evac's comments

It's an app where your objective is to build your ideal future selves by mastering the habits needed to bring them into reality (in the present you). For now, it's an experiment to try and make habit-building more engaging and durable since changing personal habits are difficult to do in the long run.

I plan on having a mobile version of the app too, but as I'm still only one person working on the web app full-time, it might be a while before that future mobile app comes out. In the meantime, I hope your current app works out for you!

As for the tools I used, it's currently hosted on Heroku and I built the app on the Meteor framework and MongoDB database. I chose them to let me focus primarily on the core app and design. That way, while I still had to know enough to use them, I didn't need to spend another couple months learning the deep ends of all the technology.

In so far as learning from scratch, I actually already had a basic foundation in the areas I needed to learn. In design, I grew up as an avid artist who enjoyed drawing, crafting, and doing some crappy graphic designs...at one point, I was even seriously considering becoming an architect. So picking up photoshop and building my graphic design skills weren't too bad for me.

In programming, I took an AP computer science course in high school and loved it. I unfortunately didn't continue programming afterward, so my ninja java skills are pretty non-existent by now. Nevertheless, it probably helped me see programming as something I could learn instead of this complete black box of mystery that truly non-technical people would see.

So I feel it would be unfair toward others who had none of these backgrounds to say that I truly learned everything from scratch. Beyond these basic skills though, yes, I had to start from all the itty-bitty basics of web development, such as the different languages available, figuring out what the heck is a library/plug-in/framework/jquery, using the console, how to deploy, and so many other first-time experiences that I can't list them all. I'm happy to say that these are second-nature to me by now though, so if I had to do it all again, I think I could probably build Habbit in half the time.

As for future selves, I'm making the assumption that what you want to be at 30 is different from what you want to be at 60. So even if they're both in the future, they're in different stages of your future.

And in the short-term, I'm assuming that some might focus on improving a different aspect of themselves each year, like focusing on exercise and fitness for one year and master those habits, then move on the next year to focus on finance and career, and so on. From that perspective, you'll have slightly different selves and goals in each year.

Those are just my assumptions for now though. I'll probably observe and improve the use of future selves over time based on actual usage.

It's a gamified app for building your ideal future self with habits!

It was just launched yesterday on HN so, for the first day of my first startup, I'm happy with getting over 60 users signed up already. Not sure how to tell what's good traction or not though.

If all else fails though, I'm glad that I might have a career as a children's author! But really, thanks for your kind words about the illustrations and story-telling. They mean a lot to those countless drafts of redesigns and rewrites.

I especially like your idea of publishing a book version as a companion to the web. If the app grows big enough, I may very well do that!

Thanks also for your ideas, definitely considering some of them already!

As for my business model, you pay what you feel it's worth. At the end of every month, you can review your progress and set your price. While that might not be a contemporary method, I feel that each individual will probably derive different levels of value from Habbit. :)

Though I referenced "motivation" earlier for simplicity, the underlying psychological mechanics I want to build in are much more complex than motivation. I've been researching an interesting cross-disciplinary domain between psychology and technology and have learned that it IS possible to use computer or mobile devices to motivate and shape the habits of a person. For the actual implementation of that, I'm still tweaking it around, but will hopefully be able to have some experiments out by this summer or fall. Of course, I could always try the faster route and find someone else to build the app for me, but I like programming enough that I want to achieve the self-satisfaction of building the first prototype at least.

(A semi-success story. After the past 2 years of tweaking and examining our assumptions, my sister and I have successfully designed a self-sustaining system that keeps her engaged in what she wants to learn...on a 10-hour daily schedule, she's learning 3 languages, music and other subjects without supervision (she's 15). It's more rigorous than her high school curriculum but it's amazing how lighting-speed she learns when she's in this state of flow everyday. Now hopefully what I've learned from this can be applied to many other people too.)

I don't think solitude necessarily means that you have to lock yourself away in a dark hole. I thought of solitude as still seeing the world, whether through books, online communities (like Hacker News), or observing things out in the real world, but still retaining enough private space to think and ponder without distractions.

- our fear of loss - our first impressions (which usually influence all subsequent decisions/habits) - our sense of ownership of an idea/opinion/product - our self-fulfilling expectations (something you expect to be great will usually be great) - and so much more we're usually not aware of

For more on the topic, a very readable and engaging book on behavioral-economic influences is Predictably Irrational. At his blog, he shares some of the book's interesting ideas and findings about different factors: http://danariely.com/the-books/