A frequent question that I get is “how on earth do you manage your time,” with all the freelance projects and personal projects I do. “It just seems impossible to have that much going on, but still have time to spend time with friends,” is another common statement that I get sometimes.
Truth is, I’ve always been kind of proficient when it comes to managing my time and keeping on track with goals and deadlines. But it’s not all me I promise! I always have my bullet journal or planner next to me, it has become my favourite tangible productivity tool. But aside from that, I have recently started used one of my favourite apps again!
Today I want to talk about an amazing App that has been keeping me in check lately, called Habitica! Formerly known as HabitRPG, this app has taken my productivity to a whole new level.
Here are the Coles Notes:
- Start a character: There are all kinds of ways you can customize your character, but if you don’t have time, just a basic character avatar will do! This is my current character!
- List your habits and dailies: The app will come with a few examples of tasks that you can use, but if you’re anything like me, you’ll want to just clear all those out and start fresh with your daily habits to track and what not. I personally stretch these a bit and track a bunch of smaller things. (The more you check something off, the more coins you get in a day!) These features really do help with starting to build new habits, or break bad ones! Dailies are good for everyday tasks that you don’t want to keep putting in your to do section! Then just add any other to do list tasks as they come along. I sit down every morning with my BUJO and draft out a game plan from there, but now instead of wasting a page in my notebook, I map out all of my small tasks on this app and check them off as I go. More coins for me!
- Set your rewards, use the coins you receive to buy new items or quests: Obviously there needs to be some kind of compensation for being so amazing, so everytime you do something on your lists you get coins. These coins can be used to buy armor, items that bump up your abilities and other neat things. There are bosses and battles once you get into a party, and these items will totally help with that. A feature that I really like is that you can set it up to give yourself tangible rewards too, like episodes of game of thrones and what not.
- Join a party, find some guilds or start a challenge: A great thing to do when you first get started is to find a community of like minded people to quest with. Quests happen within a Party. In order to get into a Party, you need to request or get invited to one, or just start your own, you can find a chat in the tavern full of people looking for members or looking to join a party. You can only be in one party at a time, but you can be in multiple guilds! Guilds are kind of similar to a party but they are more specified interest wise (At least that’s what I have noticed!) There are guilds for people who like bullet journals, guilds for people who like Gilmore girls, guilds for people that reward themselves with anime! It’s all here, and it’s all amazing!
- Collect all pets and mounts: Also, while you complete tasks you can find random items. There is no way of controlling it, but these add that addictive collecting aspect that us app-users love. Basically, you can find eggs, potions, and food. Once you have an egg and a potion you can combine them to get a pet. For example, Bear Cub Egg + Cotton Candy Potion = Cotton Candy Bear Cub!There is a huge list of combinations that you need to try to complete! You can feed your pets to train them and boost their stats, but they only eat certain foods. IE. Pink pets can only eat pink food, and brown pets can only eat brown food… and every other colour is the same. It’s simple, but like I said, so addictive. Since the HabitRPG days they have added so many new pets, and I’m completely invested in getting them all.
Overall, I love this app and it really does help make everyday tasks a little more fun. At first, I was worried that it might make productivity a bit distracting, but after I explored a bit, joined my party and settled down, it really is something that I can’t see myself living without now. It is a free app, there is the option to purchase in game currency which, to be honest, I definitely see myself doing in the future (the developers of this app are so amazing so I would love to support them), but you can play without it for sure! Check it out and let me know what you think!
