Many HN'ers will be familiar with Don't Break the Chain - a technique that motivates you to achieve your goals by working towards them every day, thereby building a chain of days in a row that you have done something.
It's a great technique, but having used it for years I started to notice a pretty big flaw, which is that if a chain does get broken it can be pretty demotivating - and the longer the chain, the more demotivating the feeling.
And so I developed 100%, which rather than using 'days in a row' as a motivator, instead calculates a 'dedication percentage' based on the number of days in last 30 where you completed a task, with the aim being to keep that number at 100%.
By using a percentage, you don't get a massive crash when a chain gets broken, and by using a rolling time period you can build back up to 100% in relatively short time (compared say to rebuilding a 150 day chain).
The idea was to build upon the basic premise of don't break the chain, and address what I saw as its main flaw.
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[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 13.3 ms ] threadIt's a great technique, but having used it for years I started to notice a pretty big flaw, which is that if a chain does get broken it can be pretty demotivating - and the longer the chain, the more demotivating the feeling.
And so I developed 100%, which rather than using 'days in a row' as a motivator, instead calculates a 'dedication percentage' based on the number of days in last 30 where you completed a task, with the aim being to keep that number at 100%.
By using a percentage, you don't get a massive crash when a chain gets broken, and by using a rolling time period you can build back up to 100% in relatively short time (compared say to rebuilding a 150 day chain).
The idea was to build upon the basic premise of don't break the chain, and address what I saw as its main flaw.