The Journal App Making Journal: Day 52
User experience with the Clear Habit Journal
Continue to journal on two questions everyday in this Journal App Making Journal.
1. What have I learned about app design and development today?
Taking a break from coding today.
2. What have I learned about journaling products / technologies / other journal users today?
Continue to look into journaling products / technologies out there today.
Featured journaling technology today: The Clear Habit Journal
> About the Clear Habit Journal
This is a physical notebook designed by James Clear, the author of the bestselling book, Atomic Habits. I have been using it as an implementation system for the book, and experimenting with my own habit change over 21 days, to assess how effective the journaling system is. This experiment will end on Day 56.
> Key ideas I learned from Atomic Habits today
From the companion Habit Academy video course:
Finished the 7th and last module of the course today, on “How to Break a Bad Habit”. This module expands on yesterday’s idea of delayed feedback as a barrier to taking action, and adds the ideas of Present and Future Selves. The person who understands and values long term rewards is our Future Self. The person taking the action however is our Present Self, who values pleasure and comfort. The inherent conflict between the two Selves creates a barrier to making positive habit change.
The key behavioural solutions include becoming acutely self-aware through intentional observations about cues for our bad habits, starting low and gradually adopting increasingly higher standard identities, and making showing up more important than being perfect.
> The UX of using Clear Habit Journal for my own habit change
In the self-aware exercise above, it is suggested we take note throughout the day about situations that cue our bad habits, because unless we are aware of the cues, the bad habits would remain automatic and impossible to change.
The Clear Habit Journal was not the most effective at serving this notetaking exercise as it is bulky and not portable. The video course does suggest using more portable mediums — index cards, with specific structures drawn on it to capture four types of cues — Who, What, When, and Where.
I like the idea of a dedicated space for purposeful notetaking. Getting a deck of index cards, and carrying it around everywhere with a pen though, there must be an easier way? Especially in practicing the atomic habit change principle of “making it easy”. Wouldn’t it be great if there is an app for this =)
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