i don’t exactly feel like i’m qualified to give productivity advice, because i’m a huge procrastinator… but precisely because i’ve had to deal with this for all my life, over the years i’ve discovered a few tricks that help keep me on task and on track. i thought i’d share a few of my favourites this week. first up: habitica! 
habitica is a mix of habit-tracking and to-do list app/site… but, the cool thing about it is that it’s also a role-playing game! every task, daily or good habit that you complete gives you points and rewards that can be used to advance your avatar or swap for other things.
that would be cool in itself, but i find that one of the most effective aspects of the website is that you can join a party and complete quests or battle monsters together with your friends. how do you do these things, you ask? well, by finishing your real life tasks, of course! every item that you tick off your lists hurts the monster you’re currently battling, but if you skip tasks or leave them undone, then the whole party suffers as a result… so the peer pressure to get stuff done is huge!
this mix of punishment, rewards and accountability works really well for me and so over the past year, habitica has slowly replaced my beloved things.
the website feels somewhat old school because of the pixel art, but i actually like that, as it’s less distracting than a proper “game”. and because the project is open-source and has a motivated community behind it, lots of members contribute with art, words or new features — so it feels like there’s always something new to explore or look forward to.
give it a try, if you’d like! and if you end up staying around, let me know and i’ll invite you to our group! :)
2 replies on “habitica!”
Hello, fellow procrastinator :) As you can see, I am currently reading your blog instead of working :P
Thank you for this tip, I will have a look at the website. I already can see that it also helps with the little annoying things; I am very bad at following up on tiny but tedious activities such as taking medicine, brushing teeth, watering plants, etc. I hate them in particular because there is no reward at all, no satisfaction from crossing them on a to-do list because they are not worth listing, and once it’s done you only know you’ll have to do it again the next day. That game could help, I’ll have to give it a try.
I’m looking forward to the rest of your tricks too! This year I have just started a quest to try and be more productive and better organized so as not to feel constantly overwhelmed with all the stuff to do. I have started a simple bullet journal and it seems to work for me so far, it helps keeping an eye on all the parallel projects and not let anything be forgotten until the last moment. Have you heard of this? It doesn’t sufficiently help with procrastination, though, so I’m looking forward to hear of your techniques.
hey Nathalie! i think you’ll like it — lots of little rewards for those mini-tasks that you do everyday! :D
i have a paper calendar/diary, mostly for ideas that pop into my head or other lists, but i have yet to give a bullet journal a try. i hear good things about them though!