Behave Yourself! Slacker Rehab

Now that January's almost over, it's time for a little check-in on those big plans we made while drunk on gluten-free Dos Equis not one whole month ago.  Have you been a good badass?  No?  Well, we're not surprised, but we're here to help.  Habit RPG is pretty much the best thing that's ever happened to those of us who are long on plans, standards, and workloads but short on self-discipline.

Watch the video for a far more coherent explanation than we're able to give at this point, and get our tips after the jump!




Our friend Golf the Gamer is just bananas about this little app.  Since she started using it a few months ago, she's been making her damn bed every day, studying for the GRE consistently, and totally crushing the People's To-Do list.

Habit RPG offers three categories of shit that needs to happen in your life- habits, dailies, and to-dos.  They give you a little avatar that you can customize!  Like your spouse, the avatar wears a helmet and stuff, but there's much less backtalk and acting all butthurt because you called his FRG Leader Suck Dynasty to her face.  Maybe we're getting a little overly specific (and maybe Golf will inspire multiple Behave Yourself articles), but you get the point.  Habit RPG tricks your brain into wanting to do stuff you don't want to do.  Echo says that it's actually a way sophisticated behavior modification system informed by the newest latest in neuroscience...cognitive scholarly shit that would take about twelve hours at Khan Academy for most of us to understand.

Anyhow, we have some suggestions for better behavior, inspired by the real-life challenges of our editorial staff!

Habits

• be on time for stuff- your partner is probably obsessed with being punctual and gets his dogtags in a knot when you show up for a 11am lunch, smoking and talking on the phone
• smoking (lose points)
• talking on the phone when your partner is at the lunch table (lose points)
• go to bed at a decent hour- again, if you read this blog regularly it's a fair bet that someone in your house is up at the crack of still-dark to go do pushups or whatever.  that someone probably gets all lectury when woken up at 1.30 am by the laugh track on the Nanny that your undisciplined and yet very good sitcom taste-having ass is STILL watching
• get up at a decent hour- at least one of your friends is waiting for you at the gym, GO!
• eat something for breakfast and yes, samosas and samoas count.  (curry and GS fundraisers are a kickass combo any hour of the day!)
• practice some impulse control and avoid calling the walmart-crazed harridan in your life any name she deserves.  We're with you on this one but you know better and now you have a chance to get the recognition you deserve!

The chronic lack of adult supervision faced by those partnered with soldiers means that we have to get creative in finding ways to build our own (partially electronic) support system.  If GI Establishment were Mr. Establishment, Esq, or Establishment Bros Taco Truck or whatever, h/sh/ze would be home more frequently to say, "Holy shit you made crockpot lasagna?!  I thank you, our mutual sodium levels thank you, our budget thanks you, this is amazing you rule."   Or your friends would be all, "Hey I know it's the SOTU watch party at this bitchin' gay sports bar but cool it on the liquid stupid, you whiskey-soaked minx!"  Or your boss would be all, "Dude come to work on time because you have a steady paycheck based on the fact that you have a halfway decent job and are not coping with another PCS-induced period of being reluctantly self employed."

Maybe some of those were overly specific, but we're willing to bet that there's a whole range of life circumstances that decimate your access to a range of external motivators that get your ass in gear on a daily basis.  If that's the case, or if you're just curious, check out https://habitrpg.com/ and download the app today!