HabitRPG–Helping to keep me on track (and it could help students too!)

I kid around a lot about being somewhat dangerous when left with too much time to wander around the interwebs while waiting on things to digitize/download/upload/rez/etc at work. Every now and again, though, I manage to find something that I find useful and entertaining. When I immediately see the promise of something and it’s fun, we get into the realm known as the “squee factor”–and yes, I let out a squee when I learned about HabitRPG from this article on Kinja.

HabitRPG is a free online program that gamifies your to-do list. There is a subscription version (for 5 dollars per month) for more goodies, but so far, I’ve found that for most students, the free version would probably be fine. How does it gamify your to-do list and habits?  Once you sign up for HabitRPG, you can outfit your character or avatar. Below is an image of mine now at level 30.

HabitRPG uses basic motivators from gamification to help hook users into the “game” and prompt them to get things done on their to-do list, while building good habits (or lessening negative ones). XP, leveling, health meters, badges, rewards, pets, mounts, quests, parties, guilds and the like can all be found in HabitRPG. Need people to be accountable to or a cheering section to get you going? Join a guild. Like collecting items through quests and drops? There are questlines and pets (as well as the foods and saddles to “raise” them into mounts). The creators have made a great set of tutorial videos and, better than me re-explaining how the program works, I’m embedding them below.

I’ve been playing with the system for a bit over a month now and I’m still finding new tricks to use to better organize my lists. I can’t say that the program has suddenly made me into a perfectly organized individual but, there has been a handful of times that the reminders (red-colored alerts) have prompted me to do something I’d been putting off or I did something extra to get that last bit of gold needed for a piece of armor. Bottom line, it’s a fun way to keep yourself accountable and I think students, especially the gamer crowd, might get a few grins using it as well.

See you out on the grid!