Board Thread:The Quarters - Q & A/@comment-26447681-20150530053520/@comment-67.172.247.65-20150727230121

The difference between a positive habit and a perma-grey daily: A habit which is positive only, and will not be checked more than once a day (for example flossing, when my goal is to start flossing once daily but there's no need to floss twice a day) will have its value nearly double when it's clicked, but then at the end of the day the value is cut in half, until it reaches 0.1 at whch point it goes to zero. This means it a habit that is set to be clicked at most once a day will always stay neutral even if I'm doing really well with it. So things like flossing might be better served by making a grey daily. Even though those visually stay grey, they do have a task value that will change for the better over time. This allows you to more easily take stock of when the habit is established it and make it into a regular daily. If it were just a habit there would not be as easy of a way to tell when it is established.

On the added control of habits with multi-clicks: you can set the difficulty level with dailies so that you can get more damage/reward.

On the interchangability of habits and dailies: If it's something I'm supposed to do daily, I make it a daily. Then I'm punished for not doing it. If it is something that is nice to do, but not required, or if it's something I haven't done before but I want to start doing, it's a habit. If a task is required some days but not other times, and there is no set schedule to when it is required, I have some solutions I created. Like you I have a lot of flexibility with my work tasks so I needed to get creative. My basic idea was to drill down to what I have to do every day, even if it is very generic sounding, and set those as dailies. Then the habits and to-dos dictate the details of what I do to complete that day's generic dailies. For me, my dailies are simply the amount of time I spend doing focused work. They do not describe the work at all, since that changes from day to day.

In order to make sure I work enough time on important stuff:

- Each 30 min of focused work I'm supposed to do per day is a separate daily. (I have several dailies marked "1st 30 min focused work", "2nd 30 min focused work", etc.). You could use one daily with a checklist for each block if you want, but I like having the increased damage of leaving them each as a separate daily. I only mark these if I was doing something important, like working on a project. Putzing around (like what I'm doing typing this right now!) doesn't count.

- Habit "extra 30 min focused work" (positive only) to reward myself for days I do extra work.

In order to make sure I do the really important stuff or stuff I've procrastinated instead of spending time on less important projects:

- Daily of "make a checklist of the 3 things I'm going to make sure I do tomorrow". I write a to-do with tomorrow's date as the title and the three things I'm going to do tomorrow as a checklist. Then when I get to work tomorrow I'll know what I've committed to doing. I get an extra reward from checking off the checklist when I've finished the 3 things. Setting the goal the night before is crucial for me or I make it too easy. Anything I've procrastinated too long is placed on the checklist for the next day.

- If I have a task with a deadline, even a soft deadline, I make that task a to-do and include the deadline.

- Daily of "make due projects into poison dailies". Every day I look at the to-dos with dates, and for anything due that day, I make a new daily with the same name. For every day that the project is overdue, I don't get to check that daily and I take damage. When I complete the project I check it off the to-do list and I delete (without checking off) the "poison" daily.