Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by toyg 2094 days ago
$10 a month for yet another streak-focused app I’ll drop in two weeks... sorry, pass. I can see why the trial is 7 days though.
2 comments

I totally agree on this, the pricing is not well thought, take HabitBull for example, the app is free for 5 goals and you can unlock the rest of features with unlimited goals for a one time purchase of $10.

That's a way better pricing model for this kind of apps in my opinion.

What is a streak-focused application?
This thing where you are supposed to take satisfaction from looking at a "chain" of repeated tasks on your calendar and feeling so bad for "breaking" the streak that you'll keep doing it. There are quite a few out there.

The effect on me is typically to increase my self-loathing when inevitably the chain breaks, and the feeling of "oh no, doing it all again will take so long!" discourages from picking myself up.

Chains don't really work the moment they get broken. Instead the alternate view that habits take about a month to form at least and you can only really change about 1% of a day every month is a better system that allows gaps and adjustments and systems built around our errors and unreliability and rewarding that long term habit building without the chain effect are a lot more effective long term.
Also known as the "Don't break the chain" technique.
And the Seinfeld strategy