Congrats on the launch. It’s cool you were able to help your friend as well.
I was recently diagnosed with autism + adhd as an adult. When I look at the screenshots, it seems like the reward system is point based. Do task X, earn N point, once you have Y point you get your self-defined reward. Am I understand this correctly?
I’ve always had problems with rewards I make up like this. If they are too small, they don’t seem to matter to me, and I can just go get the reward without doing any work. When the reward is bigger, even if I do the thing, I won’t actually be ready for the reward, I’ll drag my feet (as it requires some effort to make the reward happen), and after some period of time the reward is completely detached from the action. I went nuts paying off my house, and told myself I’d do something one I finally do to celebrate and reward the effort and sacrifice. I didn’t end up doing anything. I told myself certain things were because I achieved the goal, but it wasn’t. I was going to do those things anyway. I didn’t pay off the house to get a different reward, not having the mortgage to deal with was the reward in itself.
When it feels like I must do something, I tend to rebel against it. I think they call this pathological demand avoidance (pda)? This has the side effect of making me less likely to follow through on things I try and commit to, if it’s because I think I should (or someone else thinks I should) vs having a deep internal drive to do it and understanding why I’m doing it. When the latter is true I can’t be stopped, but with the former, I can’t bother to start.
I’m currently using HabitKit to track some things, the UI is similar to the GitHub commit visualization. I’m not necessarily trying to hit things every day, but I want to be able to see if there are trends or patterns, and if things are getting better or worse. Remembering to go in the app can be a problem. I was able to automate a couple with Shortcuts, which is handy. The only real reward is the hope that the data it generates will be useful, or seeing it visually will evoke some kind of mental shift where I start to actually care about the things I “should” care about.
You've got the core concept of the app down, yes. My friend definitely experiences all the things you mentioned, from PDA to not remembering to open a tool/app he's decided to try to use. To work with those issues, I designed the app to be fun so that, even just by opening it, he gets those dopamine hits that his brain needs. Your points count up when you open it, there are subtly pleasing bouncy animations as you interact with it, things are colorful with customizable themes and sounds, there are haptics at just the right moments, etc. The whole thing is designed to make his brain /want/ to open it rather than being a tool he has to /remember/ to open.
As for the habit and reward system, it's similarly designed to be something he wants to use vs has to use because his PDA will immediately kick in and rebel against any kind of forced system. Our built-in tutorial tries to provide enough guidance on this to help you understand what types of habits/rewards could be effective for you and your brain so it doesn't run up against the problems you mentioned. The app does a lot of work to reward you for using the app in support of the habits you want to form without triggering the stuff like PDA that you're trying to avoid triggering. If you end up trying it out and have feedback on ways we can improve this, please do share! We're definitely open to feedback and have already received some good ideas for improving the tutorial from others we've shared this with.
You’re welcome, let me know what you think! I’ve also asked that friend of mine for whom the app was originally designed to pop in here when he gets a chance and give you more of his perspective first hand.
It sounds like you and he share a lot of similar struggles. We realized that he wasn’t the only one with these needs so we’re very interested to hear about others’ experiences with the app. Look out for his response later on.
I was recently diagnosed with autism + adhd as an adult. When I look at the screenshots, it seems like the reward system is point based. Do task X, earn N point, once you have Y point you get your self-defined reward. Am I understand this correctly?
I’ve always had problems with rewards I make up like this. If they are too small, they don’t seem to matter to me, and I can just go get the reward without doing any work. When the reward is bigger, even if I do the thing, I won’t actually be ready for the reward, I’ll drag my feet (as it requires some effort to make the reward happen), and after some period of time the reward is completely detached from the action. I went nuts paying off my house, and told myself I’d do something one I finally do to celebrate and reward the effort and sacrifice. I didn’t end up doing anything. I told myself certain things were because I achieved the goal, but it wasn’t. I was going to do those things anyway. I didn’t pay off the house to get a different reward, not having the mortgage to deal with was the reward in itself.
When it feels like I must do something, I tend to rebel against it. I think they call this pathological demand avoidance (pda)? This has the side effect of making me less likely to follow through on things I try and commit to, if it’s because I think I should (or someone else thinks I should) vs having a deep internal drive to do it and understanding why I’m doing it. When the latter is true I can’t be stopped, but with the former, I can’t bother to start.
I’m currently using HabitKit to track some things, the UI is similar to the GitHub commit visualization. I’m not necessarily trying to hit things every day, but I want to be able to see if there are trends or patterns, and if things are getting better or worse. Remembering to go in the app can be a problem. I was able to automate a couple with Shortcuts, which is handy. The only real reward is the hope that the data it generates will be useful, or seeing it visually will evoke some kind of mental shift where I start to actually care about the things I “should” care about.
As for the habit and reward system, it's similarly designed to be something he wants to use vs has to use because his PDA will immediately kick in and rebel against any kind of forced system. Our built-in tutorial tries to provide enough guidance on this to help you understand what types of habits/rewards could be effective for you and your brain so it doesn't run up against the problems you mentioned. The app does a lot of work to reward you for using the app in support of the habits you want to form without triggering the stuff like PDA that you're trying to avoid triggering. If you end up trying it out and have feedback on ways we can improve this, please do share! We're definitely open to feedback and have already received some good ideas for improving the tutorial from others we've shared this with.
It sounds like you and he share a lot of similar struggles. We realized that he wasn’t the only one with these needs so we’re very interested to hear about others’ experiences with the app. Look out for his response later on.