goldtask

A rewards system CLI that helps you reinforce your good habits! You define how much Gold you earn and what you can spend your Gold on. You can:

• Create common tasks and assign them worth in Gold
• Create common prizes and assign them worth in Gold
• Complete tasks to earn Gold and redeem Gold for prizes
• For uncommon tasks and prizes, earn and redeem Gold for anonymous one-offs
• Fuzzy search for the common tasks and prizes that you've created
• View a dashboard of what you've done for the day and see a short list of prizes that you could buy

Inspiration

"Procrastination" has been one of my hobbies for as long as I can remember not wanting to do things. One of my favorite ways to procrastinate is by getting lost in a good video game. But while I'm playing, a terrible guilt hangs over my head---I should be doing more productive things! Given that I understand what I should be doing and that I'm aware of the consequences of delaying my to-do list, why is it that I so easily succumb to the couch instead of being productive?

Video games give you the silliest rewards. Experience points for killing a monster (pushing the X-button). Virtual gold pieces for completing a quest that took five minutes. Trophies for completing segments of the storyline. It turns out that the reward systems of video games, though superficially trivial, are addictive. The goal of Goldtask is to repurpose these silly, addictive reward systems to our advantage: to make productivity addictive.

Goldtask is the virtualization of a simple reinforcement trick that a psychologist friend of mine used to beat procrastination. At the end of every work hour that he believed was productive, the psychologist dropped a small, fixed amount of cash into a jar. At the end of a productive week, the jar would contain a sizeable sum, and the rule was this: He could spend the money in the jar frivolously on any reward he desired.

The reinforcement trick is immensely effective, but there are caveats to implementing such a plan. First, you need cash. Lots of people nowadays only carry cash for emergencies, and some people don't carry cash at all. Second, a cash reward is rewarding only if you spend it. You can't spend cash on "a day of just video games" or an "eat-anything-you-want day", but these could be suitable rewards for doing the things we don't like to do. Third, income is variant, and so is the value we give money. You might find that you are readjusting how much money you put in the jar, or you may even be annoyed by the fact that you have to use money at all.

How Goldtask Works

In Goldtask, the "money" is not real-world currency, but "Gold" that you can exchange for real-world prizes that you define. You are in control of how much Gold both tasks and prizes are worth. The idea is simple: If you hate a task, make it worth a lot of Gold compared to the tasks you are indifferent towards. For instance, I have a task called "30 minutes heavy exercise" worth 250 Gold, whose value dwarfs my not-as-despised task "1 hour work" worth 100 Gold. Then, when I have 4000 Gold, I can redeem them for a day of whatever I want to do, guilt-free!

Installation

Goldtask is a command-line application. To install Goldtask, you will need Node.js. Once you have Node installed, run

npm install -g goldtask

When you first run Goldtask, it will create a .goldrc YAML file and a .goldtask subdirectory in your home directory. This .goldtask directory is where Goldtask stores its data by default, but you can change this by setting home in the .goldrc file. For example, you could set home to a subdirectory in your Dropbox directory to sync between multiple machines.

Usage

To get started, run gold. The first run will create the setup files listed in "Installation". Then it will tell you that you have 0 Gold.

We just finished our homework! We don't have any tasks defined yet, but we can easily create one. Run gold earn to get a prompt to select a task. Select <new task> with the arrow keys (or type the words) and hit enter.

$ gold earn
? Which task did you complete? (Use arrow keys or type to search)
❯ <new task>
  <anonymous task>

Goldtask will prompt you to enter the task name and the amount of Gold the task is worth. Enter 1 hour homework for the name and 100 for the Gold. Now you should see that Goldtask has created the task and given you Gold for completing it.

$ gold earn
? Which task did you complete? <new task>
? What should be the name of the new task? 1 hour homework
? How much Gold should the new task be worth? 100
Created a new task worth 100 Gold: "1 hour homework"
You earned 100 gold for completing "1 hour homework"!

If we run gold (shorthand for gold status) again, then we should see the following:

$ gold
(For help, run `gold -h`)

You have 100 Gold.

Today's Activity
----------------

  [17:30] You earned 100 Gold from "1 hour homework".

To make the Gold worth something, we need something to spend it on. That's where prizes enter.

To create a prize and redeem Gold for it, run gold redeem. When the prompt to select a prize appears, choose <new prize>.

? You have 100 Gold. Select a prize: (Use arrow keys or type to search)
❯ <new prize>
  <anonymous prize>

For the name of the prize, type Cookie, and for the Gold, type 20. A confirmation will ask if you also want to buy the new prize. Hit enter to buy the cookie.

$ gold redeem
? You have 100 Gold. Select a prize: <new prize>
? What should be the name of the new prize? Cookie
? How much Gold should the new prize be worth? 20
Created a new prize worth 20 Gold: "Cookie"
? Buy "Cookie" for 20 Gold? Yes
You bought "Cookie". Enjoy!

You now have permission to go eat a guilt-free cookie! Now let's add a more ambitious prize.

$ gold redeem
? You have 80 Gold. Select a prize: <new prize>
? What should be the name of the new prize? Vacation to Mars
? How much Gold should the new prize be worth? 100000
Created a new prize worth 100000 Gold: "Vacation to Mars"
You do not have enough Gold to purchase "Vacation to Mars".

Now if we look at the dashboard again:

$ gold
(For help, run `gold -h`)

You have 80 Gold.

Today's Activity
----------------

  [17:30] You spent 20 Gold on "Cookie".

Suggestions
-----------

  For 20 Gold, you could buy "Cookie"!
  Earn 99920 more Gold to buy a "Vacation to Mars"!

Goldtask reminds us that there are prizes to obtain!

Data and Config Files

By default, Goldtask stores its data in a directory called .goldtask/ in your home directory. You can change this by changing the home property in the .goldrc YAML config file, also in your home directory.

Inside .goldtask/ are config.yml and data.yml. After running through the usage section, you might find it annoying that there is no way to delete the task and prizes you created (that feature is in progress). To remove them, just set both tasks and prizes in config.yml to the empty array [], or delete the appropriate rows from the list:

# config.yml
tasks: []
prizes: []