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Habit Judo
A simple, easy to use app to help reinforce daily habits that you wish you had.
Habit Judo begins with 3 easy daily habits. They should be little things that you should be doing but aren't, e.g. cleaning kitty litter, flossing, drinking 8 glasses of water, etc. Start easy, so that you build positive momentum for later. You start by keeping track of whether you complete each habit each day. This daily tracking is really important, it's essential to triggering the positive feedback loop that makes the system so powerful. In fact, it's so important that "Record your habits" should always be one of your first three habits (the other two you can choose yourself).
Each day, for each successful habit, you earn a RANDOM number of points between 1 and 10. This randomness is what produces the variable in the variable ratio. Your points accumulate each day. At certain point thresholds that occur about every 3 days, you get a small self-determined reward (something less than $10). At point thresholds that occur about every 10-12 days, you "level up." Every time you level up, you get to add a new habit. Habit Judo uses the judo belt system to represent levels. You start as a white belt, and move through the colors yellow, orange, green, blue, and brown on your way up to black belt. To keep you habits present-in-mind, you should symbolize your belt level by something on your person. One easy method is wearing a silicone wristband (think LiveStrong bracelet) of your current belt color.
Why does Habit Judo work?
Psychologists and trainers have for years known of the power of operant conditioning in changing behavior. Positive reinforcement is a method of operant conditioning that provides positive consequences (rewards) to increase the rate or probability of a behavior. Kid solves a puzzle, kid gets a cookie.
There are different schedules of reinforcement (Kid gets a cookie after each puzzle, after each 5 puzzles, etc.) but the most powerful and addictive type is called a variable ratio schedule. It has both the highest rate of responding and the greatest resistance to extinction. With a variable ratio schedule of positive reinforcement, the number of responses necessary to produce the reward varies from trial to trial (Kid doesn't know how many puzzles he needs to solve to get a cookie, but it could be the NEXT ONE!). Variable ratio schedules are what accounts for the ongoing popularity of slot machines (the next one could be a winner!) and lottery tickets (ditto).
What's new
Local Notifications - Daily reminder to update your habits and check in.
Import Feature - for users that started off with the spreadsheet or have gathered points elsewhere.
Minor Bug Fixes / UI Enhancements.
Screenshots
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- Last changed:
- Jul 12, 2011
- Category:
- Lifestyle
- Developer:
- Dog Day Apps, LLC
- Version:
- 1.1.0
- Average Rating:
- 4.00 (4)
- Size:
- 8.8 MB
