Do you use HeroMode to set goals and track your progress? If so, HeroMode's newly released v6.4 might bring you some extra joy. We have given Adventure Milestones a refreshed design in v6.4, which is now available on iOS, web, and chrome extension. Adventure Milestones allow you to mark meaningful moments and track your progress towards long-term objectives. Whether you're learning a new language, writing a book, or launching a product, milestones help you break down your goals and provide boosts of motivation along the way.
The v6 release train keeps on rolling! Today HeroMode v6.4 is released on iOS, web, and Chrome extension. This release is all about Adventure Milestones!
Adventure Milestones
We first introduced Adventure Milestones in HeroMode v2. Since then, this often undiscovered feature hasn't changed much.
However, we hear from power users how useful milestones are for them. Milestones mark meaningful moments of your adventure, and they are a great way to track your progress and celebrate your achievements. We also use milestones to mark key moments of HeroMode development!
So, finally, in HeroMode v6.4, we gave Adventure Milestones an UI upgrade.
Above: A new look for Adventure Milestones in HeroMode v6.4.
Milestones, Goal Setting, Task Management, and Motivation
An Adventure is already broken down into many quests, each is like a task or a to-do item. So what are milestones?
We get this question a lot, and it's an excellent one that made us think more on the psychology of goal setting and motivation.
In HeroMode, any long-term objective can be set up as an Adventure. For example, you can set up an Adventure to "Learn a new language", "Write a book", or "Launch a Product".
Every long-term objective is built on a series of smaller tasks. For example, to "Learn a new language", you might need to learn a few vocabularies each day. To "Write a book", you might need to do some background research, develop an outline, and commit to writing periodically. To "Launch a Product", you might need to develop a prototype, test it with users, and iterate on the design.
You can control your actions. You can set up quests to make steady progress. And as you complete them, the points and coins you earn will give you little boosts of motivation along the way.
However, along the adventure, there are often circumstances that are out of your control. More importantly, the desired outcome is not guaranteed, even if you can meaninfully increase its odds by putting in effort. For example, you might not be able to find a publisher for your book, or the changing wind of the market forces you to pivot your product.
This is the paradox of goal setting: You can control your actions, but more often than not, the outcome is heavily influenced by factors outside of your control. This reality can be extremely discouraging. You can put in hard work, but through no fault of your own, the outcome might not be what you want. As the saying goes, there's wisdom in knowing what you can and cannot change.
So how do we stay motivated in the face of uncertainty? HeroMode is designed to reward effort. We want to motivate you to put in the work, and celebrate every little task you complete. But we also want to have a way of tracking goals along an adventure, even if some of them are not totally under your control.
This is where milestones come in. Milestones are a way to track meaningful events along an adventure. They are not tasks, but rather much bigger signs from the outside world recognizing that you are making progress. For example, if you are learning a new language, a milestone might be "have a conversation with a native speaker for more than 10 minutes". If you are writing a book, a huge milestone might be "sign a book deal with a publisher".
The combined effect we wish to achieve with HeroMode is to motivate you to consistently put in work against your goals, but not get discouraged when there's unexpected setbacks. After all, an Adventure is not complete without some twists and turns!
So if you have a long-term goal, consider setting up some milestones along the adventure. They are an additional way to track your progress and celebrate your achievements! We hope you will enjoy the new design!
September 13, 2023 Update
Writing this blog two days ago actually gave us inspirations on how to make milestones UI even simpler. So in a soon-to-be-released v6.5, you will find an even more streamlined UI for Adventure milestones!
