I love a good to do list. I make a lot of them. I have them in my journal and my planner and on my phone.
But my absolute best place to put a to do list to ensure that I will complete it is on Habitica.
Why?
It gamifies the whole list! And my ADHD brain loves a good game!
What is Habitica?
Habitica is a website. And it’s an app you can install on your phone. You can use the website or the app or both — they sync together. That’s great for anyone that needs to have access to their to do lists all the time (now if I could get it on my Galaxy smart watch it would be perfect!).
Habitica is all about getting things done and building habits — and rewards!
Now, I get that some people don’t need rewards for doing the things that you need to do. But many of us do. Especially people with ADHD. It’s not the actually receiving of the reward that I need. It’s the anticipation of the reward. It’s knowing that the more I get done, the more I’ll get in return.
I’ll tell you more about the reward system in a bit.
There are three main sections in Habitica to help you do more, be more productive, and even learn more!
The Habits section is where you want to put things that you want to make a point of doing every day. For example, you want to drink more water — add a habit for “drink a glass of water” (like mine above). Every time you drink a glass of water, you can click the plus button and you get credit for it.
Dailies are for things you absolutely must do each day. I like to keep this minimal because it can be a lot of pressure to have too many things you have to do. I have four dailies — take morning meds, take evening meds, test blood sugar (and record), and don’t smoke. These are my musts for every day.
Finally, there’s your To Do list. I love this.
Personally, I like to add lots of things to it. It motivates the hell out of me to check those things off and get “gold” and other rewards for it. I tend to go in there once a week to add things (but more if I think of something else) and then I go in daily to check things off.
On the far right, you’ll see the Rewards section. Let’s talk about that.
What are these rewards?
As you can see there are two ways you can be rewarded.
The easiest way to benefit from the rewards is to simply collect the items given to you by Habitica as you gain gold and diamonds. You get to choose what items you collect as rewards and you can use them in the game on your missions (more about that coming).
There’s lots of useful items to collect. The more you complete from your lists, the more rewards you can collect.
Now, this is the part I love.
You can make those rewards very personal!
At the top, you’ll see some rewards on mine you won’t have. That’s because I added them myself. These are things that I love to give myself or do for myself but I can’t do them everyday. Well, I could. But if I do, they are less special.
I’ve chosen to make myself earn them.
I love Tim Horton’s coffee. Specifically, I love a good double double (two cream, two sugar). But, I can’t have it a lot because I have diabetes and there’s a lot of sugar in there! And I’m trying to save money and daily Timmie’s runs aren’t conducive to saving money.
I’ve added a few more things in there and when I want those things, I have to use my gold in Habitica. So, I have to think twice. Do I want to use that gold now? Or maybe I want to save it up a little longer for something bigger?
What’s this Habitica game?
You can go on Quests! I’m still figuring out the whole Quest deal but I’ve completed one and working on the next one. I’m going solo right now but you can invite people to join your “Party” and go on quests with you.
As you accomplish tasks and work on creating habits and doing your dailies, you’ll make progress in your Quest.
Be warned though — if you miss Dailies, you’ll potentially cause damage to yourself and other members of your party!
But when the boss is defeated, you can get experience, gold, pets, and other cools stuff.
Want to get productive with me?
Click here to join Habitica (it’s most free but there is a paid version, which I don’t use) and if you want to join my party, drop your username in the comments!