Paperless Productivity - Habitica

 

After taking a little bit of a break from productivity apps I moved onto a slightly more fun way of getting your tasks done, and that's by using Habitica.  In a nutshell, this app is basically a way of gamifying your life.  Where you build yourself an avatar and complete tasks and habits to level up your character and unlock in-game features.  However, if I'm being honest I was just there for the pets you can get.  

As with all the other apps, I was just using the free version on my phone.  However, you can also use the app on your computer and I'm assuming the two link up through your account.  There is an option to subscribe as well for additional features, which is actually quite cheap and, if I used this all the time I would think about it.

Once you've downloaded the app you register your account and then create your avatar.  Then it's time to go.

The main set up of the app is broken into four pages (shown at the bottom) made up of Habits, Dailies, To Do's, and Rewards.  Each page comes with some little examples to start you off with and which you can edit and change if you want to.  

The first page, Habits, seems to be for habits you would like to develop, but which aren't necessarily actions you need to do on a daily basis.  Adding a habit is pretty easy to do.

Click on the cross at the bottom on the page, add your name for the habit and any notes you think you'll need.  If it's a habit you want to get rewarded for doing have it as positive only, to be rewarded for not doing it negative only, and if you want it to be something you want to get rewarded for doing but have the extra penalisation if you don't do it(such as not eating process sugar) then have it as both positive and negative. 

There's then an option to set how difficult you think the habit will be, as well as adding how often you want to reset the streak, and add a tag if you're wanting to attach the habit to a larger goal, like getting healthy.  If you don't complete these habits regularly they begin to decay in colour, you lose streaks and end up being penalised.

The next page is the Dailies.  This is for daily habits and you can only click these to say you've completed them. I'm not entirely sure why this additional page is necessary when you already have Habits, however you can add much more information to this habit and they seem to have more consequences to completing or not.  Setting them up is pretty similar as before.

Click on the cross, add the name of the daily, any notes you want to add, and how difficult you think it is going to be to do.  The biggest difference with the dailies it that you don't add a positive or negative and you can break down the habit with checklists.

You can schedule this habit, put how often you want to repeat it, adjust the number of times you've completed it (streaks), and also tag this habit to a specific goal.

There's also a possibility of adding a reminder. This didn't appear on my screen saver, as with other productivity apps, but it does appear on my phone's notification bar.  As with the habits, completing or forgetting these dailies has positive or negative impacts on your Avatar.

The To do's were the main page for me.  Setting up your tasks are pretty much the same as adding Dailies.  

Click on the cross.  Then add the name of the task, any notes you think will be useful, how difficult you think the task will be, when it needs to be done by, a reminder, and then tag it to a larger goal / task.  

As with the Dailies, you can also break the to do down into smaller tasks using the checklist, and I found this a pretty useful way of getting them done.  As with the others, the to do's will begin to decay in colour if you don't complete them in the time you've scheduled.

One thing I found with this page is that the tasks are ordered in the order you add them, with the newest at the top.  This wasn't particularly helpful for how I wanted to use this app, but it's easy enough to change this by clicking on the three vertical lines at the top right and then filtering them by Scheduled.  You can also use this to find all the to do's you have for one goal by clicking on the Tags.

Each Habit, Dailies, and To Do's you complete gets you rewards in the form of food, potions (including hatching potions for your pets), and coins which you can then spend on equipment, or you can make up a reward yourself and decide how many coins this reward will cost you.

The menu allows you to look at your skills and achievements, buy some more items and quests in the shops, look at what equipment you own, and purchase some gems which will then allow you to buy additional items. 

There's also an option to do some socialising with other people using Habitica and build quest parties if that's what you're into.

The Tavern is probably the most useful part if you need to take a break from all those tasks and habits.  By checking into the Inn these are then frozen and then have no negative impact on your Avatar.

I didn't really use these other options other than the Pets and Mounts section.  Here you can hatch your pet, feed it up to become a mount, and equip your Avatar with it.  I'm guessing these come in handy when you're completing a quest, but I just enjoy hatching and feeding them.  Right now I have a bear as a mount and a wolf as a pet, and as far as I'm concerned my Avatar is living her best life.

I have to admit that, even though I'm not a gamer in any way, I really liked this app.  I don't think it necessarily added any more of an incentive for me to actual complete my to do's and habits, but it did add a pleasant element of fun to it.  It also didn't use as much storage on my phone as I thought it was going to, which is always good.  The only thing that didn't quite work for me was the fact that my habits and to-do's are on different pages and I much prefer having them all in one place so I can see everything I need to work on that day.  However, I would still recommend this app and I think I'll put it with TickTick and Teux Deux as my top apps so far.

I had originally planned on testing Evernote next, but as I already have and use OneNote it actually seemed a little bit pointless as you would use both digital notebooks in a similar way.  So instead I'm going to try something a little simpler but cuter, and that's Cute Note.  Should be fun.