as simple as it is now! Its beautiful! If you must add new features, please hide them away so as not to clutter it.

Thanks for doing this! I actually printed out calendars and have been making X's but this is so much cooler...

I like it. One nitpick is that when you go to the login page the cursor does not default to the login field. This is kind of expected behavior.

Anyway, pretty useful little app. Thanks!

Edit: Feature added, rock on.

Thanks. Should be fixed.

I like it. I added it as a link in my Firefox bookmarks bar. Definitely needs to support multiple chains though. Instead of multiple tabs, I think it would be best just to have a column of color blocks with the name of the chain on the right hand side of the page. Then when you clicked on a color that chain would be displayed.

I think you're on to something. nickb's comment about iCal had me thinking along the same lines.

Ah, datablogging. I did something similar back when I was jobhunting, to track how many resumes went out (and how many responses received):

http://joshwand.com/php/jobsearch2.php

after you've read the lifehacker post for this, the app is completely self-explanatory just by looking at the interface and clicking a few days.

i'm impressed, and i'm a jaded snob who is totally cynical about web 2.0 crap.

I like the iGoogle widget, this is something I could actually use.

At first I just tried to use the site itself as my homepage. I missed iGoogle.

Actually, that's not a bad idea. I don't use iGoogle as a homepage anyway, I found that too distracting so I switched to something less boring (it backfired, now I am in the habit of opening iGoogle as soon as I open the new browser window anyway), but making this a homepage would remind me without distracting me.

Although it does need a user timezone setting. It thinks its Thursday, when its actually Friday here in Australia! Threw me for a moment there!

Definitely. I knew I was going to get a comment on that.

This is quite nice, i like the look that it has on iGoogle.

P.S does anyone have a link to info on creating widgets for igoogle.

http://www.google.com/apis/gadgets/

LOVE the simplicity! Great job! And extra kudos for the iGoogle widget!

interesting! but one detail: the advice talks about a chain created by X. So, it should look like XXXXX but in the app it's red boxes not connected...

I like the red boxes better. Big chunks of those are easier to recognize as a block.

how about allowing me to track more than one project (i.e chain). Nice work.

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