Introducing My New Habit-Building monday.com App
monday.com just wrapped up their contest for developers celebrating the launch of their new app store. I built an app for it, and I’m so excited to share it with you!
Don’t Break the Chain
Before I show you my new app, I have to provide a little background first…
There are two things I’m most proud of in my career: going from a beginner to a software engineer without a computer science degree and becoming an author without any prior experience writing.
Both journey’s were hard, but I used a trick I’d learned years earlier to make them happen.
The trick is called Don’t Break the Chain, and Jerry Seinfeld popularized it. He came up with it when he was crafting his first stand-up comedy routine. First, he hung a calendar up in his room. Then, at the end of each day, if he wrote a joke, he would give himself a green check mark (actually it was a red x, but I like green checkmarks better) on the calendar for that day. That’s it. That is the entire trick, and it is incredibly powerful.
Once you start a chain (two or more green checkmarks in a row), you will not want to break it. Two green check marks in a row become five green checkmarks in a row. Then ten. Twenty. The longer your streak gets, the harder it will be for you to break it. Imagine it is the end of the month, and you are looking at your calendar. You have twenty-nine green checkmarks. You only need one more for a perfect month. There is no way you won’t accomplish your task that day. Or as Jerry Seinfeld describes it,
“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.”
My monday.com App
Don’t Break the Chain has been so beneficial to my career that when monday.com asked me to work with them on their contest, I knew right away what I wanted to build: an app that lets you easily incorporate Don’t Break the Chain into monday.com’s platform.
Here is how it works. On monday.com, you create boards to keep track of your projects.
When you install my monday app, you can select a board and create habits.
Then, each day the app will repopulate those habits onto the board you picked.
When you mark all of your habits complete, you get a green checkmark on your calendar for the day.
The app keeps track of your longest streak, your total number of perfect days, the total number of habits you’ve complete, and the average habits you complete per day.
Final Thoughts
Participating in monday.com’s contest was a fantastic experience.
I had so much fun working on this app!
If you participated in the contest, send me a DM and let me know what you built, I would love to see your app!
And if you missed out, don’t worry because monday told me they are considering doing another contest, so make sure to follow me on Instagram for updates!
Check out my app and stay tuned for the next apps challenge!
Finally, make sure to sign up for monday so you can try my app and start building new habits!
About Cory Althoff
Cory Althoff is a software engineer and writer. He is the author of The Self-Taught Programmer, which Book Authority named as one of the best software books of all-time. Learn more.
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