ForumsNewsNew Section: Habits


New Section: Habits
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Phil_van_Woerden

Posted: Jan 20, 2015
Score: 0 Reference
Hello,
I selected three stars on a rating-type habit but on the wrong day.
No way I can undo / delete this... I may change the number of stars, but I cannot cancel the rating for that day.
Or did I miss something? I am using the website and iPhone app.
Thanks!
Jake

Toodledo Founder
Posted: Jan 20, 2015
Score: 0 Reference
You can change a previous day in two ways.

1) On the left side list, select the previous day from the drop down menu at the top and then select the new value.
2) Click on a habit to show the details. Then in the "Week View" box on the right find the previous day and change the value.

If you are trying to select "0 stars" you can click just to the left of the left most star and it will set it to 0 stars.
AA

Posted: Jan 22, 2015
Score: 0 Reference
Posted by Christoph Dollis:
My suggestion is to put a badge for the remaining Habits in today's INBOX on the Habits tab on both the app and web version. This is the most important thing.


Yes, but (as discussed earlier: http://www.toodledo.com/forums/1/19956/-92282/read.html#jump ) until Habits make it possible to remove already failed today's Habits from the Inbox, that Inbox count would be pretty useless – misleading, in fact. So, that's the no. 1 usability issue I see in Habits now – the Inbox's inability to show only what I'm still supposed to do today, as opposed to also showing what I should have done today, but didn't, and can no longer do today, for one reason or another.

I didn't know Habits weren't included in "Toodledo site backup", and that makes me worried. I hope Toodledo will fix that soon.


This message was edited Jan 22, 2015.
cj

Posted: Jan 22, 2015
Score: 1 Reference
After using Habits for a while longer (and comparing it to some other utilities I use for similar purposes) ... I'd like to offer the following suggestions, requests, wishes etc:

Overall - the biggest drawback is that Habits is decoupled from tasklist (and anything else)
thus, I now have to embark on a new habit, of checking "habits" ... too easy to ignore or forget.
I've used other habits-like programs (which are very robust - but I would LOVE to just use toodledo alone), so here are a cople of my top suggestions that would exponentially increase the usefulness of Habit, with just 2 new features:

1. Habit reminders
--------------------------
This (for me) is a must. Most other similar programs have this.
for toodledo, this can simply be like the task reminder options.
Even better if I can get the "habit" to remind me periodically (nag me) and allow me to snooze it.
but for now, just a simple scheduled reminder would make this more powerful.


2. Connect Habits to my daily todo/tasklist
----------------------
(optionally - while I value this feature - others may not)
so if a habit is connected to the tasklist - then it shows up.
the easiest way to seamlessly to this is to add "habits" under the "Show" option. and even better if I can categorize/tag the habits as well.


My two cents. FWIW.
Jake

Toodledo Founder
Posted: Jan 22, 2015
Score: 0 Reference
We are working on the ability to fail a habit intentionally so that you can distinguish between failure and "forgot to log it" and also to remove it from your inbox. It is clear that a checkbox habit needs to have a fail state. Example: "Don't eat candy". If you eat a piece of candy you fail for the rest of the day.

It isn't clear to me how you can fail at a rating or number habit. Can someone please provide a scenario where you could fail at either of these?
shelbyp

Posted: Jan 22, 2015
Score: 1 Reference
Hi Jake, i think similar to your candy example if you log your workout time daily and you do not workout you might want to log a fail. Although you could admittedly log 0 or not log at all in this case.



I am loving habits, my most used feature and has already changed my habits! Looking forward to some of the more key requests which were mentioned. Thanks also for having this on IOS at the same time. This was critical for me to start using it, surely for others as well.

Shelby

EDIT: Also note that logging a fail may become less important if some flexibility is built in to the habits. e.g. supporting habits which only need to occur N times a week to be checked. Actually this is by far my biggest issue, Since after adding about 20 or more habits most of which do not occur daily, I am basically spending time parsing my inbox looking for the relevant ones. For habits which occur less than daily, it will be important to sort these appropriately. For exmample if the habit needs to be performed twice a week and there are only 3 days left in the week then this should appear higher (probably in the inbox). I think a 3rd section ("Upcoming"?) is needed between Inbox and Completed to handle these less frequent habits.


This message was edited Jan 23, 2015.
AA

Posted: Jan 23, 2015
Score: 0 Reference
Posted by Jake:
We are working on the ability to fail a habit intentionally so that you can distinguish between failure and "forgot to log it" and also to remove it from your inbox.

Thank you very much.

Posted by Jake:
It isn't clear to me how you can fail at a rating or number habit. Can someone please provide a scenario where you could fail at either of these?

For the number habit, see below.

For the rating habit, this issue is not as urgent for me, because I typically only check off all of my rating habits just before bedtime. But, similar scenarios are possible as well. Let's say a rating habit of yours is "Be Kind to Co-Workers". Quite apart from weekends when you might have no interaction with your co-workers at all, you might be taken ill on a regular weekday as well, or be away from work on vacation, etc. etc., with no interaction with your co-workers possible (not even via email). How are you supposed to "rate your kindness to co-workers" on such a day? :-) Any rating for that particular habit would be false on such a day. As another user noted earlier, it's not obvious or intuitive how you can rate a habit "0 stars". Instead of rating it "0 stars" (which doesn't really make sense), we should be able simply to discard/"fail" a rating habit for any particular day, so that it's removed from our Inbox, but doesn't show up among completed habits, either, because it wasn't completed. It simply wasn't relevant for that particular day.

Posted by shelbyp:
i think similar to your candy example if you log your workout time daily and you do not workout you might want to log a fail. Although you could admittedly log 0 or not log at all in this case.

"Workout time" is a perfect example in reply to Jake's query.

Logging a zero (0) or "not log at all" wouldn't be satisfactory solutions to me. A zero is not the same to me as not performing a habit at all. You could try performing it, and still come up with a 0 as a result. That's not the same thing as not trying at all. In fact, for some of my number habits, a zero is my targeted result, whereas a negative number means I failed to reach the desired zero.

"Not log at all" is not a solution, either, because then that "unlogged" habit remains sticking in your Inbox, cluttering it and obstructing the clear view of those habits you still need to perform today.

Posted by shelbyp:
Actually this is by far my biggest issue, Since after adding about 20 or more habits most of which do not occur daily, I am basically spending time parsing my inbox looking for the relevant ones.

Exactly. This has been my biggest issue as well, since day 1 of using Habits. I spend almost as much time "visually parsing my inbox looking for habits [still] relevant for today", as by checking off those habits. In the long run, that's hardly acceptable from the point of view of usability/productivity.

Posted by shelbyp:
I think a 3rd section ("Upcoming"?) is needed between Inbox and Completed to handle these less frequent habits.

Well, I proposed earlier that a 3rd section might be called MISSED/FAILED [for this day]. Then, UPCOMING might possibly be a 4th section for the purpose you're suggesting? :-) I don't really care about which section is 3rd or 4th, but I do find it important for Habits to offer a section listing all the habits I failed to perform on a given day. (As opposed to "not logged yet" habits, which belong to the Inbox, until they are either logged or failed.)

Posted by cj:
thus, I now have to embark on a new habit, of checking "habits" ... too easy to ignore or forget.

Hehe... not really, if you make that one of your habits, too! :-D That's exactly what I did: I now have 79 habits in Toodledo, and one of the 79 is a "meta-habit", that is: "Check off Toodledo Habits for the day" (and before bedtime at the latest, not on the following morning, which already decreases productivity). It's impossible for you to forget it that way. I agree that this (checking off Toodledo Habits) has now added one more chore to my everyday routine... but in return for increased productivity and clarity about my everyday activities, I'm more than willing to make that investment.


This message was edited Jan 23, 2015.
miklos.szeles

Posted: Jan 23, 2015
Score: 1 Reference
Hi,

I am really happy that you introduced Habits. I was looking for a good habit tracking app to use it in addition to Toodledo, but it is possible that I won't need any third party app for that. In addition to the points mentioned by other Toodledo users I would advice the following changes, additions to make Habits a really good solution:

1, It would be very useful to introduce a counter habit type. It should have a button which increment the value by one for easy use. Many cases you want to log the event on the go, not at the end of the day. Like drinking a glass of water, smoking a cigarette, ... These shouldn't be considered completed before the end of the day, as I just want to track the number of something daily. For these kind of tasks it would be nice to be able to set a goal to do less than A, more than B, or to be between C and D.

2, In the iPhone app, the habit entries use unnecessarily large space, so only 4 of them can be seen on the screen at a time, which makes it much harder to use. With a little change, it could show 6-8 habits without a trouble. Not even talking about horizontal mode, where the header takes half of the screen also the statusbar takes 1/5th of the screen, so you cannot even see 1 habit in total. I think this is a typical topic, where Bridget's expertise could improve the UI a lot.

Miki
cj

Posted: Jan 23, 2015
Score: 0 Reference
Posted by Jake:
We are working on the ability to fail a habit intentionally so that you can distinguish between failure and "forgot to log it" and also to remove it from your inbox. It is clear that a checkbox habit needs to have a fail state. Example: "Don't eat candy". If you eat a piece of candy you fail for the rest of the day.

It isn't clear to me how you can fail at a rating or number habit. Can someone please provide a scenario where you could fail at either of these?


re: Fail state for checkbox:
perhaps a different GUI paradigm (since you now have a UI designer!) ... my first thought would be something like a thumbsup/down icon - where the default is neither. not ideal, but this is better than the binary checkmark.
let's say I want to Run or Workout every day (one or the other).
+ I could have one thumbsup/down for the Run (another for the workout). If the Run is deliberately skipped (because I worked out) - then this would be the "neither succeeded nor failed" state - but a skipped state.
+ or - interesting - even better if I could have a state that says "do one of these 3 (nn) things today. success is if I do one or more. failure is doing none.

> It isn't clear to me how you can fail at a rating or number habit.
well I can offer a use case.
I want to WRITE a Minimum of 500 words per day (but preferably more - and I want to log the totals)
SO - if today I wrote only 250 words. I want to log it ... but it is still a FAIL. I broke the chain.

My 2 cents.
AA

Posted: Jan 23, 2015
Score: 0 Reference
To me, it's not about "failures". (I'd opt for a "softer", less negative label myself, such as "Missed" habits.)

The crucial thing here, as I see it, is the ability to maintain a clean Inbox. Whenever I look at my Inbox in Toodledo Habits, regardless of the time of day, I wish to see only the things I'm still supposed to do today. Nothing else. That's what GTD is all about. Right now, the Inbox is a mixture of things I'm supposed to do, and of things I was supposed to do, but didn't (and can no longer do today), and of things I'm supposed to do some other day, not today. So, the Inbox is a mess currently, especially if you have 79 habits like I do.


This message was edited Jan 23, 2015.
shelbyp

Posted: Jan 24, 2015
Score: 1 Reference
Posted by miklos.szeles:
Hi,


1, It would be very useful to introduce a counter habit type. It should have a button which increment the value by one for easy use. Many cases you want to log the event on the go, not at the end of the day. Like drinking a glass of water, smoking a cigarette, ... These shouldn't be considered completed before the end of the day, as I just want to track the number of something daily. For these kind of tasks it would be nice to be able to set a goal to do less than A, more than B, or to be between C and D.

Miki


This is a clever and useful idea, +1. I mentioned that it would be useful to have habits which could occur multiple times in a day, but I find that your idea is better, more flexible and also more consistent with the existing interface. Also should not be too hard to implement.
Christoph Dollis

Posted: Jan 25, 2015
Score: 1 Reference
The habit traffic light paradigm—green, yellow, or red:

http://everydaysystems.com/podcast/episode.php?id=11


This message was edited Jan 25, 2015.
AA

Posted: Jan 25, 2015
Score: 1 Reference
Right. We currently have "Red" (= Inbox = still upcoming for today) and "Green" (= Logged/Completed) in Habits. A third (and fourth?) color is sorely missed. I suggested (see http://www.toodledo.com/forums/1/19956/-92282/read.html#jump ) "Orange" for Missed/Failed Habits. A fourth color might be, in line with the article you posted, "Yellow" for "exempt" days (= Habits irrelevant for today, or upcoming for a day different from today, etc.).

This message was edited Jan 25, 2015.
shelbyp

Posted: Jan 28, 2015
Score: 1 Reference
The space on the main part of the dashboard could also be used to display/layout some of the features requested. Currently precious "real estate" is being used to display habit suggestions. In fact this is only useful for people who have few habits, for the rest who know the system, a link at the bottonm of the page is sufficient. This space could then be used to disaplay some of the color categories proposed.

The thing I like about the habits interface is that it is "fun" to use and looks nice. I think this is more important for the habit section than the tasks. For this to be motivational it needs to be fun, and you've done a great job with the graphs and the calendars, colors etc to achieve this. New features in the habits section should try to keep this aspect.
AA

Posted: Jan 30, 2015
Score: 0 Reference
Habits have now been added to Toodledo's full site backup file, which is great.

And, I'm seeing some new strings there, of the <failure></failure> variety, which is encouraging to say the least, although the new option currently isn't yet visible in the user interface.
crochetgeek2010

Posted: Jan 30, 2015
Score: 1 Reference
Hi,
I like the habits but almost exclusively use toodledo on apps like ultimate to do list. When will the habits become available to app developers for 3rd party software?

Thanks
Laura
Jake

Toodledo Founder
Posted: Jan 30, 2015
Score: 0 Reference
Habits is still evolving quickly, so we are waiting to release it to developers until we have finished all the major features we are planning and the interface isn't changing so rapidly.
Phil_van_Woerden

Posted: Feb 01, 2015
Score: 0 Reference
Hi Jake,

All my habits were working till yesterday (Jan. 31st) but today (Feb 1st) nothing appears in my inbox?
I can still see all of them in the past, but only if I select a day in January.
Same behavior on computer and in the app on different devices.
Is a habit only valid for one month or is that a bug?

Thanks, Phil


This message was edited Feb 01, 2015.
dtssantosh

Posted: Feb 01, 2015
Score: 0 Reference
+1 @Phil_van_Woerden

no Daily Habits Visaual in Habits Tab..


This message was edited Feb 01, 2015.
AA

Posted: Feb 02, 2015
Score: 0 Reference
My guess is that could be related to your "start of new week" preference. Yesterday happened to be both a Sunday and the first day of a new month, and that combination might have triggered something unusual in your Inbox. I'd expect that everything should be back to normal in your Inboxes today, Monday.

I saw an issue similar to the one you describe in my own Inbox on one of the Sundays in January, but everything was OK for me yesterday. (My "start of new week" preference is Monday.)

That said, the "logged vs. not logged" piechart on the Dashboard is still incorrect for me every day.


This message was edited Feb 02, 2015.
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