A few weeks ago I started using Habitica. In the creators' words, it's a "free habit and productivity app that treats your real life like a game". The app has been around for several years, and I have to admit, it's not new to me either. I tried using it a few years ago and found it too complicated and confusing. But for some reason I decided to give it another go, persisted in trying to understand it, and now use it daily.
Anyone familiar with roleplaying games will understand how the Habitica game works. You have a character with a certain amount experience points. Every time you complete a task, these increase slightly, and over time you level up. When you level up, you receive stat points that you can allocate to the character's four stats. You also earn coins that you can use to buy outfits, decorations and weapons. There are four different character classes to choose from, with different skillsets. (I'm a Rogue!) Players can join challenges or play in a party to defeat monsters. I haven't personally joined a party myself, but I am doing some challenges which are fun. You can also collect pets! Currently I have my favourite one with me -- my pink dragon!
The core of Habitica is the tasks, and there are 3 different kinds which work in different ways. As I mentioned earlier, I did find it a bit confusing at first, but I came to understand it fairly quickly. The 3 different kinds of tasks are:
* Dailies -- tasks that you repeat every day, week, month, year, etc. These might be 'do the dishes', 'take my tablets', 'clean the windows', 'buy a planner'. These tasks disappear once you tick them off, but reappear on the appropriate day.
* To-Dos -- one-off tasks. Once it's done, you get the kudos, and it disappears forever.
* Habits -- these are things that you'd like to get into the habit of doing. They are repeated but don't have regular intervals. You might do them several times a day, or only once or twice a week. Examples might be 'read for 1/2 hour', 'work on art', or 'weed the garden'.
The three kinds of tasks are in different sections, and you need to flick back and forth to access them. I would say that's the only drawback of Habitica that I've found, but once I understood the purpose of the different types of tasks, it was a lot easier to handle. I've been using Habitica daily for over almost a month, and have found advantages that the other organising systems I've used don't have. The tag system is invaluable: I've set up tags such as 'morning', 'evening', 'computer' and 'garden', so I can filter tasks according to my situation at any particular time. This is something I couldn't do with other systems I've used, and I've come to find it incredibly helpful. In fact, Habitica has completely replaced Trello and my whiteboard as my way of organising my day.
The game is quite forgiving in many ways. At the beginning of each day, all of the previous day's not-done tasks are displayed, giving you the chance to tick off any that you did but forgot to update in the app. It also has a built-in motivator: every day that a task isn't done, it turns a deeper red colour, and when you finally do those, you get extra experience and coins. Ones that you've diligently been doing daily turn green and then a beautiful turquoise colour. Of course, it's up to the player's sense of honesty to faithfully record what they did or neglected to do! I don't know about you, but I always feel like I didn't really earn something if I cheated to get it.
I could go on about Habitica's features (like the group challenges and supportive community) but I'll leave it for now! All that remains is to tick off the "Blog Post" task. :D
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