The Gift of Productivity
You know that long list if things your guy has that he
always wants to get done but never has time for? It has a list of projects and
things to do around the house, or books to read and other things to catch up
on. Now there is a way to give him the motivation to get all of those things
done!
How to Play
Habit RPG is an online game that is directly influenced and
controlled by real life actions. If you are familiar with any adventure type
video games you will see how this game works just like them. In the video games
you are the main character, often joined up with other characters who join your
group or party. Together or individually you follow a story, go on quests,
fight bad guys, find items and pets, and gain experience for your character so
it can be stronger and fight tougher enemies.
Habit RPG incorporates all of these ideas in to a real life
based game. In the video games you gain experience and level your character in
different ways. Often it involves doing mundane tasks like killing a whole lot
of the same poor creature over and over again. Sometimes the tasks are more
difficult and involve more steps to complete. These are usually worth more
points and you can usually gain cool items from them.
Habit RPG uses these same concepts to help you to complete
tasks and to form good habits in your life. To gain experience you can do tasks
like remembering to floss your teeth every day, by taking the stairs instead of
the elevator, reading a chapter of that book you've been meaning to finish, or
any other thing you are working on improving. The game also has built in quests
where you can fight bad guys by completing items on a to do list, and even join
up with real life friends or family members to fight the enemy together!
To get started you put things in either as "Habit",
"Daily", or "To Do". An example of a Habit might be
"Put the toilet seat down" and every time you do it you get to hit
the plus button which earns you XP (experience) gold, and maybe an item. But,
every time you walk out of the bathroom without doing it you have to do the
minus button, which causes you to lose points from your health bar. If you lose
all 50 points then you lose a level.
If you put something under "Daily" you can set it
to be required to be done every day or just certain days of the week. An
example could be "Go for a walk." Then if you go for a walk you get
XP and other rewards. If you don't walk that day then you lose health. If you
are in a group with other people and working on the same quest they will lose
points if you don't do your "dailies" too, so it is even more
motivation to get them done!
Placing something on a "To do" list leaves it open
ended unless you put a deadline on it. So if you don't get to it for a few
weeks you won't lose points. "To Do" items typically grant more
experience points upon completion. You can also determine if each activity is
Easy, Medium, or Hard difficulty. This will affect how much experience you earn
as well as how much damage you take if it is an incomplete daily or a habit
that you failed to comply with.
You can get different outfits, equipment, weapons, and pets.
You can even feed your pets enough to become mounts! There are a lot more
details to it, but that is basically the gist. It is a game where you level up
your character while you're improving yourself as a person.
Getting Stuff Done
This game has helped to get a lot of tasks done, and has
made our relationship less stressful. Instead of saying, "Honey can you
please do this for me?" I can just say, "Do you think you could add
this quest to your Habit RPG To Do list? It is probably a hard one so you'll
get lots of XP." It makes trimming hedges and poisoning weeds worth doing
instead of dreading.
Pretty soon he will start looking for things to do around
the house that can earn him experience points. It is a great motivator and lots
of fun. I know a lot of people who have been flossing their teeth every day for
several weeks now because of it. Who does that, really?
It is a way for the whole family to work together to defeat
the enemy of Laziness and to have fun completing tasks that would otherwise be
kind of a pain. Life is more of an adventure!
Where Does the Gift Come In?
Habit RPG is free to play, but they offer a subscription
that gives bonuses that help make playing more fun! The subscription is only $5
per month.
·
Disables Ads - There
are some ads to help keep up on the maintenance and development of the site. Buying
the subscription removes them from the page.
·
Allows Purchase of Gems
with Gold – Gold is found every time a task is completed. It can be used to
purchase new equipment or other rewards. Gems are used to purchase extra
special things like different clothes, skin colors, and quest scrolls. Buying
the subscription makes it so the player can use the gold they find to buy gems
to buy these fun items.
·
Retain Full History
Entries – The website keeps a short history of completed "to do"
items and information about habit formation and daily completion.
Non-subscriber information is consolidated or deleted after a certain amount of
time to save space on their servers. A subscriber has full access to their
history in graphs and to export to other programs.
·
Daily Drop-Caps Doubled –
There is a limit to the number of items a user can find each day. No matter how
many tasks they complete they will only be able to find a certain number of pet
eggs, hatching potions or food. This number is doubled for subscribers. That is
a huge bonus for people who enjoy the little pets and mounts. (They really are
so cute.)
·
Supports the Developers –
The money goes to supporting further development to help make the game better,
and rewards the people who have put so much time and effort in to creating it.
This is a feel-good point to buying the subscription.
Overall, the subscription makes the game more fun to play
which makes getting things done much easier. He will find the subscription fun
and helpful. It isn't much money so it is a nice inexpensive gift idea.
This is a nice gift for anyone who appreciates video games
and wishes he got more done in real life. It is good for the guy who likes to
see direct results and rewards of their work. (That's all guys right?) This
gift will only work for guys with a computer and internet access. There is an
app for Smartphones, but it is much easier to set everything up on the
computer.
This is outstanding for adults as well and kids. My niece
and nephew are really excited that they are in our party. They look forward to
getting things done and it helps them to strive to be better at school. It is a
good way to remind kids to get their chores done. A boy of any age will work
harder at anything in order to get a bigger virtual sword and an outfit that
makes their little cartoon guy look tough.
I tried to get a direct link to the subscription page, but I guess you have to have an account first. They are also introducing group and family rates to get the subscription benefits for your whole party! You can look at the Group Plans here.
You can see my little character on the side of this page. My husband
created a program to make it appear on a website and show which animals I'm
using right now and what outfit I'm wearing.
Here is a picture of my husband's character right now. He has a golden
gryphon, a shield that looks like a skull, and a smoking sword. He kind of
looks like a ninja. He has been getting a lot done to earn all of these cool
items.
What do you think? Will this help your husband, son, boyfriend
or friend get their work done? What is your experience with old fashioned to do
lists, and how would it compare to this? Please share in the comments below!
