I recently saw a Notion creator selling his interactive habit tracker for $40? 💸 To me, that was an insane amount of money, and so I decided to do it myself.
This was a pretty simple, no-code embed that tracks the daily progress of your habits. This gives you the idea of 'gamifying' your life.
What exactly is gamification?
Gamification means using ideas and rules from games to solve problems that are not games, like in businesses or for social good. It's making work more enjoyable and interesting by adding activities that feel like games.
The key goals of gamification are to:
Increase engagement
Improve retention
Drive action
When gamification is done right, it can have an immense impact on behavior change. Insights shared that gamification has been shown to increase engagement and motivation, as well as improve performance and productivity.
There are various methods to add gamification to your daily routine, however, it's crucial to identify what suits you the most. A universal approach may not work for everyone as individual preferences vary. It's recommended to try different approaches to determine which one is most effective for you.
The Interactive Habit Tracker is one way you can try to gamify your life.
why you should gamify your life
As humans, we have an inherent inclination towards playing and enjoying games. Games satisfy our inherent needs for fun, competition, and social interaction. They give us a sense of purpose and challenge, which can motivate and reward us.
Here are three reasons why you should gamify your life:
🕹 improve your motivation & focus
Gamification requires you to define your goals clearly. This provides a sense of direction and purpose, which helps to increase motivation and focus.
🕹 make our progress feel tangible
As you complete tasks and reach milestones, you can track your progress and see how far you have come. This creates a sense of accomplishment and boosts motivation.
🕹 Continuously encourages us to keep going
By making tasks and activities more engaging and enjoyable, gamification can help you stay focused and motivated. It adds an element of fun to otherwise mundane tasks, making them more enjoyable to complete. Gamification often provides feedback on your progress and performance. This can help you identify areas where you need to improve and make adjustments to your approach, which can help you stay focused and motivated.
nOTION Interactive habit tracker walkthrough
Without further ado, here is a tutorial on how I created my very own Notion Interactive Habit Tracker!
1. Create a calendar view database
Shortcut: [/calendar view]
2. Add properties
A. Checkbox property for the number of habits you have
B. Formula property for separator
This property will separate your habits and progress bar in your calendar view.
To type M-Dash, click Option + Shift + Dash.
B. Formula property for progress bar
This property is to create the progress bar. Copy the equation in your formula:
round(100 * (unaryPlus(prop("Habit 1")) + unaryPlus(prop("Habit 2")) + unaryPlus(prop("Habit 3"))) / 3) / 100
Take note of the additional '(' sign for the first uniaryPlus. Divide by the number of habits you have. In this case, we have 3 habits, hence, we divide it by 3.
Show the formula as a bar with the number format as a percentage.
C. Show properties in the calendar view
Unhide your habits, separator, and progress in your calendar view.
3. Create a recurring template for daily habit
Add a Created Time property.
Create a new template.
Once you have your new template, click the 3 dots on the right, turn on repeat, and click "Every day".
Set the time at which you want your database to generate your new entry and click save. This will automatically create a new entry daily.
Next, go back to Calendar view and click the 3 dots to find the layout.
Then show the calendar by created time.
Showing the calendar by created time will not let you key in past data entries from the date you create this database.
4. Generate an interactive chart
Go to notion2charts and sign in.
Link your selected Notion dashboards to charts and create a new chart.
Next, click on the line chart type, with X-Axis as "Created time" and Y-Axis as "Progress".
Once you've customized your graph press copy and embed it on your dashboard.
Ta-da! Your very one interactive habit tracker.
Gamifying your life through Notion's interactive habit tracker can be a powerful tool for achieving success. By turning your daily activities into a game and tracking your progress through a visual interface, you can increase motivation and focus, create a sense of achievement, and improve overall productivity. Notion's habit tracker offers a customizable and intuitive platform that allows you to create a personalized gamified experience tailored to your needs and goals. With a little creativity and persistence, you can turn even the most mundane tasks into an engaging and rewarding experience and achieve success in all aspects of your life.