I wanted to tell you about a really fun tool that has helped me tremendously in the self-development department. I have been using it since a couple of months, and so far I regularly do oil-pulling and drink water Kefir every morning, floss and do a mini-clean of the home every night, have gotten much more punctual, put away clean laundry on the same day, and remember to facercise and wear perfume pretty often.
The tool I used for this is Habitrpg which is a website and Android/ iOs app which lets you gamify your life. In short, you keep your avatar alive and battle monsters by ticking off to-dos and completing your daily tasks. The app is really simple and at the same time really customisable, and above all it's addictive and fun.
The tool I used for this is Habitrpg which is a website and Android/ iOs app which lets you gamify your life. In short, you keep your avatar alive and battle monsters by ticking off to-dos and completing your daily tasks. The app is really simple and at the same time really customisable, and above all it's addictive and fun.
HabitRPG works really well if you need instant gratification to be good: this app gives you gold to buy in-game rewards for your avatar (weapons! snowballs! potions!), or real-life rewards for you (my current exchange rate is 10 gold pieces = 30 mins fun activity or 1€ for fun shopping). You also get mana, pets. You also see streaks of your habits, you can see how many days in a row you have managed to complete a certain daily and track your progress with a nifty graph.
Things are more fun with friends and in Habitrpg you can join a part of other HabitRPG users with whom you go on quests. Knowing that my team member might end up dead if I get too lazy keeps me accountable!
I love how HabitRPG divides things that have to be done into dailies, habits and tasks. This was an "aha" moment for me and I now always divide my stuff into these categories. Dailies are things that have to be done everyday. Habits are things that you want to do more often, but not necessarily each and every day. To-dos are one-time tasks.
As dailies and habits become automatic and effortless over the weeks, I tweak them and slowly add a new thing that I'd like to work on. It's really gratifying!
As dailies and habits become automatic and effortless over the weeks, I tweak them and slowly add a new thing that I'd like to work on. It's really gratifying!
My tips for HabitRPG:
If you are just starting out, you might find these tips useful:
* Start with just one or two dailies and slowly build up more. If you aren't managing to tick-off most dailies on most days, temporarily degrade the less-important dailies to habits.
* Dailies can be greyed for several purposes, which is an extremely useful hack.
* Dailies, habits and todos marked as "difficult" bring you more points. Use that option to set priorities -- not only hard and time-taking tasks should be marked "difficult" but also anything that is urgent or is important in the bigger scheme of things.
* Give yourself a day off if you are sick, or doing something awesome. To do that, check into the inn for the day and you will not lose points for not checking off dailies. And, more importantly, you deserve a guilt-free day off.
* Put a fun / self-care thing on your dailies. It's important!
* Define your tasks clearly. For eg. "30 minutes biking" is concrete, "take the bike" is vague. If you bike for an hour, you can click the habit twice.
* To unclutter a too long list, combine habits. I put in "15 minutes uncluttering a space / repairing / mending" as one habit.
* If you tend to stay up later than midnight (that is the default time when HabitRPG resets for the next day), adjust your chron to the time you usually go to bed.
* The Habitrpg Wikia has well-written explanations and tutorials!
Would you try HabitRPG or do you use it already? Do you have other methods of developing good habits and keeping yourself accountable? Do share!
