Retro self-improvement app may just help form good habits

A few days ago, DESIGNTAXI published an interesting little post, about a "hipster app" - aka a sheet of paper with writing on it - that purports to help improve yourself in just 30 days.

Now before your Woo-meter goes into the red, please consider this thing just for a few minutes.


It's a small booklet that you can print onto a single page and fold yourself using the pocket mod folding technique.  And it's free, here.

What this thing lets you do is try to develop a positive habit.  Too many people think that all habits are bad.  Well, if you're Charles Manson, or Jason Bourne, they probably are (but for different reasons).  For the rest of us, habits can be very useful things.  You want to make a habit of brushing your teeth.  You want to make a habit of checking your blind spot when you're driving.  Why?  Because they are (a) good things that (b) you don't really need to think a lot about to do.  By forming good habits, you will naturally tend to take care of yourself better, work better, play better - all without the cognitive load of having to consciously manage those tasks.

We tend to form bad habits without really knowing we're doing it.  That means we don't really know how to form a habit - it just happens.  So, when you want to form a good habit... What do you do?

That's where the "Hipster Habit App" comes in.  It's easy to use - ridiculously easy to carry around with you - and it provides a template for you to form pretty much any habit you want.

I haven't tried it myself, but I must admit it looks good.  It's not too saccharine, not too geeky, and not too hard.  Of course you can't change yourself - you are who you are - but you can adapt.  You can tweak yourself - hack yourself, if you prefer - without worrying about changing your base code.  You can't change it anyways, so get over it.  The Hipster Habit App is an interesting, low-overhead way to do that.  It seems based on sound psychology (as far as I can tell), so except for the usual Your Mileage Will Vary disclaimer, I think this could actually work.