It’s been almost 2 years since I first wrote a blog here sharing my thoughts about how we could build a better tool for tracking productivity and habits. The reason for taking this long to show some progress on this idea was basically due to my laziness, procrastination, and concept being blurry that I couldn’t figure out how to actually go about the implementation. Now, even though the concept for implementation of habit, todo, projects, journals, mood tracking, and app locker working together is figured out, the horizon of helping people form new habits in a sustainable way is yet far away from my current capacity (I hope the opensource community will get this thing right) as I can’t help people become productive and form new habits sustainably when I don’t even know it fully.
For the past 2 years I have been a student of habits, routines and productivity. I have tried to observe my routines, habits, and productivity along with reading about habits. Professionally I have made a good jump as a programmer since I wrote that article. Some were conscious choices, some opportunities just came along and I was lucky enough to grab them. Few months back I became Top rated developer in upwork. The role of my family and friends has been beyond explanation.
Enough about myself, let’s move into the topic.
So what is Productive?
- Productive is an app for organizing a productive and happy life.
Unlike the traditional apps where each app work alone and a person has to input and keep track of all these different habits, task, journal, personal projects tacking and app lock/block apps, with Productive user will use one app for all these things as a well-integrated system to re-engineer a productive life. The tracked state of the habit can mean something to Applocker. The checked item from todo can mean something to journal. For example, if you have a bad habit of surfing the internet and social media like me just after waking up, this app will lock the social media until you get up, drink water and take a shower. Until you do not tell the app that you have completed those items, it will remind you to do them every time you try to access Instagram or twitter. So here the data on habit tracker is used by Applocker to help the user build better habits and avoid unconscious actions. There will be many other different kinds of similar principles and features the app will use to help the user build better habits.
Most of the time if a person becomes productive to his responsibilities and wants, he can be considered healthy and happy. So at its core, the motive of this whole concept is to help people live a more fulfilling life by making the most out of their time and energy.
Let’s take a look at this possible home page of the app.
Let’s take a look at our concept of homepage. It’s currently named Inbox though I am looking for a better name. This screen will basically list what is the Todo list for today. Not only will it list the todos, it will also provide info regarding how much time was spent on a particular task, if the task is a part of a project (“Read atomic habit” card in the example) or a routine(Do 50 push-ups) or short term task for that particular day (Buy groceries). As you can see the emojis on the left of each card, they define the category of the task, we can use those categorizations for various types of insights and helpful and meaningful stats. One can even start the time tracker before working on a task.
The progress of CircularProgressbar at the top means how much of tasks were completed and their color mean how well the day went. Green is best, blue is good, purple is ok, red is bad and yellow is worst shit.
Before we start working on a task, it will show when (It can either be at a certain time or after a particular task itself) to do it and where to do it. We will use the method called Habit stacking to increases the likelihood of doing the task by doing it just after another more trivial task. For example brushing teeth just after having dinner, taking shower just after working out.
When we try to check off a task from Todo list, we will be asked how well did it feel to do that task and how much time did it take to complete. So this way, we will track our time and mood during a particular task without even bothering. Later we will see how much time was spent on what activity and what was the mood while doing that task so that we can optimize things in our favor.
There is a change even when we try to create a task. Normally we make a Todo list almost out of impulse without considering how and when will we do the task, and we make a todo of more than 10 items without even actually realizing.
This reduces the chances of getting that task done, which in turn reduces the chances of doing Todos next day as we lose the momentum and eventually the motivation to even write the Todo.
If we create a Todo consciously and have an idea of when and where will we actually complete the ToDo, it will also increase the chance of our brain remembering when, where and how to do our Todo increasing the chances of that item to be done when we arrive at that time, context and/or place.
We can even plan a reward for a task for example if we workout, our social media apps will be unlocked likewise we won’t be able to use social media until we complete the workout plan. It will increase the likelihood of getting that task done as this does 2 things.
- First is it does not make the process of using social media easy and you may not have that strong will to open social media rather that was just an impulse and an unconscious action. This will remind you and stop you from using Facebook.
- Second is you will be reminded to do Workout, so much so, if you want to use social media you must workout. This way we can convert the Cue of “want to use social media” into Habit of “should do Workout”. This is completely different blocking facebook by App/site blocker and writing todo in another app as we will most likely never be able to switch from our impulse of Trying to use Facebook to doing the workout.
Above things serves a few purposes :
- The likelihood of getting task/TODO to be done is greater as we become more mindful about what we plan and we do not overestimate our capability and the time we have.
- We will avoid doing unconscious actions like checking social media, watching youtube and Netflix as you will be reminded what you should be doing instead.
- We will be able to track the time spent and mood while doing a particular Todo / Task.
- Other obvious behaviors imposed by Todos.
That’s it for today,
I will be describing how the habits will work on the next post.
Thanks so much for your time.
You can see the full Figma prototype here :
