Gamifying my morning routine--is there an iPad app for that?

March 16, 2013 7:43 AM

I have to be at work earlier than usual for the foreseeable future, and I am not much of a morning person. Still, I have had considerable success by breaking my routine down and gamifying it by giving myself points for hitting different markers (e.g. 2 points for getting up without hitting the snooze button, 1 point for hitting it only once, 1 point for heading out the door with the dogs at a certain time, 1 point for arriving at the office on time, 2 points for 5 minutes early, 5 points for more than 5 minutes, etc.). I then give myself little rewards for certain numbers of points (e.g. two days' worth of on-time arrivals equals a latte at my favourite coffee place). I think it would be fun to be able to track this on my iPad, and am looking for something that will allow me to re-use the same checklists and will count points as items are completed. I've looked at the various checklist and "to-do" apps, but none of them seem to fit the bill, especially the point-tracking aspect. Any ideas?
posted by rpfields to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

Best answer: I've been using Habit RPG based on a recommendation from Ask. You may be able to tweak it to suit your purposes.
posted by hilatron at 7:52 AM on March 16, 2013 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Epic Quest lets you give yourself different amounts of points for different tasks, and keeps track of them as you battle your enemies (or get to work on time). You could set up tasks like "Get to work on time" "Get to work one minute early" "Get to work two minutes early" and give them different point values, then each day pick the appropriate one.
posted by The corpse in the library at 8:12 AM on March 16, 2013 [2 favorites]

Best answer: You could probably hack the goals in Health Month to work for you.

It's got the fun point system and custom goals you could use to not hit the snooze button and so forth.
posted by mibo at 8:33 AM on March 16, 2013 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Thanks everybody, these are very much appreciated! I just ordered a Fitbit, so the Health Month site might be very helpful to me on some other goals as well. I will try all of these out over the next couple of weeks and am sure one of them will work for me.

I'm amazed at what's out their on the 'net that I would not have known about--if anyone else has more recommendations, please keep 'em coming.
posted by rpfields at 4:10 AM on March 17, 2013

Beeminder might work for you.
posted by 6thsense at 4:35 AM on March 17, 2013 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Just following up--all of these are great suggestions, but so far it seems that the Fitbit Premium App will actually come closest to doing the trick, especially since the Bluetooth connection means I don't have to be logged onto the net to connect. Paying for the premium version means I can create my own goals and give myself badges, which satisfies my inner child.

Thanks to everybody for all your suggestions--they are all great except for the portability factor.
posted by rpfields at 1:10 PM on March 25, 2013