Alright, I searched the internet for any type of software that will help me organise myself and found a few. Today I’m going to tell you about Habitica and how it changed my life. This is not a sponsored or paid article. This is for all those struggling to get their things together and stay consistent. Originally HabitRPG started as an online task management application on back in 2013 on Kickstarter where it raised $41,191 for the development of the software. Nowadays I’m impressed by Habitica and normally I’m a person who’s hard to be impressed. I swear this thing sucked me in its universe and now I’m hooked which means I stick to my plans until I achieve results. It keeps me on track, it’s a great way to stay motivated and it turned my life into a gaming experience.
So how it works? Make it a game.
There is a role-playing element and it’s a big component of Habitica. A role-playing game is one in which you recognise yourself with your character. You start your journey with a character who represents you and your life progress, take control of their personality which you design yourself and let it develope while levelling them up. When you complete tasks and progress further, you’ll earn experience points and improve your character. There are many in-game items, skins, pets that will help you stay motivated and if that’s not enough you can implement your own reward system.
Habits, daily plans, life goals and entertainment!
It has all three of these. What more do you need?
Your dailies help you organise your day and create easy to follow routines with ordered lists which you can check one by one. Once you’re done with them you’ll be able to focus on what’s left and track your daily progress.
The “To-Dos” section is more like “Life Goals”. Here you would write down the most important goals you have. I personally like to include some “side quests” in-between without a deadline whenever a new idea comes to my mind. The completion of every goal is bringинг you closer to your personal life success.
Habits in Habitica are long-term objectives used to alter the behaviours of a person. These “Habits” can either be put to “positive” or “negative,” or both. If you frequently finish a positive habit commonly, it’ll green. That’ll help you see if you are sticking to the plan and doing well. On the other side, if you frequently repeat an adverse habit, it will begin turning red and causing increased health harm. But don’t worry when your character obtains sufficient points of experience, they’ll gain a level that restores their health bar back to a hundred per cent.
Reward system
You can decide how difficult a task is, based on your personal preferences. The harder the task the more life points you’ll lose when you fail but the more gold and XP you’ll gain when you succeed. You should be careful. It’s important to put realistic goals and start small to get a better understanding of how things work. Once your character loses all his life points and the bar becomes empty, you are going to lose a level and all your gold. This is heavy punishment so you better be consistent. You’re also having a chance of receiving an item every time you completed a task successfully. There is an option for setting your own real-life rewards or chose to use the same in-game system, whatever motivates you more.
PROS:
- Browser-based (Access it on any platform – windows, Linux, Android, MAC)
- Easy to understand (User-friendly interface blah-blah)
- Open Source
Truly open source. You can find the source code on Github. You can suggest changes to the community, add your own art and even fork the project. If you are paranoid like me and you don’t want to share your personal information you can register with an anonymous email and character name or just host an instance of the game on your personal server staying independent. - Has its own API
Depending on your needs allows you to create your custom tools and applications to monitor and manage Habitica. - Multiplayer
Invite your friends or find new online and go on multiple quests together, fight monsters and earn XP. - Statistics
The software helps you track your strong and weak sides and building habits. It’s one thing to believe you know what you struggle with but different when you can see it visually represented with your eyes.
CONS:
- Limited features – It has limited functionality compared to other task management applications but is way more exciting.
- Sync between devices is not perfect
- Javascript sometimes does weird things when moving a task up and down the list
Become Organised, Consistent, Successful. Do it in just a week
Yes, it’s possible. I’m using Habitica from two weeks and I already feel a big improvement in my life. Before that, I had a problem with being organised and consistent but this is one of the tools that changed that for me. Of course, a single app is not enough to make you stay on the course if you are not having the will to but at least it will show you how you treat yourself and do you care enough for your health, work, family and so on. If you feel demotivated or you need inspiration please check out my other article on that topic. It’s not some entrepreneurs motivation speech it’s the key to achieve things even when you lost your inspiration. An easy mind hack is to know that If you can do it for a week you can do it for a month. Ready to try it out by yourself?
Go to their website: Habitica.com
Conclusion
Some personal tweaks and settings definitely helped me with Habitica but maybe I’ll share them with you in another article or as an update to this one if you are interested. Please tell me in the comments below what’s your favourite application to organise your life or do you prefer to write down everything on paper.