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Melissa Sandfort's avatar

In Internal Family Systems, firefighters are the parts of us that LOVE immediate feedback, action and games.

The more I can create a game out of absolutely anything, the more I can get my firefighter parts on board with healthy habits.

Vitamin D? D minder app = goal, 1 million IU of D from the sun every summer.

Sleep? Oura ring daily feedback.

I have to-do apps on my phone but they don’t fully work… maybe not tactile enough.

I have index cards — I’m going to try this!!!

Here’s to upping my gamification of daily tasks!

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VirginiaKath's avatar

I LOVE the index card idea! Lately just crossing things off my to do list has not been the motivation as it had been in the past, but it is probably because I'm not breaking things down into small enough tasks. Thank you for the reminder.

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Carol Szymanski's avatar

When I was in college, I chose to write a thesis. I could have taken an extra class. I had never written a thesis and there was no manual. A friend of a friend introduced me to someone who was also writing a thesis and he told me about index cards. Life changing. I went from completely frozen and zero progress to writing bite sized quotes and references on the index cards that turned into paragraphs then finally into a finished 68-page thesis. Index cards can be adapted to many uses. Thank you for reminding me how index cards are life saving devices.

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Chris Guillebeau's avatar

Nice work! Sounds like you were ahead of me on the index card magic. 🪄

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Marbles's avatar

I started playing Stardew Valley shortly after my last hospitalization. This is a pretty good explanation as to why!

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Chris Guillebeau's avatar

😀

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Renayle Fink's avatar

This is so cool! I always knew it was important to break things down into tasks, but I didn't think about using index cards and tearing them up when I'm done. I love visual cues, and I'm definitely going to put this to use.

I also wanna now download and play Stardew Valley because it sounds like so much fun!

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Chris Guillebeau's avatar

Try it out (both things, haha) and let me know how it goes!

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Sarah Glasco's avatar

I love this and pretty use this system myself as well. I do post-it notes. I learned about scrum a million years ago when I was a new professor and my undiagnosed ADHD brain found it really useful for organizing and breaking down tasks for researching, writing and submitting stuff for publication. It is all about micro tasks, too. One thing I need to adopt from your game is tearing up the post it note upon completion. lol I have a back log of post its, like probably 100 in my bag right now and I eventually end up going through them and crumpling them up one by one and feeling proud of myself for actually doing all the things while simultaneously amused by the things that are months old that I didn’t do haha. The immediate gratification of shredding the task to celebrate your micro accomplishment seems slid to me! Implementing… NOW! 🤘oh and this was not intended to be a shameless plug, I swear on my parents’ graves but you just made me remember that episode 10 of the ADHD Peri Punks podcast that just came out Monday is on what we are calling time dysmorphia and we talked about our single task post-its etc. in that episode. Might be right up your alley given your new book. 💥🩵

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Victoria Aronoff's avatar

This looks great! I'm gonna try it! But I have a question about the 20 minute session--is that just a baseline and you can do more if you feel like it? Is there a recommended cap on how long to keep at it?

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Meg Ahern's avatar

This is great! Also: apps don't have the physical component, but I absolutely love the Finch app for a compassion-based gamification of to-dos and self-care. Taking care of an adorable baby birb was what finally got me to floss regularly. Or there's Habitica for a more retro D&D-style gamification that can also be used on a browser.

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