As I mentioned before, I’m testing some email based courses as an added feature here at Productivity501. I have a very limited test going on for the Procrastination Prevention course right now.
The second course I’m working on is for the Habit List. I know many people downloaded the Habit List, printed it out and promptly buried it under a pile of other papers. The course helps walk you through the different uses of the Habit List by sending you a very very short email for 10 days.
The idea of the course is to help motivate people to actually use the tool simply by keeping it on their mind for a week and a half. I’m going to do a slightly larger test for this course. You can signup with the form at the bottom of this post. (It uses Javascript, so you may not see it from a feed reader.) The form will only be available until I get enough people signed up for the test period. The last course test filled up in just a few hours, so if you want in sign up now.
Once you submit the form, you will be sent an email asking you to confirm. This is to keep people from getting signed up who really aren’t interested. Once you confirm, you’ll get the first email along with the Habit List PDF as an attachment.
Edit: We quickly ended up with well over 100 people signed up, so I’ve shut off the beta sign up until we can run the first group through the test and correct any problems we find. We should have everything ready to go live in January, so watch for an announcement.
Mark:
I’d like to subscribe, but your form seems to be crashing Safari.
@Neil – Thanks for pointing this out. I think you just discovered a bug in Safari. :) I made some changes to the form and it seems to work on Safari 3.0.4 for me. Please let me know if you still are having problems with it.
Looks like she is in working order.
Your two week check up asked for an update. After two weeks of using the chart, I stopped using it – mostly because I kept misplacing it. However, by then the process had become important and I could envision those little boxes and how good I felt checking them off – both all the positive new things and the one negative I am breaking.
Here is what I attribute to the success of the project.
1. an easy to use chart with no bells or whistles
2. the challenge of a new year (though I started before the beginning of the year.
3. it was the right time.
I noticed that a couple of the items I had placed on the list have become new habits – a bit shaky, but still habits.
I noticed how proud I was of my new habits.
Two related to housekeeping. I began them somewhat begrudgingly. I don’t like housekeeping. But, after about 5 times, I started doing them to see if I could live up to the challenge. After another week, I began to do them automatically, and I began to feel pride in my work – in other words, I wanted to do them well. Those will probably grow since when one improves one’s housekeeping, there is a tendency to see more that needs to be done. The trick is “baby steps” (see the Flylady pages)
The negative habit is still a struggle and will remain so for a while, but this is working – and after all these many years, I did not expect it to be easy. That habit is surrounded by many other positive habits that I put on the list to help me to change behavior – prayer, meditation, self-hypnosis (don’t know if I believe that one, but tried it anyway), and preparation for backsliding.
I no longer need the chart to help with the list I prepared initially. The changes are now for me and I care about them.
When I feel that things are even more ingrained, I will reprint the chart and add some new things.
This method was the right time and the right place. I tried many of the on-line methods – such as Joe’s Goals – but those did not reinforce my practice as well. I needed the paper and pen method.
Thank you for letting me try this.
I think now, you should flesh out your daily instructions you sent and maybe turn it into a more solid month long course. But, what do I know. What you did was the right idea at the right time for me.
Thanks.