A few days ago, heleninwales mentioned that she uses HabitRPG to help keep her on track with getting things done. Knowing that I'm someone who enjoys games and finds the types of rewards found in games motivating, I have sometimes wondered if there was a way to apply those types of rewards to my real life. Well, it turns out that HabitRPG does just that; it helps people to apply game rewards, and penalties, to our real lives. And, it's customizable. You get to decide what activities are important to you, how important they are, and whether rewards or penalties apply. There are four lists for things you want to do: Habits, Dailies, To-Dos, and Rewards.

So, I signed up. And guess what, that very evening, I started seeing positive changes in my behavior. For one thing, getting off the interwebs early enough that I can get myself in bed at the time of my choosing has been an issue for me; too often I crawled in bed later than I wanted to, either shorting myself on sleep, or getting up later than was ideal. Just having a Habit identified (I've actually got three related Habits, getting to bed on time, getting up on time, and getting at least 8 hours of sleep) helped me to get myself to bed at my chosen time. I woke up early the next morning. Plus, I got more things done, in large part because they were on my Habits or Dailies lists, but also because getting up earlier helps me to be more effective.

I used to think I was a night owl, but I've been coming to recognize in recent years that that isn't really true of my actual experience. Sure, it's easy to stay up late—in fact, it's often hard not to—but I'm just not as efficient when I get up late. Go figure! Either my body has changed as I've aged, or I've been wrong about this for most of my life.

Back to HabitRPG. I'm still working up to To-Dos. I've assigned some things to the list, but haven't actually started working on any of them. This will happen, I'm sure. But, right now, I'm still working on just getting all the immediate items on my schedule done, and done on a new, earlier schedule. No more dawdling in bed in the mornings because I was up until the wee hours of the night. No more putting stuff that ought to be done every day off, just because I've spent too much time doing things I don't really need to do. Huzzah for a happier, more balanced life!

I'm also thinking about connecting tasks in HabitRPG to items in Trello, which I used to use regularly. Trello's interface is similar, in some ways, to HabitRPG's, but much more customizable and without the reward system. It's focus is on organization and keeping track of tasks.

The one thing lacking from all this is an integrated timer. For that, I'll probably use Reminderfox. Reminderfox is another application I've used for quite some time, but I haven't been leveraging its features to help me keep on top of everything. In fact, these days, I probably use the timer feature more than any other.

I'm hoping that with the help of these three apps, I can waste less time, be more effective, and get more done.



P.S. Just so you know, today when I logged into HabitRPG, there was a message that included mention of a Spread the Word Challenge. There are in-game rewards for writing a blog post or sharing on social media about HabitRPG. I don't expect to actually win, since the winners are based on "the most likes/notes/favorites/upvotes/etc." and I don't have the kind of web presence likely to result in a lot of this type of activity, but it just feels fair to let you know that I've entered.