Don’t Break the Chain is a fun and simple productivity tool for Windows Phone 7. Choose a goal and track your progress every day. After a few days you’ll start building up an impressive history of success – from that point forward you just have to keep at it. Choose something that you can track everyday for best results.
For example: if your goal is to lose weight and start eating better maybe you just want to cut out the fast food so ‘avoid fast food’ would be a great daily goal… for every day that you skip the fries and burger gve yourself a big healthy checkmark. Or maybe you want to become a famous actor like William Shatner – you could use ‘Improvise a scene’ or ‘pose wildly’ as your daily goals. You could even go the Jusin Bieber route and ‘sing a lovely song’ each day – NOTE: the app makes no claims in regards to your ability to attract a fan base the size of Bieber’s.
The app is relatively simple and straightforward… choose a goal, enter it into the app’s settings so that it can help you keep on track and then open it up every day and click the I Done Good button to record your success… sweet!
Jerry Seinfeld
He said the way to be a better comic was to create better jokes and the way to create better jokes was to write every day. But his advice was better than that. He had a gem of a leverage technique he used on himself and you can use it to motivate yourself—even when you don’t feel like it.
He revealed a unique calendar system he uses to pressure himself to write. Here’s how it works.
He told me to get a big wall calendar that has a whole year on one page and hang it on a prominent wall. The next step was to get a big red magic marker.
He said for each day that I do my task of writing, I get to put a big red X over that day. “After a few days you’ll have a chain. Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You’ll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break the chain.”
“Don’t break the chain,” he said again for emphasis.
That’s right – this is the famous motivational method purportedly used by Jerry Seinfeld. Now I don’t know Jerry Seinfeld personally and I doubt he uses this app but just think – you could become rich and famous if you use this app… that sounds pretty cool, eh!
Future Enhancements
At the moment the app is fairly basic in its capabilities. It lets you choose your goal and record your success. You can’t keep track of multiple goals and you can’t track your success in any way other than the calendar view. Don’t worry – I’m going to be enhancing the app (Hm, maybe that should be my daily goal!). I’ve got Live Tile support coming so that you can pin the app to your WP7 home screen and it’ll change icons/colours to let you know how successful or negligent you’ve been. I’m also in the beginning stages of planning out an achievements system so that you can let the world know how awesome you are. Oh, and possibly a customization feature allowing you to choose the icon to something appropriate for your goal such as a no-smoking sign for those quitting smoking or a pen for those who need to write more or an old-school Smurf (not from that horrible new movie that trades in cute for crass and adorable for fart jokes) for those who wish to smile every day. Although that would mean missing out on the super-happy green check mark guy app icon that’s there now – he’s amazingly happy isn’t he!
Feedback
Please try out the app and let me know your thoughts. Love it; hate it; can’t figure it out; love the app icon… toss me a note. Oh, and if you get a chance load up your phone and rate my app.. the more reviews the better since it will encourage more people to try this thing out thereby motivating me more to kick in additional features. :)
