Categories
geek

habitica!

i don’t exactly feel like i’m qualified to give productivity advice, because i’m a huge procrastinator… but precisely because i’ve had to deal with this for all my life, over the years i’ve discovered a few tricks that help keep me on task and on track. i thought i’d share a few of my favourites this week. first up: habitica! habitica!

habitica is a mix of habit-tracking and to-do list app/site… but, the cool thing about it is that it’s also a role-playing game! every task, daily or good habit that you complete gives you points and rewards that can be used to advance your avatar or swap for other things.

that would be cool in itself, but i find that one of the most effective aspects of the website is that you can join a party and complete quests or battle monsters together with your friends. how do you do these things, you ask? well, by finishing your real life tasks, of course! every item that you tick off your lists hurts the monster you’re currently battling, but if you skip tasks or leave them undone, then the whole party suffers as a result… so the peer pressure to get stuff done is huge!

this mix of punishment, rewards and accountability works really well for me and so over the past year, habitica has slowly replaced my beloved things.

the website feels somewhat old school because of the pixel art, but i actually like that, as it’s less distracting than a proper “game”. and because the project is open-source and has a motivated community behind it, lots of members contribute with art, words or new features — so it feels like there’s always something new to explore or look forward to.

give it a try, if you’d like! and if you end up staying around, let me know and i’ll invite you to our group! :)

Categories
in finland stationery sundays

cool finnish stamps

aaaaaah, finland. the land of moomins, delicious cardamom rolls, sauna… and brilliant stamps! there’s the postcrossing stamp of course (one of the first to honour the project), but here are a couple others that i particularly like.

the veggies stamps are a fun issue. you pick a veggie on the left, stick it on your postcard or letter, and then decorate it with stickers from the right side — like playing mr. potato head! the combinations are endless and the result is always a different and fun stamp!

i love this stamp sheet! to celebrate the country’s 100th anniversary last year, the finnish post invited all citizens to upload their photo and then made these sheets of 10 stamps with lots of mini-portraits on them. they scrambled the photos from sheet to sheet, so they’re all different and people have to look really closely at the sheets or the mail they’ve received to find theirs! isn’t that a cool idea? our friend kati found her photo on the stamp below :)

and last but not least, this magical moment at the finlandia stamp exhibition last year, in which their mini-volunteers at the kids section helped us become part of a stamp!


that was so much fun. the kids were super nice, spoke perfect english and even gave us lollipops at the end! :D

Categories
links and ideas

shake & fold

we watched this short ted talk years ago…

…and to this day, i cannot wash my hands on a public restroom without counting the 12 apostles while vigorously shaking them! :D

Categories
analogue wednesdays

analogue wednesday #137

bits and pieces from the neighbourhood.

Categories
one second everyday

one second everyday — march 2018

march started with rain and ended in radiant sunshine! we had friends over, celebrated birthdays, tried new things, improved the “garden”… it was a nice month all around. this year has been very quiet for a change, and i appreciate that.

march was also the month in which we celebrated five years of doing “one second everyday” videos, which is amazing! i’m so happy we’ve stuck with the habit for this long, and hope to keep it going for many, many years.

though we don’t do them for the sole purpose of sharing, i like that these videos function as a metronome of our life for our friends. sometimes people i haven’t seen in a while see the videos and then reach out to comment on a specific second — even if just to remark on how much food we eat, or how much the boy’s beard has grown! and it’s so incredibly nice to hear from them. :)

but what i like the most about this series is that recording the seconds has become a ritual that forces us to stop and appreciate little moments throughout the day. like kurt vonnegut’s uncle alex, i often ask myself: “if this isn’t nice, what is?”. and it is very nice indeed.