Shaking your goal setting up
Productivity tools are all the rage right now as people are attempting to stick to their New Year’s resolutions and start the year off right by planning ahead. Typically, productivity tools, especially goal setting tools, tend to lose their luster over time. You have to enjoy using them for them to serve their purpose. While push notifications may help remind you to check your goals, they do not really motivate you to complete them. A new goal setting tool, Habitica has an idea of how to shake things up.
Your goals become a game
Habitica is a free habit building and productivity app that treats your real life like a game. It does this by turning all your tasks (habits, dailies, and to-dos) into (literal) little monsters you have to conquer. The better you are at this, the more progress you make in the game. If you slip up in life, your character starts backsliding in the game.
Challenge your friends
While you can play Habitica solo, it’s much more enjoyable when you start collaborating, competing and holding one another accountable. The most effective part of any self-improvement program is accountability and this is especially true in Habitica. The “challenges” section lets you compete with friends and strangers; whoever does the best at the end of a challenge wins special prizes.
Habitica isn’t all about rewards though, true to life it has a system of “stochastic rewarding,” meaning is accommodates all reinforcement styles: positive, negative, predictable, and random; making the game interesting and the user more likely to stick to their tasks.
Immediate results
There is an iPhone and Android app available and an API for integrating into Chrome Extension. If you use the Chrome Extension you’ll lose points for browsing unproductive websites, while gaining points for browsing productive ones. Habitica plays into the “instant gratification” culture by handing out immediate results based on how you’ve handled your day’s tasks. This keeps people engaged with their to-do lists, and accountable for their results, be they positive or negative.
If you’re looking for a fresh way to stay on top of your to-do lists and increase your productivity in a fun, engaging way, Habitica is definitely for you.
