November 2011
1 post
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Happy Thanksgiving from Habit Labs!
At Habit Labs, we’re grateful for:
All of you awesome Health Month people!
A chance to keep building things that we think will help solve the problem of sustainable health-improvement for everyone. We promise to have something to show you before the end of the year!
Our team (Jen, Buster, Scott, Amelia, Alex, and Adam), our family, and our friends who help us on a daily basis.
The...
October 2011
1 post
August 2011
4 posts
Let us be your Health Month buddy!
Update: Thank you to everyone who applied! We’ve randomly selected our batch for this month but really really enjoyed reading all of the applications and are hoping to open it up to more of you in the next month or so!
Is this your first time playing Health Month? Are you skeptical that you’ll be able to make any sustainable health changes with it? Are you a multi-month veteran, but...
Come and get it! Private rules and more custom...
Happy Monday, friendly Health Monthers! Are you ready for September? To help, we’re launching a couple great new features today that I think you’ll like.
For a long time, the most requested feature on our UserVoice Forum has been the lack of more than one ‘custom’ rule.
Until now, we’ve allowed 1 custom DO rule and 1 custom DON’T rule. We’ve always...
A couple small features to streamline your Health...
I’ve spent the last bit of time refactoring Health Month behind the scenes. You shouldn’t see too many big changes on the site, but here are a couple of small features I couldn’t help but squeeze into this update:
You will now only be asked to spin the Wild Wheel if you are up to date on your turns. In other words, if you’re 2 days behind, or a week behind, you...
Company news!
Hello!
Today we’re happy to announce that we’re merging Health Month, Inc with Jen McCabe’s Contagion Health and now we’re called Habit Labs! Learn more here (secret prize inside if you click through).
All this means for you Health Month users is that we’re now able to start growing the team (we’ve hired our first 2 people and are looking for more as we...
May 2011
1 post
Update! →
A lot is happening, though I haven’t said much about it here yet.
Here are a few bits of Enjoymentland news:
I’m no longer a 1-person company! (real announcement coming soon)
I sold Locavore…
April 2011
1 post
1 tag
Should the 4sq badges stay or should they go?
Weigh in on this controversial topic here.
March 2011
1 post
2 tags
Health Month hearts Fitbit
I’ve been a fan of the stylish Fitbit since before it was born, stalking the blog where the founders talked about building a little gadget from scratch, and I believe I pre-ordered one well over a year before it was available.
Their little pedometer is actually fun to carry around, and whenever I show it to someone they’re like “Oooh, I want one!” Who knows how many...
February 2011
5 posts
1 tag
Woah! 11 new rules!
I haven’t added any new rules recently, so I thought I’d go through the Uservoice Forums and the list of popular “custom rules” to find those that keep popping up.
As people start planning their March rules, I’ve added 11 new rules for you to pick from:
Wake up before X o’clock
Walk your dog!
Do yoga
Stretch
Do your household chores
Walk at least X steps...
Health Month Recommended Behaviors, version 1 →
I worked on the Personalization team at Amazon from 2000-2004, and more specifically on things like “Personalized Recommendations”, “Customers who bought this also bought…”, “The Page You Made” (a…
1 tag
New feature: import your rules to new months with...
New feature! See that yellow box on the “Choose your rules” page? It will now be available for anyone who’s played more than one month, and will help you easily import previous rules to the next month, improving them at the same time.
Here’s an example of how it will look:
The design’s a little rough at the moment, but the basic functionality is there. I am...
Excerpts from New Yorker article, Social Animal
Just read a slightly tangential article in the New Yorker all about happiness, identity, education, the subconscious, and many things in between. Here are a few of my favorite lines.
On happiness:
Joining a group that meets just once a month produces the same increase in happiness as doubling your income. According to research by Daniel Kahneman, Alan B. Krueger, and others, the daily...
Most health solutions aren’t medical, they’re...
It’s becoming more obvious to people that our friends and family have a huge impact not only on our current health, but our future health changes. From the ever-wise Jay Parkinson:
This is a significant paradigm shift. The companies that realize the future of health is about life and happiness rather than sickness, death, and medical solutions are the ones that will lead in the next...
January 2011
9 posts
February... the real start of the year
Some new things for February!
1. If you’re a team-coordinator, you can now invite all of the members from your previous month to play again this month (and I’ll make sure to remind current team leaders to do this before the end of every month).
2. We’ve got a bunch of new “official bloggers” for the month (and a few who’ve decided to continue on from January)....
Calling all bloggers
I’ve really enjoyed reading about Health Month through the eyes of this month’s official bloggers. Have you?
I’m putting a call out to anyone who’s interested in blogging their health month in February. The only requirements are that you’ve got a blog (or can get one), plan on playing Health Month, and are willing to publicly blog at least once or twice a week...
Your Nutritionista: To Carb or Not to Carb? →
nutritionista:
Ah, that is the question. The ETERNAL question of dieters. For today’s More than Mary post, I tackle the issue from all angles.
As some of you may know, I don’t think grains are great. I don’t think humans were meant to eat as many grains as we currently consume, and Idefinitely don’t…
Interesting break down of some pros and cons of health.
Sorry for the early reminders for February!
I host Health Month on Heroku, which is generally a fantastic service, but in an attempt to diagnose a server problem, they have now run my “once a month” email reminder of a new game twice! I’ve tried to get them to stop, and I have now disabled the script, so many many apologies for the extra confusion in your inbox.
1 tag
Check in with your spirit animal
Many people noticed that the weigh-ins had been taken off the site about a week ago. It was just because I wanted to improve the way it worked, and didn’t want to have to migrate data and such mid-month.
Here’s what I’ve come up with. You can specify what you want to track (weight, body fat, energy levels, stress levels, and mood). From there, you also mention how often...
Your average behavior, and your notes
I’m excited to be starting the new year with some more new big features.
I was on a roll yesterday and decided to knock out another feature that I’ve been wanting to build for a while. At the top of your profile page, you’ll see two new things as of this morning:
On average…
We make goals, and we try to hit them, but how do we actually DO on them? What’s our...
New features: Pop Quizzes! Public reviews!
Pop Quizzes!
Okay, the Wild Wheel had been annoying me for a while. It almost never chose a rule for me that was relevant. Lots of other people have let me know that they felt similarly. And yet, I didn’t want to just kill the feature because I think it’s important to add some randomness and serendipity into the game, otherwise it just becomes too boring and predictable.
I took...
Official health month bloggers!
Added a new feature for the new year. During January, 9 health month users from previous months have volunteered to take their game a step further and blog their health month publicly.
You can find them at the top of the right column on the Game Wall.
I’m excited for this development because I think the social element of the game is crucial, and as some of us start becoming more...
@ddukes: 2011 - New Me Resolution →
ddukes:
New Year’s resolutions are SO tired and generally don’t survive past mid Feb. (just try finding a free elliptical trainer at the gym before Valentine’s day, the following week, not so hard). So this year I’ve decided to make a ‘New Me’ resolution. The idea isn’t just to make a change that will…
December 2010
3 posts
My January 2011 Health Month plan →
Every year for the past 5 or so years my friends and I have adopted a rather strict set of rules to follow every January, and we called it Health Month. Here’s the old Facebook page and a rather…
1 tag
In the LA Times!
Check out this cool article about Health Month about how social games are slowly learning about how to become tools for positive motivation. I had a great time talking with this reporter, and I’m excited to see that the article opens with us and includes a quote from our conversation. It’s our first major piece of “real world” press!
“Internet game-playing as a...
My Ignite talk slides: Brains vs. Badges
I gave a 5 minute talk last night to 500+ people in Seattle about brains versus badges, or your desires versus their business models. They apparently videod the whole thing so I’ll post that once it’s available. But in the meantime here are my semi-understandable slides from the talk:
Ignite 12: Brains vs. Badges
November 2010
8 posts
Happy Thanksgiving!
Two new features for Thanksgiving weekend.
If you’re playing in the current game, you can now send fruit and even actual life points to people directly from their profile page. Eventually there will be a lot more things to give and share with each other.
You can now see everyone you sponsored on your profile page, and also see who someone has been sponsored by.
Of course, there’s...
1 tag
Game Wall showing notes by your friends
I am now testing a new version of the game wall that doesn’t filter by team or bracket by default, but rather by the people you’re following (requires you to be logged in). I think it works a lot better, but will require people to find a few people to follow.
Let me know what you all think!
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What products help you during health month?
I’ve started thinking about health gadgets. What are your favorite health iPhone apps, wifi scales, pedometer keychains, sleep bracelets, etc?
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Health Month and the Happiness Project →
Though Gretchen Ruben’s project is focused primarily on happiness, and Health Month is focused primarily on health, I see a lot of similarities in our approach to positive behavior (and perspective) change. I too was highly inspired by Benjamin Franklin’s 13 virtues project, and really think that paying attention to something is the best way to change it. And the best way to pay...
hauntedcastle.org: Reward Moments →
wcrtr:
Throughout the process of developing a new activity/fitness game, I’ve been thinking a lot about rewards mechanics and specifically those related to game systems of any variety. Personally, I’m not a huge fan of the way that most badging / achievement systems are designed, but when done right it…
Well said.
1 tag
Help an LA Times reporter
A reporter from the LA Times is looking for people who have found Health Month to be helpful in producing some change in your health. If anyone is willing to talk to him (he’s really nice, and seems to get what the site’s all about), email me at buster@healthmonth.com as soon as possible (his deadline is in a couple days).
Thanks!
PS. I’m back! And going through the big...
1 tag
November!
October is over, long live October!
And welcome to all the new players in November.
Eventually, I want to run some numbers and provide some stats and interview the winners of each bracket, and do all kinds of other interesting analysis on what seemed to work best, what didn’t work, etc. Unfortunately, I’m still working on how to make all of this happen while doing everything else...
October 2010
22 posts
Motivation Playdeck #3: Purpose →
AKA Relatedness. The sense of doing something that contributes to an idea that’s bigger than yourself. In a weird way, this is how we get our sense of “belonging” and being related to the…
Health Month’s kindred spirit: Social Workout →
Yesterday I learned about a site that I feel is sort of a kindred spirit to Health Month. It’s called Social Workout, is based in NYC, and seems to be interested in a lot of the same ideas that…
Health Month’s friends →
I’ve been thinking a ton about the space that Health Month is in, as I contemplate the pros and cons of various ways of spinning it up into a business.
As far as I can tell, there’s nobody doing…
1 tag
New rules! Better rules!
Next month, the following new rules are now available:
Study (something interesting)
Go to bed before (you specify the time)
Spend (however many minutes you want) minutes of quality time with your kids
Stop using the computer after (you specify the time)
Volunteer (however many hours) a week
Save $(however much you want) every day
No gluten
As you can tell by the parentheses in...
1 tag
A fun interview →
thehappymedium:
Buster Benson—or Buster McLeod, or Erik Benson, depending on how long you’ve known him, I suppose—works independently under his company Enjoymentland, creating apps that help improve lives. Benson isn’t the typical designer I’ve spoken with in the past, but his brand of game (the kind that…
Travis asked all of the right questions in this interview. I love it when people...
Motivation Playdeck #2: Competence -> Mastery →
The Self-Determination Theory uses the word competence, and Daniel Pink uses the word mastery in his book, Drive. Different states of the same journey. And really, the motivational element here…
1 tag
Excerpt from Drive: 4 tips for getting (and...
Set your own goals. Don’t accept standardized, cookie-cutter exercise plan. Create one that’s tailored to your needs and fitness level. (You can work with a professional on this, but you make the final calls.) Equally important, set the right kinds of goals. Ample research in behavioral science shows that people who seek to lose weight for extrinsic reasons — to slim down for a...
New blog series on motivation as it relates to... →
I’ve gotten feedback from two people I highly admire (Gary Wolf and Jesse Schell) that perhaps Health Month might be focused too much on extrinsic rewards, and that I should read Punished…
Motivation Playdeck #1: Autonomy →
Autonomy is the first element of the Intrinsic Reward Trinity outlined in Dan Pink’s book, Drive (autonomy, mastery, and purpose). It is the ability to make choices about your life, the ability…
Conrad Schulman, creator of Life Allowance, is a... →
I didn’t want to do this, but since neither Conrad Schulman nor Facebook will be reasonable and give me a fair hearing, I figured I might as well go public with it.
A week ago, on October 3th, I…
1 tag
Create a Health Month team for November and get...
I raced to finish the teams feature in time for people to try it out before the beginning of the October game. As of right now, we’ve got 189 teams playing, and I think that now that the point system is all straightened out (more on that below) that I will start recommending teams to everyone who plays. I think, ultimately, teams will make the game a whole lot more rewarding and effective...
Me vs Health Month (and why fitness functions are... →
Now that I’m starting to think about the business side of Health Month, I get to wade into the wonderful world of what success means to me, and what it means for Health Month, the business. Noah…
1 tag
10 new features for 10.10.10
Get texts! You can now add your phone number to your account, and get text message notifications when your teammates post a new note. Much more exciting stuff around this coming soon, thanks to Twilio’s very cool service. For a while, there’s a secret prize for associating your phone number with your account.
Follow and be followed! You can follow people! People can follow you!...
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My first popularity contest
I usually don’t like popularity contests, but I’m trying to not feel as bad about self-promotion as my introvert instincts normally have me be.
That, and popularity contests are a lot cheaper than paid advertisements, right?, which are my other avenue for getting the word out about Health Month.
And, anyway, isn’t Health Month something that people should know about? ...
1 tag
Today's sponsored "secret to happiness"
These studies need to all be taken with a grain of salt, but I always like a study that confirms my own suspicions, scientifically accurate or not.
Six hours sleep a night, four shopping sprees a month, two holidays a year among “secrets to happiness” - Daily Mail Online, UK
In particular:
SECRETS OF A HAPPY LIFE
Uninterrupted sleep 6hrs 15mins
Commute to work ...
Do you use Tumblr, Facebook, or Twitter?
If so, you should follow these new Health Month-specific accounts:
@healthmonth - Twitter account used for announcing new features, and posting interesting health and game-related links that I find around town.
healthmonth.tumblr.com - This blog.
facebook.com/healthmonth - The Facebook page that you should “like”.
RSS - for those who use an RSS reader.