
Habitica – A gamified habit-building and productivity app - ycombinete
https://habitica.com/static/home
======
bschne
See also Ben Kuhn's "Make your habits zero-effort" \-
[https://www.benkuhn.net/zero/](https://www.benkuhn.net/zero/)

"Life hacks abound: Tell your friends about your plan so you’ll be embarrassed
if you fail! Make sure you keep an unbroken streak! Charge yourself money if
you don’t stick to it! Donate the money to your least favorite charity! Forget
donations, how about electric shocks?

The escalating absurdity should tell you that this problem is unsolved. But in
my opinion, that’s because everyone tries to do it wrong. Personally, I’ve
found my productivity habits to be extremely long-lived when I make sure
they’re literally zero maintenance."

~~~
esperent
That's cool, I haven't seen this idea summed up so well. Do you have any
examples of this?

One thing I do is put sites I want to spend less time on into my hosts file.
That way I have to edit a file, which means leaving the context of my web
browser, before I can access the site.

Another habit I want to build is quick journaling first thing in the morning,
so I made my browser start page a Google docs, and I automatically open the
browser on start. So when I turn on my laptop, the first thing I'm presented
with is a blank sheet. I can then copy whatever I write into my notes folder.

Tracking time with an app sounds interesting. I checked the Rescue Time app,
but the pricing information is really well hidden on their website. I had to
Google it. Sure enough, it's $9 a month - that's $108 a year!! For a time
tracking app!

I really dislike this trend of small apps switching to a subscription model,
and I will not support it. Does anyone know a similar app that is more
reasonably priced?

~~~
bschne
> Do you have any examples of this?

Personally I've been surprised how well setting up contexts for intended
outcomes ahead of time works - e.g. if I want to study X, I close everything
else on my computer the night before and only open the textbook and my reading
notes; If I want to get up on time and go for a run I put my running gear in
one place all ready to put on, etc. More generally I try to prepare a daily
note on my computer the night before with the most important few things I'd
like to focus on.

But what works and doesn't it's highly personal, e.g. the hosts file thing has
never lasted more than a day or two for me :)

~~~
Cyphase
Try the LeeckBlock browser extension (Firefox and Chrome). It might work
better for you than the hosts file. I just commented about it in a sibling to
your comment.

------
stared
I did try quite a few things, but for me each app adds _friction_ to tasks.
Friction with setting, friction with changing priorities (a wall of shame of
unfinished tasks saps the rest of willpower), friction with things that need
to be done in a different way than provided by an app, etc.

What I ended with is a daily Evernote checklist (any plaintext editor would
work). Ticking is a reward on its own, while the overhead is minimal. A low-
tech version of that is a Bullet Journal - a thing that actually works for
quite a few of my friends (my Evernote is sort of a BJ, just electronic).

~~~
bromuro
I agree with the friction. I haven’t found anything better than pen and paper
:)

------
franklin_p_dyer
I highly recommend the book “The Power of Habit” by Charles Duhigg. It
describes lots of interesting scientific findings.

That book introduced me to a technique for eliminating bad habits that has
worked really well so far. Duhigg describes a case in which a lady was trying
to stop biting her lip, so she was asked to carry a slip of paper with her,
and whenever she felt the urge to bite her lip, instead write a tickmark on
the piece of paper. This ended up working for her (and for me) because it is
apparently easier to replace one habit with another (i.e. lip-biting with
tickmark-writing) than to eliminate a habit completely. And once you’ve fully
replaced your bad habit with writing tickmarks, it’s easy to stop doing the
latter - just stop carrying pencil and paper in your pocket.

------
godelski
There's an easy way to form habits that's a bit silly but all my friends and I
have had great success with it. Essentially you break things down into the
smallest task possible (not smallest meaningful task, smallest). Then you
start with only that task.

Let's say that you want to floss every night. Start by just touching the floss
when you brush your teeth. For me, after a few nights I got frustrated and
just started flossing. On days I'm tired I still just touch the floss.

Too much? Break it down more:

Look at the floss

Touch the floss

Open the floss

Pull out a little

etc

The idea (I didn't come up with it but forgot the source) is that many of the
tasks we are trying to get ourselves aren't that hard but it is overcoming
that _mental_ hurdle. So by breaking down into micro-tasks you slowly raise
your threshold. You are also trivializing the tasks. It isn't hard to go from
"My hand is already on the floss, why don't I pick it up?" and so on. I find
that I get frustrated with the micro task within a week and just end up doing
the thing. (I've been flossing my teeth 90+% of days for the last 6 months)

------
cbanek
I used to use habitica and it was pretty fun, and it helped me organize a lot
of my repeated but non-daily tasks, like remembering when to put the garbage
out, going to the gym, etc. For me, the biggest problem of habits and routines
I think is actually remembering them and a notification to do them at a time,
because I easily lose track of time.

Now I use todoist, and while it's not the same, I like todoist, and am
enjoying it more. The browser extensions are nice. It has karma and tracks
things, although doesn't have the idea that you should have completed things,
which can make things a bit tricky, but overall it's really helped me get
things out of my mind and into lists.

------
optimalsolver
An alternate take on gamified productivity:

[https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/KwdcMts8P8hacqwrX/noticing-t...](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/KwdcMts8P8hacqwrX/noticing-
the-taste-of-lotus)

~~~
kqr
Yeah, this is my experience with duolingo too. I _know_ in my head that all
that extrinsic motivation only limits my intrinsic motivation, where the
latter is what'll actually get me to learn something. Despite that, it's hard
_not_ to do easy exercises just to end up on the leaderboard.

~~~
kubanczyk
I use uBlock/adBlock, so right click on the Leaderboard, create a custom
filter and that's it, bye.

Other features of Duolingo (the streak, the daily goal, etc.) play really well
with my own intrinsic motivation, FWIW.

------
cardenasrjl
I've tried many apps to track my actions and in long term it doesn't work.

~~~
52-6F-62
Yeah these never work for me either. I’ve tried again and again-even thinking
I’ll keep something like Notion as a user friendly database for tracking what
I’ve done. But no. Even if I like interacting with it I just fall off because
of the overhead.

I’m better off with a sticky note (even virtual ones on my desktop) and a note
pad I can tear a page out of than anything else

But I’ve always found—since high school—that just the act of writing something
down physically cements things in my mind. At least for as long as I need them
to be easily accessible.

~~~
PaulStatezny
> But I've always found...that just the act of writing something down
> physically cements things in my mind.

Same here! This is why I use a simplified Getting Things Done system, but at
the beginning of the day translate it into a "to do" list for the day on
paper. It lets me focus on one piece of paper through the day instead of
getting overwhelmed with the GTD system.

------
kirubakaran
If you're interested in this, have a look at my
[https://crushentropy.com/](https://crushentropy.com/) It is markdown for
planning and visualizing your day.

I've been using it consistently for several years now and I can say it has
made me a lot more productive, as I'm more mindful of where my time goes, how
fragmented my day is, etc.

~~~
rapnie
I am sure this is cool and all, but why would one put their daily planning in
an anonymous online service by Insstant LLC that do not even bother to place a
Privacy Policy link in the footer? Some slight improvements and more people
might try it out.

~~~
kirubakaran
Thanks for the feedback. Will do.

------
diimdeep
I would use something that looks like an actual habit tracker [1] but with
elements of gamification, than a game with elements of tracker, which seems to
care more about being fancy pixel art, than a tool to help people track
habits.

[1] [https://loophabits.org](https://loophabits.org)

~~~
mmanfrin
> which clearly cares more about being fancy pixel art than a tool to help
> people track habits

Why do you say it 'clearly cares more' about art than its purpose?

~~~
dddw
Art doesn't want a purpose

------
emerged
I really like Habitica, but like so many productivity apps, you can't nest
tasks into arbitrarily deep hierarchies. To me, that's a completely essential
feature. You can have sub-tasks, if I recall correctly, but only one level
deep. There are so many great task management related tools which are missing
this one critical feature, not sure why it isn't more common.

~~~
Wronnay
This. I try to use Kanboard for everything but the level of limited
hierarchies makes complex projects very hard to manage.

It's good for little projects but really big ones need multiple hierarchies or
being broke down into smaller projects (but with lot's of smaller projects you
don't have a good overview if your software doesn't allow multiple
hierarchies).

------
arkad
There's also self hosted version on github:
[https://github.com/headcounter/shabitica](https://github.com/headcounter/shabitica)

Disclaimer: I'm not a contributor and have never installed it.

Edit: broken link

------
strombofulous
I don't like how hard they try to hide the fact that you can purchase "gems",
even the FAQ page doesn't discuss what you actually need them for. Does anyone
who has used this before know if they start getting in the way or becoming
more important than actually completing tasks?

~~~
rarec
They're only useful for cosmetic and extra quests and the like. You can just
straight up ignore them and not lose out on anything.

~~~
akhiluk
You are right. I'd bought some gems with my Google Opinion Rewards money, and
the only use someone has for gems is for costumes and backgrounds - all
cosmetic changes, nothing that affects the gameplay. IIRC you can use gems to
change your class if you wish, but you get an Orb of Regeneration at Level
100, so you can change your class for free at that point.

------
miki123211
There's also the nuclear option, AKA beeminder.com.

You set your goals, choose a financial punishment, and you get charged on
failing. Works pretty great.

~~~
mjangle1985
Why not just use a rubber band on your wrist and a sting each time? It
provides the same conditioned response to not doing your work but you don't
have to pay for it.

~~~
miki123211
Two reasons

1\. Beeminder can, if you want it to do so, increase punishments up to an
arbitrary amount. There are situations where you want your punishment to be
extremely high, so that you know losing is not an option.

2\. Some people have a problem with entering the right amounts of data, or
even tracking all their stuff. Beeminder is automated.

Do whatever works, though. The rubber band approach isn't bad. Some people
might prefer automated scripts that send out compromising photos or destroy
data if certain conditions are met. There are a lot of approaches.

------
Kelamir
Habitica... straight to what I got from it:

1) girlfriend (she said 'Write: "met my gf there, 10/10 recommend" :derpy:')

2) a plenty of productive work done

3) friends!

Habitica is awesome used in collaboration with other people. It helps one's
motivation drastically to have people for accountability, which gamifies
whatever one has got to do.

I suggest you create or join a party that focuses on challenges and encourages
cooperation. It has to have a handy medium for communication, like Discord.

For example, we once held a challenge with several teams in a D&D-like game.
To make a move, you had to get two hours of work done(in pomodoros). It looked
like this: [https://imgur.com/a/VA9vrmN](https://imgur.com/a/VA9vrmN)

It motivated everyone to get lots of work done. I remember I slept only a few
hours on the day of the launch, and that day had managed to do a few moves!

Oh, the fun I had when I had stolen Zephyr Cape! It had increased my movement
speed considerably, and as I had it, I had to use the power to its fullest,
and was motivated to work more and more.

Right now I am looking for another group to have a similar experience. If you
are interested, or you've a group where we could benefit from each other, hit
me up, nickname's Kelamir.

------
arxpoetica
Fun story. I remember meeting Tyler Renelle way back at a JS meetup when he
first started developing it. Not 100% sure, but I think he originally built it
off a framework called SocketStream[1], though I don't remember exactly (I was
a contributor to SocketStream at the time). It might have actually been
another of the similar frameworks[2] at the time that relied on sockets,
realtime-app predecessors to React/Angular/Vue/Svelte.

I used Habitica early on, and it was fairly fun, but I could never (irony
much) keep the habit of using it.

Update: looks like it was Derby:
[https://github.com/HabitRPG/habitica/search?o=desc&q=derby&s...](https://github.com/HabitRPG/habitica/search?o=desc&q=derby&s=committer-
date&type=Commits)

[1]
[https://github.com/socketstream/socketstream](https://github.com/socketstream/socketstream)
[2] The competitors were Derby [https://derbyjs.com/](https://derbyjs.com/)
and...can't remember the other one off the top of my head.

------
jbjbjbjb
Habit trackers are great when you pair them with a smart watch and
automations. I use an app called Streaks, Apple Watch and Shortcuts. Streaks
can pick up health data and in Shortcuts I’ve set it up so it increments a
counter in Streaks to keep track of when I open Instagram or Twitter.

I’m not sure it gives me enough motivation to do something I don’t want to.
But it does help me stay on track and not forget the things I want to do.

~~~
graeme
Actually, do you find the counter reliable? It hasn’t been working so well for
me with the Tally app.

Edit: worked well with streaks. I think tally’s shortcuts integration is poor,
whereas Streaks’ is excellent

~~~
jbjbjbjb
I think it works well enough for me I have my daily count set to 10. So I’m
really trying to prevent those days where I’m mindlessly checking it
throughout the day.

------
httpsterio
Personal anecdotes about habits and promises. I've tried many different things
to motivate myself to either abstain from behavior like smoking or to keep up
healthy streaks.

An example would be a promise I made last Christmas to my fiancée. I've had a
hard time quitting smoking because it's my go-to solution when life is
stressful and feels like the walls are coming down. I gave her 500€ and told
her that money is for a small holiday for us next summer if I don't smoke. If
I smoke she can keep it all and use it for whatever she wants.

Now when I wanted to smoke, I'd have to weigh the decision against that
promise. The downside was, I had a clear price that I could decide to pay if I
wanted a cigarette. Needless to say, I failed in two months and now she has a
new sewing machine.

On the other hand, I've now managed to keep a 45 day streak on duolingo. It's
a way smaller thing and there's nothing externally motivating me except that
damn little owl and a little lit flame icon displaying my streak. There's no
penalty for failing nor is there any way to wiggle out of failing if I choose
not to do my daily exercises. My main motivation is just to learn Welsh for
the sake of it and I find it much easier to keep this up than any other habit
which comes with internal or external pressure.

Making your friends hold you accountable to something just sounds like the
recipe for getting unmotivated and losing the actual goal and swapping the
enjoyment of doing something into fear of some sort of penalty which one could
decide was worth facing.

I've also heard that talking too much of your ideas and goals will decrease
motivation as you gain some feeling of success which should be rewarded to you
after you've actually done the deed. I feel that this personally affects me
and I've stopped talking about goals and I'm just trying to reach them and
celebrating afterwards.

~~~
PaulStatezny
As far as I understand, your experience mirrors the research.

External motivation (like a reward/penalty, accountability partner, etc) is
weak. Internal motivation is incredibly strong. So the question becomes, how
do you get internally motivated?

I wish I had a reference, but I remember hearing about a study (here on HN)
about where internal motivation comes from. The conclusion — a mixture of 3
elements: Purpose, competence, and freedom.

Basically, you're in a situation where there's something that needs done. You
have a strong sense of purpose that it ought to be done. (There's a huge "why"
element to this!) You have the freedom to achieve it in whatever means you see
fit. And you have any skills necessary.

Sounds like with DuoLingo, you're already at the point where it's a locked in
habit. (So your mind is on autopilot with that, not requiring a lot of
motivation.)

But with smoking, you never had enough internal motivation. And I imagine
smoking like other "bad" habits has a big emotional element to it. (You turn
to it to calm down stress/anxiety.) Have you thought about those emotional
elements and what's causing those? Maybe trying to address those things _on
top of_ an effort to kick smoking would be more effective.

------
fsiefken
For those using taskwarrior, there is karmawarrior for lightweight
gamification
[https://gitlab.com/BlackEdder/karmawarrior](https://gitlab.com/BlackEdder/karmawarrior)

~~~
edwinvanl
I actually wrote karmawarrior after switching from habitica to taskwarrior,
because I missed the positive reinforcement/gamification aspect of habitica.

~~~
fsiefken
thank you so much, you got one karma point for creating an account and comment
fwiw :-)

------
mvind
It is weird how we have normalized the fact we need an app to remind us to
drink water, or work for one hour. I don't see how this can help one make
substantial and long changes to one's life and habits.

~~~
zhdc1
How is this any different from written daily routines, to do lists, and
journals, all of which have been around for centuries/millennia?

~~~
xmprt
I'm still not sure if it's a bad thing but it's definitely different. When I
use a journal/list/daily routine, I feel like I'm in control but when I use an
app I feel like I'm giving that up to someone/something else. When I miss a
goal that I wrote in a journal then I'm only letting myself down but when I'm
using an app I feel worse about messing up.

I don't know how justified those feelings are but at a certain point I think
it's worth sitting down and asking whether the app makes you feel worse about
the mistakes than the mistakes themselves.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Does that make the app better or worse, extrinsic motivation seems better.
That's one reason to use an app, I thought; some pseudo-accountability.

------
clubdorothe
Is anyone had success keeping habits with this app?

What alternatives do you recommend?

~~~
shdc
You can try getting an actual life. I'm not being sardonic. These apps are
usually a sign you're addicted to your devices, or the internet.

~~~
kubanczyk
Just be yourself.

And be good.

Above all, answer people with vaguely worded unverifiable advice to maintain a
subtle aura of superiority.

------
cdiamand
I've started building a browser plugin to help me increase productivity while
on the internet.

The plan is to have it play music, overlay a score, or give me some other
positive feedback when I'm looking at productive tabs. Conversely it will
reduce stimulation or give me some kind of negative feedback when I'm looking
at non productive pages.

I'd be interested to hear if this is something others would use..

~~~
Kelamir
That is an interesting idea! What kind of negative feedback do you think would
do the trick, cdiamand?

~~~
cdiamand
Well, i think you could just take away all the enjoyable stimulus you provide
(music, points, etc) for positive tabs. Turn down the music and subtract
points. I think playing harsh noises or something like that would be over the
top though

------
scns
I use loop habit tracker for this. You can set recurring reminders and mark
tasks done. It has an overview screen that shows your progress. Has a Dark
Mode (Big plus on OLED).

------
LrQSs8Dq
Why does this need to be an online app? Why do I need to run my own instance
if I want control over my data? An offline app would work just fine, no? After
all this is nothing more than a glorified todo list.

~~~
dector
Actually you can self-host it:
[https://github.com/HabitRPG/habitica](https://github.com/HabitRPG/habitica)

------
avree
How come HabitRPG gets posted to HN every month? (Albeit under a new name for
the past few years?)

~~~
andy_ppp
Because the community find it fairly interesting and upvote the submission.

