I spent 9 months building a gamification extension. Then I looked at my own tasks and realized: They still felt boring.
One small change turned that around. Now I almost can’t help but do them.
There’s a saying:
“A problem well stated is a problem half solved.”
That’s especially true for me as a developer. If I can’t put a problem into words, I probably don’t understand it well enough yet. But once I describe it clearly, a big part of the work is already done.
So when I add a task, it makes sense to give it a clear title and description before I start. Then there’s “only” the implementation left.
How do I make that part tempting?
One answer is the Endowed Progress Effect. When people feel they’ve already made progress toward a goal, they’re more motivated to finish it.
That led to the idea of the hexagon.
As a developer, I already write clear titles and descriptions for my tasks. One day I noticed that by the time I’d done that, I’d already made progress. If that saying was right, I was already halfway there. But my task still looked untouched.
I wanted that first step to show. A progress bar felt too big for a small task.
That’s how I got to the hexagon. Unlike a checkbox, it can show progress before a task is done:
- Its small sections show the steps you’ve completed.
- Each section can appear at different opacity levels to show even smaller steps.
Write a title and description, and part of it fills in. Come back later, and you can see that you’ve already started. Your description reminds you exactly what you set out to solve.
Then, when the work is done, I click the hexagon. It fills in completely. The task closes. A win that feels complete.
That’s what my tasks were missing. Once I could see the progress I’d already made, I wanted to finish the rest. Even the ones I’d pushed into my backlog and left there.
Test it for yourself
I’ve built a VS Code extension where you can try out this system.
It’s called "Cortex - Working Memory for Developers".
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