Peace of Mind Organizing

habitforge: another tool for creating habits

29 December 2010

I’m a big fan of accountability and I love trying out tools to help me stay accountable to goals or establish new routines. I’m crazy about Don’t Break the Chain, which I’ve blogged about repeatedly.

I was less crazy about StickK.com, a website that uses a stick (rather than a carrot) to get you to do what you’ve set out to do.

For the last ten days, I’ve been using habitforge to help me create the routine of putting my clothes away properly at the end of the day (something I’ve had trouble with for years). I’ve found it very motivating.

With habitforge, you set a goal or commitment and for 21 days (the amount of time that conventional wisdom says it takes to build a habit, though I quibble with that), habitforge sends you an email asking whether you were successful the day before. In the email you click Yes or No. When you click Yes, your’e taken to this screen:

My habitforge screen today

If the answer is No, you start back at Day One. (I’m assuming the screen looks similar, though I haven’t yet clicked No.)

I have to say that over the last ten days, knowing I’m going to be receiving this email has motivated me to throw my clothes down the laundry chute or put away ones that I can wear again. (The default behavior has been to leave the clothes on top of my bureau in a messy pile.) I like that habitforge comes to me—I don’t have to remember to go to a website like I do with similar services, like Joe’s Goals. Whether the habit will be ingrained in 11 more days remains to be seen. If it’s not, I can always set up another 21 days of emails.

Habitforge is great for daily habits. Obviously, it won’t work well for something you want to do, say, three days a week. But if you have something you’d like to do daily in the new year, I encourage you to give it a try!

Tagged with: accountability, don't break the chain, habitforge, habits, routines

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