I've always had a lot of trouble keeping up with routines. It's like a bounce between doing something CONSTANTLY to getting bored and stopping entirely. I can do something consistently for about two weeks... and then I miss a day or get distracted and suddenly it's four months later and I never actually finished that liptember series did I?
I'm not a big one for New Years "resolutions" but I find the end and beginning of a year is as good a time as any to think about what I want from my life and what different things I could focus on to make it more awesome.
I decided that my theme for this year would be diligence. My High School's motto (when I was there - it has changed now) was "Excellence. Initiative. Diligence" and I recognised even when I started there in year seven that diligence was a thing I lacked.
The trouble was, I didn't have enough perseverance or dedication to... acquire any.
But this year I decided that rather than trying to keep up with any one thing (and then getting either distracted or bored) I would try to practice keeping up with things. And it just happened to be the first of January when I signed up for HabitRPG.
I've tried numerous To Do list apps and I've attempted to gamify and/or track many aspects of my life before. I've used Runkeeper and Fitocracy and Duolingo and Superbetter and Epic Win and Patients Like Me and about ten different menstrual tracking apps (which all, without exception, sucked)....
And I've been consistently so terrible with keeping up with any of them that 25 days of HabitRPG feels like an amazing achievement.
I think part of it is the app itself. I've added so many todo items and habits to it that I have easily made it a habit to check in with it multiple times a day and tick things off... and so many that it does take a really really good day for me to do everything on my daily list. But rather than seeing a missed day as a failure that nukes my streak, the things I don't do as regularly change colour to encourage me to prioritise them - and missing something the app knows I'm already "good" at incurs much less of a punishment than missing something I'm already neglecting. I've also already used the "Inn" functionality (where it freezes all of your tasks and status) when I went away for a weekend recently
It feels like a really good fit for practising my diligence! I'm keeping up with SO many things this year including duolingo and medication and vitamins and meditating and housework and laundry!
And someone on the internets recommended Ovia to me as a cycle tracking app which DOESN'T ACTUALLY SUCK and I am pretty excited about that too!
