Habit Forming Part Deux - Joe's Goals

So here I am a few weeks later and I find myself thoroughly thrilled with "Don't Break The Chain." It's simplicity is the key. Don't underestimate this bit. You might notice I missed Qi Gong on 1/12/08. Well, as you can imagine, THAT lead to a lengthy discussion with myself, and even with Jeff at one point, about mitigation; how I might erase the miss to keep the chain going. The chain had already become so important I was willing to circumvent it's inherent simplicity just too keep it going. I could do a full 2 hour session to make up for it. How about 'enter your favorite penance here' to allow me to mark that day as not missed? What an idiot! One cannot change a missed day with anything. It's gone forever. From that I learned. DBTC is made for those tasks that one wants to make a habit. Yes, I knew that weeks ago, but now it's sunk in.

Summary: I LOVE this tool and will continue to use it while testing the others.

So, off to try the next on the list; Joes Goals. Another elegant and simple approach not so much for getting stuff done, but for creating change in one's life. It's so simple in fact that there is no documentation anywhere. You learn by using it. It took me about five minutes to see everything. He's got some really nice coding in there. Call it Web 2.0? It does what you expect, when you expect. The major differences between JG & DBTC are that with JG one can see more than one goal at one time and that Negative Goals can be set; e.g. "Don't eat fast food." The display one can post on a blog (look to the right) or iGoogle isn't quite as nice. You have to go to the website to make updates. This is one thing I like much better about DBTC. So, since I don't want to add more actual every day have to do things, I'm going to use it for two things I want to make sure to do several days per week. Neither tool does this well (maybe one of the next ones on the list?) Joe's Goals DOES allow one to set which days of the week the task must be done, but that isn't what any of the items on my "I wish I could really do all this stuff all the time" list. So we'll fake it. I study French. My goal is several times a week and I'll track my actual days. I'm also trying some eye exercise techniques from Deepak Chopra's Perfect Health. Wow. What a great book and CD that is.