Habitica : Gamified Motivation App

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

App Review: Forest

Forest is an app which claims to help improve focus and time management. Users are rewarded for leaving the Forest app open and not looking at any other apps on their phone for a set amount of time. A successful session will result in a tree growing in the users' virtual forest. More trees progressively appear as the user accumulates more successful sessions. This provides a visual reward for concentrating. Theoretically, it will help the user to concentrate on their work, study or other activity and be less distracted by temptation to look at their phone. As individual users reach certain levels, the creators of the app make a donation to Trees for the Future, an organisation that plants (real!) trees.

To begin a session, you select a time period, anywhere between 10 minutes and 2 hours, in 5-minute increments. When you tap on 'Plant', a tree or shrub is planted in your virtual forest. Over the time period, the tree slowly grows. If you look at your phone during the time period, messages such as "stop looking at at your phone!" appear. If you switch to another app, then the tree dies, and a sad, twiggy dead tree appears in your forest. If you successfully reach the end of the time period without looking at any other apps, a fully grown tree appears in your forest. You also earn in-game coins for each session, which can be spent on different kinds of trees.

The longer the session, the more elaborate the tree is. For sessions up to 20 minutes, the plant is a small shrub. From 25 minutes onwards, it's a tree, and the tree is larger and bushier the longer the duration is. This provides an incentive to concentrate for longer periods. After the session is over, you can view your forest with all the shrubs and trees you have earned. There seems to be a new forest for each week.

The app also includes an ambient sound setting. There is one included sound option: Rain in Forest. Other options can be unlocked with in-game coins. This function would be great for people who need ambient sound to help concentrate, or for meditation.

For the statistics nerd, there are plenty of charts to see how many sessions you've done, and how much time you've spent focussing over days, weeks and months. Each session can also have a label added to it, such as study, work, sport, etc. There are a set of existing labels to get you started, but they can be completely customised. This allows you to keep a record of how much time you've spent doing different activities. This function would be very handy for those who want to keep track for a weekly or monthly goal.

Pluses:
* The app is very flexible and can be used for many different purposes, from studying to meditation. I like to use it for timed, 10-minute drawing sessions.
* The idea of growing a forest is very appealing, and a good incentive for using the app. I prefer to use it rather than the standard timer function on my phone for things like tidying. It serves as an incentive to do the activity in the first place, not just to keep focussing on it once you've started.
* The design and colour scheme of the app fits the forest theme very well. The trees and shrubs are cute and there are quite a few to choose from once unlocked with in-game coins. Little details like being able to see the tree that will grow before the session starts, and seeing the growth in progress if I check the app during the session, help keep my motivation up.
* The ambient sound (I have only listened to 'Rain in Forest' so far) sounds rich and calming in my headphones. It doesn't have that repetitive feeling that you get from some sound tracks which seem to have a very short loop time.
* Many aspects are customisable, such as the labels for sessions, and the messages that come up if you look at the app during a session. This makes it more fun and motivational -- if, for example, you have a specific phrase that resonates with you, you can add it to the messages section.
* The creators haven't been stingy with the in-game coins -- they accumulate quite fast, though of course you can always purchase them with real-life money if you're impatient.
* Knowing that your efforts will contribute to growing a real-life tree is very rewarding.
* Lots of customisable charts satisfy the statistics nerd in me.
* It's possible to link your account to friends, but I haven't explored this option so far.

Minuses:
* The function to select the session length is a little awkward. The dial looks good and reminds me of old-style ipods, but it's a little awkward to select the time I want.
* You have to create an account if you want to contribute to planting a real-life tree. (All sharing settings are set to 'off' by default though, so the creators seem to be aware of safety and privacy.)
* The default forest view is the 'Today' forest (sessions I've done that day), whereas I'd prefer to see the 'This Week' forest by default. There doesn't seem to be a way to change this.
* The app only prevents you from looking at other apps on your phone, it doesn't prevent you from becoming distracted in other ways (staring out the window, talking to someone, etc). To be fair, I don't know how any app could do that!

The minuses are just niggling details though, and are far outweighed by the pluses. Forest is a lot of fun and has been a great help in motivating me to do various different activities. It's been compared to the Pomodoro (25-minute interval) timer technique, but I think it's more than just a timer. As I mentioned above, I've found it actually motivates me to do activities that I might otherwise have procrastinated on, like tidying and meditation. The prospect of being able to grow a tree while I do these things makes them much more appealing. It's even helped me to be on time for work, as it stops me from checking my emails and playing games as I'm getting ready.

Forest was AU$2.99 from the Apple App Store and is also available on Android.