Habitica: A Game for Chores

Good habits are worth being fanatical about. – John Irving

 

Aside from my 3 major goals this year, I wanted to get used to better habits. For this reason, I decided to use Habitica again. I started using it with some friends last year, but I got too preoccupied when my brother got hospitalized.

You’re probably wondering what Habitica is.

Habitica is a game to help you improve real life habits. It “gamifies” your life by turning all your tasks (Habits, Dailies, and To-Dos) into little monsters you have to conquer. The better you are at this, the more you progress in the game. (Source)

On a browser, it looks like this:

 

You can set your tasks/chores into different categories:

Habits – Doing a positive (+) habit adds points, and negative (-) habits make you lose points.

Dailies – You can set tasks to do daily (or at set intervals like every other day or nth day). If you fail to check off the task, you lose some points.

To-Dos – You can put one-time tasks/chores here like buying a gift for your mother.

Rewards – When you complete a task, you earn coins which you can use to buy these rewards for yourself. 

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If you need to take some time off the daily routine, you can rest in the Tavern. When your character is here, any tasks that are undone will not affect your stats.

 

I put sketching as a Habit (as I’m not sure I could do it daily yet). However, I put in Savings in the Dailies category. This is because I vow to save a small amount per day, that is aside from the bi-weekly savings I put aside from my salary.

This would help me build habits and a routine in a fun way.

If you’re into gaming, this would be the perfect program/app for you. I use it to create a positive mindset to finish chores. You can get motivated with getting those points, health, and coins.

You get all these perks like eggs to hatch into the pets and mounts as you accomplish more tasks. Quests/Challenges can also be done with friends, so you have accountability. When you go on a quest, you should do all your Dailies for a period of time to defeat the Monster (of chores).

My character is named “TruthSeeker“. I’m mounted on a Royal Purple Gryphon and I have a pet red dragon. Also, I have a sleeping black cat on my head.  🙂

 

 

You can download the Habitica app to use it conveniently from your phone:

Android
Iphone

P.S. This isn’t an ad. I just like the app, and thought I would share it. If this helps someone else to have fun doing their chores.. that would be great. 🙂

What about you? Have you taken some steps to move forward with your goals for this year? Do you use an app to help you with your tasks? Share it with me in the comments.