iPhone App Spotlight: Virtues

Some historical figures are overhyped.  Hey, their fame is bigger than their game - that’s all.  But I think Ben Franklin deserves his place in the constellation of awesome and his face on the C-Note.  I won’t rehash all of his many accomplishments because that would take days (and besides Wikipedia can do it for me).  An interesting aspect to Ben, the person, as opposed to just the historical figure, is that he developed a fascinating system of self-improvement revolving around what he felt to be the key virtues a person should have.  Ben was the first to admit he had plenty of issues when it came to virtuous living.  But he wanted to better himself and came up with a way to do it.

Ben enumerated and defined thirteen virtues to focus on and work towards.  Rather than try to master them all at once and become Super Virtue-Man in a week, Ben challenged himself to monitor and improve one virtue at a time.  He even designed a notebook with the whole deal: columns and red ink and black spots.  It really sounds like something you would read about in a modern organizational or personal improvement program today.  You can read more about it, straight from Big Ben himself, right here.

I had read about this whole system before ever seeing the app I’m discussing.  Not that I actually read a history book or anything.  I’m pretty sure I first came across it a few years ago through this Lifehacker post.  It sounded like a simple idea but an awesome one…and I even resolved to try it.  My modification of the system was to write one word each week that represented a goal on the magnetic notepad stuck to my fridge.  Well, it didn’t really work out and was forgotten about in less than a week.  Maybe I should have written a virtuous or helpful word instead of “Everquest.”  Anyway, when I came across Virtues, from Equilibrium Enterprises, in the App Store, the whole experience came flooding back and I decided maybe technology would increase my Virtue Level to 744993, allowing me to defeat Goku.

The app turned out to be simple, easy to use, and straight-forward.  When you launch, after seeing Ben Franklin’s face to fire you up into a virtue frenzy, you are presented with a list of the famed thirteen virtues.  You scroll through, tap one and then read Ben’s original description (which is pretty cool).  You can also press the select random button to have your iPhone pick one, kind of like a virtue slot machine. So let’s say I picked Humility, because I’m so awesome.  You set your start date and then your target score.  Now, the target score is the rating you are shooting for in your practice of that virtue.  You can raise or lower it in increments of .5.  Trust me…start low.  You then tap Save and Activate and fireworks shoot off, your iPhone plays a samba and Ben Franklin appears on the screen dancing.  Okay, so it just puts a check mark next to that virtue on the virtue screen.  But the important thing is…now the virtue challenge can begin!

You can set the amount of time you want to work on that particular virtue in the settings menu.  I agree with the designers that a week is definitely the best choice.  You can pick a day or a month instead, or just set up a custom time period.  You can also choose to work on multiple virtues simultaneously, but I think it’s best to stick to one at a time - unless you’re the super cool king of virtues or something.  Once you’re set, it’s time to start tracking.

Now here’s the thing.  Your iPhone can’t magically monitor your every thought and action and decide you were a 3.5 in Justice on Tuesday.  You have to rate yourself.  Of course, you can cheat, but as your third grade teacher said, “You’re only cheating yourself!”  And you might want to work on Sincerity first.  It may sound hard to rate yourself, but with some practice, you really feel like you’re doing an accurate and fair job of self-scoring.  What I really love is the fact that you can add a comment each day as well.  This sounds so simple but I never thought of it and it really helps me.  That way you can jot a few notes about why you screwed up and went to town on the breakfast buffet instead of displaying Temperance.  I think doing so makes it a more active procedure and helps with the self-analysis.

And hey, if you like playing games, you’ll surely love to check out the Overview page to watch how your score improves or sinks each day and how it compares to your target score.  You can customize this page to vary the start and end date of the report and to choose which (or all) virtues to display if you’re doing multiple virtues (show off).  It’s cool that you can look at historical data and see if you’re making progress and getting closer to your target score.  And those days when you steal candy from babies look bad on the chart.  It’s perfectly nice, easy to interpret and clear to view.  But I do think they could have given you a few other options for charting and graphing.

As much as I love Ben, I’m not totally sure list of virtues is perfect for me.  Most are great and I really love his awesome descriptions.  But I feel like Temperance can be a “sub-virtue” of Moderation rather then it’s own deal.  And I don’t really need Cleanliness when I can shoehorn that in under Industry.  Plus…Chastity?  Come on now - this is Aggro we’re talking about.

But the nice thing is, you’re not limited to Ben’s virtues.  You can change his descriptions of each virtue.  Even better, you can create your own custom virtues, like leveling, chillaxing or appreciation (of blog posts).  This is a handy tool that lets you expand the use of the app and make it work for your particular situation.

There is no question in my mind that using this app properly and sticking with it will improve your life.  It makes you much more aware of your thoughts, more willing to examine yourself and more skilled at seeing your actions clearly.  It can truly motivate you to better yourself.  Even better, as Ben knew, the more you practice at it, the easier it will become and the larger the strides you can make.

But I’m sure you noticed the key phrase in that paragraph: “sticking with it.”  That’s the hard part.  You stick with it and you’ll get serious value out of it.  You don’t and it’s a waste of cash and space on your iPhone.  To be honest, I kept at it for about three days after I bought it and then promptly forgot about it for at least a week.  But I’ve been back in the saddle for a little over a week now.  I’m pretty sure I have the real key to keeping at it…habit.  You just have to make it something you do automatically every day.  You have to make checking the app and tracking your progress a habitual thing.  Once you do this, it’s cake.  I mean - do you ever forget to shower, shave, brush your teeth, set your alarm, etc.?  I find one way to make it a habit is to “link” it to another habit.  So every time I set my iPhone alarm before I go to sleep, I make sure to check Virtues.  Once this becomes a habit, I think I can stick with it.

The app also does help motivate you.  You paid money for it, after all, and there’s always the motivation to make use of something you paid for.  The overview and target scores make things more fun and also help with motivation.  There’s another nice feature that really helps call your attention to the app and jog your memory.  You can turn on the Badge feature in the settings.  This causes a number in a red circle corresponding to the number of virtues you are tracking to appear on the upper right corner of the icon for the app.  It’s kinda like the little number that appears on the Mail icon when you have emails.  So it catches your eye as you’re scrolling through your app pages and you’re already conditioned to tapping icons with badges on them, like the Phone or SMS icon.

It’s really hard to actually rate or review an app like this.  I have no real complaints or issues with anything about it and it’s certainly suitable to accomplish it’s purpose.  But how do I know what it will do for you?  It can be a total waste.  It can help you improve yourself or make life better in a small way.  And I guess it’s possible it could totally change your life.  Who knows?  It all depends on the person.  I like it and I’m glad I got it.  I don’t expect any major changes and it’s certainly possible I’ll totally forget about it again and then feel mildly guilty every time I page past it while looking for the Rogue Touch icon.  And even when I feel like it’s helping sometimes, I think - man, I kinda could have coded this thing myself because it’s so simple.  But then again, I never would have.  And sometimes I think I could just do this in a notebook.  But, once again, I never would.  Having it in electronic form and right there with you on your iPhone wherever you go is certainly worth it for me.  I feel like even if I don’t succeed with it, it’s definitely worth a try.

When I bought the app, it was $1.99 and I felt okay about that.  I’m happy with the app and happy with my purchase. It’s currently $2.99 and I think that’s pushing the price envelope, even though I personally would buy it again at that price if I didn’t have it.  You just have to think about how sure you are about sticking with it and how you feel about the system.  It’s so hard to put a price tag on something so different like this.  Even though I think it’s a solid app based on a great system with potential to actually improve your life…it just doesn’t quite feel like a $2.99 app to me.  Of course, that’s unless you buy it and become so virtuous that you save the world and win a Nobel Prize.  If that happens, the $2.99 was probably worth it.