"Life hacks abound: Tell your friends about your plan so you’ll be embarrassed if you fail! Make sure you keep an unbroken streak! Charge yourself money if you don’t stick to it! Donate the money to your least favorite charity! Forget donations, how about electric shocks?
The escalating absurdity should tell you that this problem is unsolved. But in my opinion, that’s because everyone tries to do it wrong. Personally, I’ve found my productivity habits to be extremely long-lived when I make sure they’re literally zero maintenance."
That's cool, I haven't seen this idea summed up so well. Do you have any examples of this?
One thing I do is put sites I want to spend less time on into my hosts file. That way I have to edit a file, which means leaving the context of my web browser, before I can access the site.
Another habit I want to build is quick journaling first thing in the morning, so I made my browser start page a Google docs, and I automatically open the browser on start. So when I turn on my laptop, the first thing I'm presented with is a blank sheet. I can then copy whatever I write into my notes folder.
Tracking time with an app sounds interesting. I checked the Rescue Time app, but the pricing information is really well hidden on their website. I had to Google it. Sure enough, it's $9 a month - that's $108 a year!! For a time tracking app!
I really dislike this trend of small apps switching to a subscription model, and I will not support it. Does anyone know a similar app that is more reasonably priced?
Personally I've been surprised how well setting up contexts for intended outcomes ahead of time works - e.g. if I want to study X, I close everything else on my computer the night before and only open the textbook and my reading notes; If I want to get up on time and go for a run I put my running gear in one place all ready to put on, etc. More generally I try to prepare a daily note on my computer the night before with the most important few things I'd like to focus on.
But what works and doesn't it's highly personal, e.g. the hosts file thing has never lasted more than a day or two for me :)
Try the LeeckBlock browser extension (Firefox and Chrome). It might work better for you than the hosts file. I just commented about it in a sibling to your comment.
If you’re on a Mac I can recommend Time Sink. $5, paid once, every few years there’s an update and I think it might be paid too, I dunno, it’s been feature complete for ages and it really just needs occasional “new OS broke something” fixes.
https://manytricks.com/timesink/
> One thing I do is put sites I want to spend less time on into my hosts file. That way I have to edit a file, which means leaving the context of my web browser, before I can access the site.
I use the LeeckBlock extension in Firefox. I have it set to block a bunch of sites 24/7. It has an override option; I have it set to override the block for 2 minutes when I activate it. As I'm typing these words, I have ~20 seconds left before HN is blocked again, so I'll probably have to override again before I submit this comment.
It adds enough friction that I don't spend as much time as I otherwise might on the blocked sites. I think the fact that it auto-blocks again helps over having to manually re-enable the block in a hosts file. Of course that could be automated.
It also has a bunch of related features that I don't use much, in case anyone is interested.
Leechblock is good, but it's too easy to get around. I have several browsers installed since I do web dev, so it's an easy matter to just open a different one, or use private browsing, or disable the extension.
Well sure; but isn't editing the hosts file easy as well? Unless you lock yourself out of root and would have to boot from a live image. :D
LeechBlock has been enough for me, because I mostly just need a reminder to get in the way of my autopilot, not something that strongly prevents access. If my autopilot gets smarter, I can turn up the friction. LeechBlock has an option that requires you to enter a password to override it or get into the settings; either a user-specified password, or even worse/better, a 32/64/128 character random password.
Add tracking - I had a love & hate relationship with Rescue Time. Just because one can track something does not mean it is easy to change behaviour. Diagnosis is not (yet) a treatment.
I've found a way to hack Rescue Time to to the job - by wiring the newly open browser tabs to it. Now it actually changes my behaviour, and there is not friction (I don't need an extra task on "check RT sometimes").
> Side note: why do ALL time-tracking pieces of software assume that the day starts at midnight? (Midnight does not seem to be anywhere near to the average of sleep time.)
This is off-topic. I used to feel the same way, but over the past year I have fixed my sleep patterns so I now (mostly) go to bed at 10pm, sleep by 11, wake at 6am. It's been an absolute game changer for my mental health, physical health, productivity, and lots more. My social life has suffered somewhat though. If I manage to keep this pattern for a week or more, the difference in my thought patterns and sense of inner piece is amazing. The only way I have learned to force this pattern is to set an alarm for my wake up time. If my goal is 6am, but I currently wake at 10am, I will for two night set an alarm for 8am, then 7:30 two nights, and so on.
It's not exactly the same but arbtt[1] (automatic rule-based time tracker) is what I use on my desktop for tracking time in apps. It would perform the what-for-how-long data collection without providing a cloud-hosted UI for access/review
I'm unable to comment on how easy it is to analyse the dataset it generates as I've not yet got to that myself, but data collection is straightforward.
Yeah, I’ve noticed that subware developers are often less-than-forthcoming about their pricing model, probably because they know it’s unpopular. It’s the first thing I look for, and when I find it, I stop considering that app.
I've been using cold turkey. Has a one off cost and manages applications and websites block lists, on a time block basis if you wish. Also includes a built in time tracker
One of the best purchases I've made. No affiliation just a happy customer
May devolve into a troll war like it does every time, but this is really the essence of the "Systems vs Goals" [1] approach that Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame) advocates for.
This rang true for me. Systems are more powerful than goals.
One example I can cite is that I've always struggled to keep a diary until recently, when I finally got into a groove and did it for six months straight, not missing a day. Then my wife moved my desk, the habit died, and a week later I had missed too many days and lost the motivation to keep going.
Then again a wrong system leading to a habit that does not align with your inner heart is worse than useless.
As anecdata I had a 400+ day chain going on https://750words.com/ ( a nice single person startup btw) but once I missed a few days I felt tremendously happy.
I realized that I was not getting anywhere (my writing still stinks to high heaven) and that my goals did not match with the habit.
While not 0, that’s how I managed to start exercising. I started with a 5-7 minute routine. It barely took any time and that made it the first time I kept up regular exercise. Now I use an app, but it’s longer (with warm up, exercise, stretching) and I never would have managed to stick with it before building the habit.
I did try quite a few things, but for me each app adds friction to tasks. Friction with setting, friction with changing priorities (a wall of shame of unfinished tasks saps the rest of willpower), friction with things that need to be done in a different way than provided by an app, etc.
What I ended with is a daily Evernote checklist (any plaintext editor would work). Ticking is a reward on its own, while the overhead is minimal. A low-tech version of that is a Bullet Journal - a thing that actually works for quite a few of my friends (my Evernote is sort of a BJ, just electronic).
I highly recommend the book “The Power of Habit” by Charles Duhigg. It describes lots of interesting scientific findings.
That book introduced me to a technique for eliminating bad habits that has worked really well so far. Duhigg describes a case in which a lady was trying to stop biting her lip, so she was asked to carry a slip of paper with her, and whenever she felt the urge to bite her lip, instead write a tickmark on the piece of paper. This ended up working for her (and for me) because it is apparently easier to replace one habit with another (i.e. lip-biting with tickmark-writing) than to eliminate a habit completely. And once you’ve fully replaced your bad habit with writing tickmarks, it’s easy to stop doing the latter - just stop carrying pencil and paper in your pocket.
There's an easy way to form habits that's a bit silly but all my friends and I have had great success with it. Essentially you break things down into the smallest task possible (not smallest meaningful task, smallest). Then you start with only that task.
Let's say that you want to floss every night. Start by just touching the floss when you brush your teeth. For me, after a few nights I got frustrated and just started flossing. On days I'm tired I still just touch the floss.
Too much? Break it down more:
Look at the floss
Touch the floss
Open the floss
Pull out a little
etc
The idea (I didn't come up with it but forgot the source) is that many of the tasks we are trying to get ourselves aren't that hard but it is overcoming that _mental_ hurdle. So by breaking down into micro-tasks you slowly raise your threshold. You are also trivializing the tasks. It isn't hard to go from "My hand is already on the floss, why don't I pick it up?" and so on. I find that I get frustrated with the micro task within a week and just end up doing the thing. (I've been flossing my teeth 90+% of days for the last 6 months)
I used to use habitica and it was pretty fun, and it helped me organize a lot of my repeated but non-daily tasks, like remembering when to put the garbage out, going to the gym, etc. For me, the biggest problem of habits and routines I think is actually remembering them and a notification to do them at a time, because I easily lose track of time.
Now I use todoist, and while it's not the same, I like todoist, and am enjoying it more. The browser extensions are nice. It has karma and tracks things, although doesn't have the idea that you should have completed things, which can make things a bit tricky, but overall it's really helped me get things out of my mind and into lists.
Yeah these never work for me either. I’ve tried again and again-even thinking I’ll keep something like Notion as a user friendly database for tracking what I’ve done. But no. Even if I like interacting with it I just fall off because of the overhead.
I’m better off with a sticky note (even virtual ones on my desktop) and a note pad I can tear a page out of than anything else
But I’ve always found—since high school—that just the act of writing something down physically cements things in my mind. At least for as long as I need them to be easily accessible.
> But I've always found...that just the act of writing something down physically cements things in my mind.
Same here! This is why I use a simplified Getting Things Done system, but at the beginning of the day translate it into a "to do" list for the day on paper. It lets me focus on one piece of paper through the day instead of getting overwhelmed with the GTD system.
I have had much more success printing out spreadsheets (day along the long axis, habits across the short) and using a pen. The interface to generate graphs sucks, but otherwise it’s fantastic.
For me, I think it's that tracking all the stuff in the app ends up being a bit of a chore. So my mind associates the habit I'm trying to build with that slightly negative feeling.
I think it also mixes up intrinsic vs extrinsic rewards. It's less about building satisfaction or enjoyment out of the actual habit (intrinsic) and more about the tracking of that habit (extrinsic). So then the habit just remains a chore.
That's my experience at least, I realize it's different for a lot of people.
They never worked for me. But what has worked for me is breaking things down into trivial tasks. I wrote a longer post here[0], but like you I have had 0 success rates with many of the popular ideas of how to build habits. Apps distract me more than help me in this respect.
Yeah, this is my experience with duolingo too. I know in my head that all that extrinsic motivation only limits my intrinsic motivation, where the latter is what'll actually get me to learn something. Despite that, it's hard not to do easy exercises just to end up on the leaderboard.
If you're interested in this, have a look at my https://crushentropy.com/ It is markdown for planning and visualizing your day.
I've been using it consistently for several years now and I can say it has made me a lot more productive, as I'm more mindful of where my time goes, how fragmented my day is, etc.
I am sure this is cool and all, but why would one put their daily planning in an anonymous online service by Insstant LLC that do not even bother to place a Privacy Policy link in the footer? Some slight improvements and more people might try it out.
I would use something that looks like an actual habit tracker [1] but with elements of gamification, than a game with elements of tracker, which seems to care more about being fancy pixel art, than a tool to help people track habits.
I have been a long time user of Loop Habit Tracker - with its sleek charts, streaks and frequency tables, it gamifies habits for me just fine & enough.
I really like Habitica, but like so many productivity apps, you can't nest tasks into arbitrarily deep hierarchies. To me, that's a completely essential feature. You can have sub-tasks, if I recall correctly, but only one level deep. There are so many great task management related tools which are missing this one critical feature, not sure why it isn't more common.
This. I try to use Kanboard for everything but the level of limited hierarchies makes complex projects very hard to manage.
It's good for little projects but really big ones need multiple hierarchies or being broke down into smaller projects (but with lot's of smaller projects you don't have a good overview if your software doesn't allow multiple hierarchies).
I don't like how hard they try to hide the fact that you can purchase "gems", even the FAQ page doesn't discuss what you actually need them for. Does anyone who has used this before know if they start getting in the way or becoming more important than actually completing tasks?
You are right. I'd bought some gems with my Google Opinion Rewards money, and the only use someone has for gems is for costumes and backgrounds - all cosmetic changes, nothing that affects the gameplay. IIRC you can use gems to change your class if you wish, but you get an Orb of Regeneration at Level 100, so you can change your class for free at that point.
Why not just use a rubber band on your wrist and a sting each time? It provides the same conditioned response to not doing your work but you don't have to pay for it.
1. Beeminder can, if you want it to do so, increase punishments up to an arbitrary amount. There are situations where you want your punishment to be extremely high, so that you know losing is not an option.
2. Some people have a problem with entering the right amounts of data, or even tracking all their stuff. Beeminder is automated.
Do whatever works, though. The rubber band approach isn't bad. Some people might prefer automated scripts that send out compromising photos or destroy data if certain conditions are met. There are a lot of approaches.
1) girlfriend (she said 'Write: "met my gf there, 10/10 recommend" :derpy:')
2) a plenty of productive work done
3) friends!
Habitica is awesome used in collaboration with other people. It helps one's motivation drastically to have people for accountability, which gamifies whatever one has got to do.
I suggest you create or join a party that focuses on challenges and encourages cooperation. It has to have a handy medium for communication, like Discord.
For example, we once held a challenge with several teams in a D&D-like game. To make a move, you had to get two hours of work done(in pomodoros). It looked like this: https://imgur.com/a/VA9vrmN
It motivated everyone to get lots of work done. I remember I slept only a few hours on the day of the launch, and that day had managed to do a few moves!
Oh, the fun I had when I had stolen Zephyr Cape! It had increased my movement speed considerably, and as I had it, I had to use the power to its fullest, and was motivated to work more and more.
Right now I am looking for another group to have a similar experience. If you are interested, or you've a group where we could benefit from each other, hit me up, nickname's Kelamir.
Fun story. I remember meeting Tyler Renelle way back at a JS meetup when he first started developing it. Not 100% sure, but I think he originally built it off a framework called SocketStream[1], though I don't remember exactly (I was a contributor to SocketStream at the time). It might have actually been another of the similar frameworks[2] at the time that relied on sockets, realtime-app predecessors to React/Angular/Vue/Svelte.
I used Habitica early on, and it was fairly fun, but I could never (irony much) keep the habit of using it.
Habit trackers are great when you pair them with a smart watch and automations. I use an app called Streaks, Apple Watch and Shortcuts. Streaks can pick up health data and in Shortcuts I’ve set it up so it increments a counter in Streaks to keep track of when I open Instagram or Twitter.
I’m not sure it gives me enough motivation to do something I don’t want to. But it does help me stay on track and not forget the things I want to do.
Oh goodness, how did I never think of using “open app” automations in shortcuts to track opens. I use many shortcuts, but never put two and two together.
Thank you!! And then do you have a negative habit in streaks, for example “no more than five instagram opens in a day”?
I think it works well enough for me I have my daily count set to 10. So I’m really trying to prevent those days where I’m mindlessly checking it throughout the day.
Have you used Habitica ? How does it compare to Streaks ? I was interest in trying Streaks also for the reason that it has a clean UI and an Apple Watch app but the high price is turning me down.
Personal anecdotes about habits and promises. I've tried many different things to motivate myself to either abstain from behavior like smoking or to keep up healthy streaks.
An example would be a promise I made last Christmas to my fiancée. I've had a hard time quitting smoking because it's my go-to solution when life is stressful and feels like the walls are coming down. I gave her 500€ and told her that money is for a small holiday for us next summer if I don't smoke. If I smoke she can keep it all and use it for whatever she wants.
Now when I wanted to smoke, I'd have to weigh the decision against that promise. The downside was, I had a clear price that I could decide to pay if I wanted a cigarette. Needless to say, I failed in two months and now she has a new sewing machine.
On the other hand, I've now managed to keep a 45 day streak on duolingo. It's a way smaller thing and there's nothing externally motivating me except that damn little owl and a little lit flame icon displaying my streak. There's no penalty for failing nor is there any way to wiggle out of failing if I choose not to do my daily exercises. My main motivation is just to learn Welsh for the sake of it and I find it much easier to keep this up than any other habit which comes with internal or external pressure.
Making your friends hold you accountable to something just sounds like the recipe for getting unmotivated and losing the actual goal and swapping the enjoyment of doing something into fear of some sort of penalty which one could decide was worth facing.
I've also heard that talking too much of your ideas and goals will decrease motivation as you gain some feeling of success which should be rewarded to you after you've actually done the deed. I feel that this personally affects me and I've stopped talking about goals and I'm just trying to reach them and celebrating afterwards.
As far as I understand, your experience mirrors the research.
External motivation (like a reward/penalty, accountability partner, etc) is weak. Internal motivation is incredibly strong. So the question becomes, how do you get internally motivated?
I wish I had a reference, but I remember hearing about a study (here on HN) about where internal motivation comes from. The conclusion — a mixture of 3 elements: Purpose, competence, and freedom.
Basically, you're in a situation where there's something that needs done. You have a strong sense of purpose that it ought to be done. (There's a huge "why" element to this!) You have the freedom to achieve it in whatever means you see fit. And you have any skills necessary.
Sounds like with DuoLingo, you're already at the point where it's a locked in habit. (So your mind is on autopilot with that, not requiring a lot of motivation.)
But with smoking, you never had enough internal motivation. And I imagine smoking like other "bad" habits has a big emotional element to it. (You turn to it to calm down stress/anxiety.) Have you thought about those emotional elements and what's causing those? Maybe trying to address those things _on top of_ an effort to kick smoking would be more effective.
Unfortunately with smoking you have to want to stop smoking. Most of the time you either know you should want to, or you want to want to; but you don’t actually want to stop.
Ultimately I became disgusted by the hold it had over me. That I was dependent on it. That it changed my mood, and my personality. I really resented that. The health effects were never a strong enough motivator.
I started using snus, while still smoking, then stopped smoking for the most part. Just using the snus. Then I went cold turkey on the snus.
The problem with DuoLingo is the complete loss when you slip. I was using it with my wife to learn German (I studied in high school and convinced her it'd be a great vacation). It worked great until a very busy stretch of days (I think it was around when we moved). We both list our streaks, and she stopped using the site entirely. I only kept up because there was nothing better to do during lunch breaks.
Did you replace smoking with something else? My understanding is that habits can't [easily] be removed, only changed (short-term at least) - did you take up lollipops, or chewing matchsticks, or fidget-spinners, or ...
I actually wrote karmawarrior after switching from habitica to taskwarrior, because I missed the positive reinforcement/gamification aspect of habitica.
It is weird how we have normalized the fact we need an app to remind us to drink water, or work for one hour. I don't see how this can help one make substantial and long changes to one's life and habits.
Well those specific habits probably won’t. But you can choose better habits, like thanking someone, a reminder to call your parents, meditating, etc.
For me the app is generally used as a reminder but there are times at night I don’t want to break my streak so will force myself to meditate or call my mother. Always happy that I did, so it’s well worth the few seconds a day to use it.
Btw I use Way of Life. Not sure about the one mentioned in this article, it may take longer.
I'm still not sure if it's a bad thing but it's definitely different. When I use a journal/list/daily routine, I feel like I'm in control but when I use an app I feel like I'm giving that up to someone/something else. When I miss a goal that I wrote in a journal then I'm only letting myself down but when I'm using an app I feel worse about messing up.
I don't know how justified those feelings are but at a certain point I think it's worth sitting down and asking whether the app makes you feel worse about the mistakes than the mistakes themselves.
I was quite addicted and would constantly and unconsciously open reddit, and even though I was only participating in smaller, innocently looking subs, they were actually quite toxic. R/learnJapanese was fx full of people who wanted to learn Japanese and wanted everybody else to stop so they could have it for themselves.
I added it as a negative task and that made me conscientious about my visits and made me quit.
It also got me started flossing.
Weekly tasks that did not have a specific day, I failed at, but I think it was the open nature of when they had to be done and not the games fault.
The iOS version worked pretty well for a while, but some flaws kept me from using it regularly.
If you miss to tick your daily routines, the next day you have no clue to whether you're looking at the tasks of yesterday or now. There are no dates at all in the app and you have to explicitly pull down the list to update the view. I don't want to remind my habit tracker app to be ready to track my habits.
I use it for a reminder at this point but it still helps me not skip certain habits from time to time, like flossing, calling my mother, and meditating.
I agree with your last sentence, but a lot of people already have a life and they’re still addicted. The life, of course, is affected. But the addiction is strong.
I've started building a browser plugin to help me increase productivity while on the internet.
The plan is to have it play music, overlay a score, or give me some other positive feedback when I'm looking at productive tabs. Conversely it will reduce stimulation or give me some kind of negative feedback when I'm looking at non productive pages.
I'd be interested to hear if this is something others would use..
Well, i think you could just take away all the enjoyable stimulus you provide (music, points, etc) for positive tabs. Turn down the music and subtract points. I think playing harsh noises or something like that would be over the top though
I use loop habit tracker for this. You can set recurring reminders and mark tasks done. It has an overview screen that shows your progress. Has a Dark Mode (Big plus on OLED).
Why does this need to be an online app? Why do I need to run my own instance if I want control over my data? An offline app would work just fine, no? After all this is nothing more than a glorified todo list.
habitica.com and habitrpg.com have been posted 12 times since 2012, so much closer to every year (also, most of them were in 2012-2014; only three since).
"Life hacks abound: Tell your friends about your plan so you’ll be embarrassed if you fail! Make sure you keep an unbroken streak! Charge yourself money if you don’t stick to it! Donate the money to your least favorite charity! Forget donations, how about electric shocks?
The escalating absurdity should tell you that this problem is unsolved. But in my opinion, that’s because everyone tries to do it wrong. Personally, I’ve found my productivity habits to be extremely long-lived when I make sure they’re literally zero maintenance."