SRHI=40

Great night sleep, great wakeup.

Mashable just did a writeup on LittleBit, a new habit formation app. It’s nice, and it has a lot of positives. It tracks progress through pictures, or “Bits” - if you don’t do a habit once, it’s fine, but if you don’t do it twice in a row, you lose a bit.

I like this because there have been studies that show that people on diets have easier times sticking to them if they take pics of their food (I’m sure there’s an app for it). That distancing technique seems to be one very useful trick for habit formation because it forces you to think big picture instead of just going with the flow of your emotions in the moment.

I like the visualization - you can see when bits are taken away and added. And a lot of times it seems that rewards and punishments in gamification don’t have to be all that much - in Duolingo it’s a sound and a green light. A punishment may work the same. And I really like the punishment, and how 1 day doesn’t matter, which seems to be consistent with the research. It also reminds me a lot of HabitRPG, which was the first program I encountered that did this punishment system.

I also like how after you’ve completed your habit you can share your reel of pics with friends - the social component is a great motivator.

What I don’t like is that it’s yet another 21 day habit formation program. Any task you wish to become a habit becomes one in that magical 21 days - which is very much not consistent with the current research.