Habitica ideas for students
I’ve been using Habitica for a while now and I love it. The reason I love it so much is that I can use it to track pretty much everything, even apart from the normal productivity stuff, if I’m a little creative.
As for setting all of this up, I highly recommend doing that on desktop. The mobile app is great for on the go but I wouldn’t recommend it for putting an entire new system in place (maybe that’s just me, though).
So here are some maybe a little more unconventional ideas for Habitica usage:
HABITS
My habits are mostly positive with few exceptions because it’s much easier to reward yourself for doing something than to punish yourself for not doing something, in my opinion. Plus, I feel like it works out, too, because after all, you do usually want to feed your pets or buy equipment or buy quests.
Water tracker: Drinking water is important, yo. The way I go about this is I have a positive habit called “1l of water” and I just hit the + for every liter I drink. I’ve set it to reset daily so I can see at how many liters I roughly am at for the day. If you struggle with drinking water more, you can also just put “drink a glass of water” and set the difficulty to hard instead of easy, as I have it set because at this point I’m pretty used to drinking a shit ton of water, I just like to keep an overview in case I’m busy and forget. That’s the beauty of Habitica vs other apps, you can modify it to your needs!
Meet friends: This one I have set to reset every week so that I can see at a glance whether I’m having a social life. Having “high density” fun (as Thomas Frank frequently puts it) is crucial to my mental health, yet I tend to do it too little especially when I’m stressed and instead sit there on my phone wondering where the hours went and feeling generally very blah. I only have this as a positive habit because I don’t want to and need to force myself to do something with friends every single day (what’s up fellow introverts), but I’m aiming for at least once a week of my own accord, so not counting when I see them in a uni context or at fixed activities. I have this set on hard to motivate myself to actually do it, too, since I have to leave the house to fulfill it.
Color: As you may have noticed (X, X) coloring is a bit of a hobby of mine so the habit isn’t really necessary right now while I’m still technically on break and have more time to do it, but I like to keep it in there anyway. I usually color while listening to podcasts because that goes hand in hand, and many podcasts I listen to are also somewhat educational (hmu with your favorites, I’d love to discover some new ones!) while still expanding my horizons beyond what I learn at uni. This one I have set to medium, because while it is a hobby that I like to do, there’s definitely some resistance because you have to be very focused and can’t really do other stuff except listen to podcasts simultaneously. Coloring is very therapeutic to me, and I’m not an artsy person, so maybe give it a shot! You can also replace coloring with any artistic habit, obviously.
Read or listen to podcast instead of watching TV: I love doing both of these things yet they start to get infinitely harder when you’re at uni and running around town trying to stay alive during the semester. Reading especially is very beneficial to my mental health and I love doing it, but it’s just so much harder to pick up a book than to hit play on Netflix. I should probably split these two habits up now that I think about it, because I do tend to read much less than I listen to podcasts. Either way, the difficulty setting here is hard with a daily reset although it doesn’t really matter that much as both daily and weekly resets are equally suited for the purpose in my opinion.
One book per week: Ah yes, my reading goal. I am terrible at reading slowly and steadily during the year which leads me to binge read on vacation. Now, while I love doing that and I don’t perceive it as a stressful, I would prefer to also read during the year. This habit is set to hard with a weekly reset, and it is both a positive and a negative (which means I probably have to hit the - today, siiiiigh).
Work out: During the school year, I weirdly don’t struggle with working out a lot because I see it as a study break and I’m one of those people who actually looks forward to working out and hitting some goals. This one also has a weekly reset, hard difficulty and is both a positive and a negative habit, however, I only hit the - when I was supposed to work out and didn’t. This is partly the reason why I don’t want my workout as a daily, I don’t like having fixed days because sometimes you gotta move your schedule around a bit and I simply aim to work out 4-5 times a week. I’m looking into starting an exercise class for swimming next semester, though, so if I do join that one, I will absolutely make it a daily.
Meal not eaten at desk: Kind of a weird one. I started developing this terrible habit of constantly doing everything at my desk last year, especially eating. Now, if you don’t have a ton of space and roommates, it makes sense for your desk to be basically where you spend your entire day, but I want my desk to be as much of a work only, no play space as it can be, even with limited space, and eating at it is a very bad idea to keep that mental separation in place. Also, I want to be focus on what I’m eating as much as possible and not do five things simultaneously. So, in order to motivate myself to eat my food at the dining room table, I’ve made this a simply positive habit with a medium difficulty and a daily reset as I usually eat three meals a day.
Cook: If you follow me, you probably already know I’m a big proponent of home-cooked meals. But cooking is time consuming, exhausting and hard sometimes when all you want after a long day at uni is some sushi. I aim to cook at a proper meal at least two or three times a week and try to avoid takeout as much as possible. To motivate me, I have this as a positive habit, at a hard difficulty and a weekly reset.
Go to bed before midnight: I struggle with this. A lot. However, I do need my sleep - when I don’t sleep at least seven hours, I’m unfocused, cranky and tired. Plus, it’s really bad for athletic recovery. Getting to bed before midnight at least ensures I’ll be getting seven hours (since I try to get up at 7:00), ideally I’d get eight or nine, but I’m trying to stay realistic here. I have this as a positive habit with a weekly reset and at a hard difficulty. I don’t see the point in making it a daily because I know I won’t do it (I could, however, maybe make “get to bed before 1:00 a daily, to get brownie points for getting to bed even earlier than I needed to, I might yet do that).
EDIT: It’s been brought to my attention by the lovely @gold-n-mind that mobile doesn’t show the counter, something I didn’t really think of because I only use Habitica of my phone when I can’t avoid it but mostly use it on desktop. You can still set up everything how I mention it, but you will have to check the count on desktop, as of right now there doesn’t seem to be another way for mobile users. For potential mobile only users, this is what I’m referring to:
DAILIES
These, just like the habits, will be very personal. My dailies tend to change a lot because when I’m back home at my parent’s I don’t really need cleaning dailies for example. But here are some ideas nevertheless:
Get up within 15 minutes of waking up: I suck at this. I tend to waste away time in my bed, staying on my phone for 30 minutes before I even think about getting up. But a quick jumpstart to my day is extremely beneficial for my productivity, so I’m trying to work on it. This is due every day since lounging about in bed makes me tired and cranky and consumes time I could be using to eat breakfast while watching youtube.
Morning skincare/evening skincare: Pretty self-explanatory. Due every day.
Open window: Due every day. I try to always open my window before I start studying, as I don’t really leave it open over night and fresh air is obviously very helpful for da brain. Also, the cold air tends to help me wake up.
Make bed: I never used to do this. But then I read “Unfuck your habitat” and I saw the merit in starting your day on a positive, structured note while making your room seem more tidy. Also, these easy dailies give me something to check off before getting started on my harder to dos, which is a concept known as momentum. Due every day.
Do a 20/10 of cleaning somewhere: Another lesson from UFYH. It means you do 20 minutes of tidying somewhere, then take a 10 minute break. I have found I rarely really need more than 20 minutes, and you can easily integrate one 20/10 somewhere in your daily schedule. It’s not fun, but constantly chipping away at messes means you don’t have to do huge binge-cleans. Due every day, but usually not needed every day.
Take out trash if needed: Tasks like these (this one is exemplary because I have a lot of these when I’m in my apartment during the semester) are great because they get you check if you have to do something every day and if they’re due, you do them right away since you’re already there checking! If they’re not due, you can easily check something off your dailies without actually doing work. Of course, the difficulty setting on these is usually trivial, but taking out the trash is a very trivial task, you just tend to put if off forever. Other ideas for this are put on laundry, check the mail, etc.
Week review/weekly planning: This is due every Sunday. I suck at following through and do need to get better at it, but actually looking at your week in advance and knowing what’s gonna happen when as well as getting into the mindset for Monday does help.
Study dailies: These will vary wildly depending on what kind of study system and schedule you have! I have a general study daily with a checklist that says “x pages” and “flashcards”. I also now have a separate flashcard daily with a checklist for every set of flashcards I’m trying to get done. Like I said, it will vary - for some of you having a daily with a certain goal of pomodoros may work (I don’t really utilize the pomodoro method a lot, though), some of you just need a push so “study for 30 minutes” may be enough to set you on a productive course. I change up my study dailies most frequently of all of them because they change a lot depending on what subject I’m focusing on, but most of the time I’ll only have them due during the week, sometimes also on Saturdays.
Go to class: I don’t really struggle with this because I literally cannot skip more often than once or they fail me, but why not reward yourself for leaving your comfy flat and braving the real world? These are also easy to set up because classes generally take place on a weekly basis, just set them as due on the weekday when the class is, and if you don’t struggle with going to class like me, you can always set the difficulty to trivial.
TO DOS
I won’t really go in depth on the to dos, because I feel like they’re pretty self-explanatory. I will explain a couple, but apart from that it’s pretty personal and whatever you have going on, just throw it on there.
Grocery list: This is the only more “unconventional” use I have for to dos. I like to make one to do that says “grocery shop” and then put everything I need as a separate sub-point. This works really well and I like to do it this way mainly so I don’t have my shit spread out over five list apps. The only drawback is that you can’t share that list with friends (unless you shell out €€ and get a group plan), so if you have a joint shopping list with a roommate, you might not be able to use this.
University readings: I like to make huge tasks of my required reading with tons of sub-points so that the reward is proportional to the pain (lol). The drawback to this method is that you don’t get the instant gratification of being able to check off a task at the end of the day, but I use dailies to work like this so my to dos are kind of a more long-term overview of where I want to be by what date. You can be as detailed with this as you want, but I just kind of use the big chapter headings. You could also divide it by pages, though. Whatever floats your boat.
