I was telling my coworkers yesterday about much I am enjoying Lift App. Here are a few reasons why:
- I get to see my progress.
- It encourages me (“Congrats, Jess! You’re on a 5 day streak of drinking more water!”) daily.
- I actually derive pleasure/value from that BIG GREEN checkmark. Never before has a digital check mark been of value to me.
- Other people can give me props.
It’s basically a community/app/thing based around achieving goals/to-dos. I only have one “friend” connection on it and he’s not really a friend so much as a guy I have a tech-crush on who I see all the time in St. Henri and I’m too afraid to say hi (he co-writes books with Chris Brogan). He also wrote about Lift this week and what he says is really helpful so I’ll quote him. He’s actually writing about morning/evening routines, which is something we’ve been talking a bit about since this blog’s inception. (How many of you just thought “whoa, inception” and thought about the movie? Me too). You can read the full post here on Julien’s site In Over Your Head.
My life is structured around a set number of goals to complete every day. Some of those goals are tiny, others are large. Here is an incomplete list in picture form:
As you can see, I have tiny habits, like ”Smile at a stranger” (which breaks my usual pattern of looking grumpy all the time), and then I have large ones, like “Finish all to-do’s,” which is a pointer to a another HUGE list in another app.
When I finish all of my habits for the day, like the ones in the list at right, I’m done. But there’s more to it than that.
I also deliberately plan the orderin which I will do these, and the reason I do this is because it helps keep me cheery and motivated to do more.
So I wake up and immediately floss and weigh myself. These are like little wins that get me started on my habit building. Then I go into “Process mail“ and maybe ”Take fish oil“ (very good for you btw).
Then my day is started and I’ll go into my calendar and see what my day is going to look like.
I also force introspection every day through a habit of free writing, which helps me think about my own path, or my work, or whatever else I feel like putting some thought into. You cannot trust yourself to think through important stuff in your head only. Because we are so distracted, it simply does not work. So this forces it to go on paper, where I won’t quit until I hit like 750 words.
So it’s almost like my day is structured with easy win > hard win > easy win > hard win-style loops that will keep me from feeling exhausted. Some stuff is easy, others are hard. With breaks obviously. And of course I forgive myself if ever I don’t get everything done. I draw a lot from Alcoholics Anonymous style ideas so that I can think one day at a time.
The final thing I wanted to mention about this is that often, at night, it is a great idea to just do one more thing. It can be small or big, doesn’t matter, but it helps set you off on the right foot and feel like you were extra productive today. For you that could be anything, maybe doing pushups, or writing a blog post.
I never thought Lift would be as helpful as it is. I don’t even know where I heard about it, but I’m lovin’ it. If you want to add me as a friend/follow me it will automatically suggest me as a friend if you’re following me on twitter, or you can search my name and follow me. Make sure you let me know so I can follow you back and encourage you, too!
Have you found any app or anything that gives you the reward or “lift” you need to reinforce your habits? Comment here and let me know.
