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Saturday, October 04, 2025

Gamifying my Agendas

I'm a big fan of to-do lists, and I make one practically every day on my Kindle Scribe, especially on weekends. But, once upon a time, I used to use an app that made me very happy, called Habitica (it's also a website). It gamifies to-do lists, habits, daily tasks, etc., so that instead of just checking them off, you are rewarded, not with points, but with something fun. It's a throwback to Dungeons and Dragons-style role-playing games. You have a little avatar with health, experience, and mana (magic). You have a class (mage, warrior, healer, and rogue). When you do your tasks, you are rewarded with gold to buy equipment, but you also gain points that go towards the health, experience, and mana, and you level up. Your equipment can affect your basic stats, and buff them up. It's just like a role-playing game, tabletop or video. I was on it for five years straight and took a break for a while, but I'm back on it. I've joined a party, which adventures together, taking on quests, where as long as everyone keeps up with their tasks, we do well. Those tasks do damage to the bosses when completed. This party is no-nonsense. We are expected to do over 300 points of damage per day and there's a script they had me create and run (with directions) to automatically accept quests because they do about 15 a day. There are 28 people in the party as of today. I have spells that help the party against the bosses and finish the quests as well, and I cast those throughout the day when I have a moment. It actually takes only a little bit of my time; it's just a matter of going in occasionally and checking off my tasks and hitting the magic spells (I'm playing a mage, of course; others would have other abilities). But it's been fun. You can also do challenges and win gems. You can subscribe and get gems to buy special equipment, too. I used to subscribe. I can't right now. I have a ton of gold right now, and eggs and food to hatch more pets and mounts. Yes, you can make dragons and or ride wolves. There are backgrounds to customise your avatar square. Lots of equipment to change your stats, but at the same time, you can wear a costume to look a certain way. Here's my profile; I just realised I've been on Habitica for almost 10 years. You can find it at www.habitica.com :



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