Sometimes it seems like life is 90% upkeep and waiting. Washing the dishes, doing laundry, taking the bus, shopping for groceries, packing lunches, watering the plants, responding to emails, going to the gym, taking out the garbage, feeding the cat, cooking dinner, and on and on and on...
Sometimes it feels like we're going through life on autopilot, and it can often feel like we don't even have time to live and experience our own lives.
What if there were a tool that could tease meaning out of those seemingly trivial tasks, something that could prod us back into awareness, foster appreciation, and encourage us to be more deliberate and present in our lives?
A Behavioral Cut-Up, a concept based on William S. Bourrough's literary cutups (in which he literally cut apart and rearranged texts to create new texts), is a deliberate twist imposed on some aspect of one's habits in an attempt to make the familiar unfamilar, thus ripping that person awake and out of the tedious monotony of day-to-day life.
The Behavioral Cut-App is an app that seeks to stir us to life again.
30% behavioral-cut-up generator, 30% to-do list, and 30% gamification, this app seeks to help actualize the user.
##Features:
- Google calendar API integration with to-do list aspect
- Users can contribute and up/downvote cut-ups
- Randomized cut-up suggestions (user can choose level of difficulty)
- Users can level-up based on difficulty and quantity of cutups completed
- Social networking aspect optional with account creation
- Reminders
- Recurring Events
##Examples:
- 'Do the Dishes' becomes 'Compose a dish-doing song while doing dishes. Utensils are your instruments' (easy)
- 'Grocery Shopping' becomes 'Don't buy anything that comes in a package' (easy-to-medium)
- 'Take out the garbage' becomes 'Carry all of your garbage around with you for a week' (medium difficulty)
- 'Pack lunch' becomes 'dumpster dive your lunch' (medium-to-difficult)
- 'Sleep' becomes 'sleep outside' (difficult)
While there are many to-do list apps in the world, and some that add gamification, there are zero that attempt to make the to-do item itself more appealing.
This app is certainly not for everybody, but for those creative spirits who want to make life more interesting and possibly encounter like-minded indiduals, this is the app for them.
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The Hippie/Punk/Artist-turned-Yuppie: Bored and lamenting buried ideals, this person is stressed, overworked, and bored of the Friday game nights and Sunday brunches. Shopping at Home Depot has become monotonous, and the thrill of buying things is disappating. What happened to that rebellious spirit who didn't want to live by anybody's rules, who wanted to do something revolutionary? Life has become hollow, and when this person thinks about everything they gave up for a nice house and a car, they wonder if it isn't too late to salvage some of that adventurousness. On the other hand, what are they going to do? Quit their six-figure job and join a commune? It would be nice if there were just some way to make life more exciting and fulfilling again. The Behavioral Cut-App may be just the thing to stir up conversation around the water cooler. This person would probably use the 'easy' level.
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The College Freshman: Newly liberated from the bonds of parenthood and highschool, this person is experiencing freedom and all the possibilities the world has to offer. It's exciting, it's inspiring, and it's confusing. So many directions to take! So many people to be! So many new responsibilities that seem incredibly difficult to keep track of! This person wants nothing more that to push personal and social boundaries, and see what they're really capable of, and what life can really be, and having an organizational life-tool would help a lot. An app that unfolds life-approaches and possibilities, while providing a management system is exactly what this person is looking for. This person would probably use the 'medium' level.
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The Artist/Punk/Hippie/Commune-Member: This person doesn't need any help trying to live life to the fullest, but they appreciate the creative community. A tool that connects them to other like-minded individuals, helps this sloppy and disorganized right-brainer to remember (and want to) to do the dishes, and encourages them to make the world a more interesting place is quite appealing tot them. This person would probably use the 'difficult' level.