Notes on (My) Productivity

I really enjoy strategy and RPG (Role Playing Games) and this can be problematic. A while ago I noticed I was so into some of these games that hours and hours of my life would be consumed by planning for these games. I would spend what felt like forever devising strategies to play and attempt to beat these games and not achieve much in my reality.

While I was getting really good at building ancient cities on games like Pharaoh, Master of Olympus: Zeus or Age of Empires, I would wish that I could transfer this kind of motivation and productivity into my everyday life. Why can't life be more like video games?! (This has nothing to do with me wanting to be a kick-ass dark elf mage....well maybe a little...)

So when the new year began, I decided to add more lists to my life. I like lists. Lists are fun. If I can make lists of possible combinations of Pokemon to use to beat the Elite Four then why can't I make lists to make things happen in reality a little more?
This is exactly what I did. I started making meal plans so I would know what I was going to cook for tea, which informed my shopping list when I next went into town. I then started a morning and evening routine list. I found I was using these lists, but only to tick off the basic tasks and leaving others I deemed not so important as sporadic.

This continued and up until now I allowed it, but I've come across something that I hope will help.

Habitica.

Habitica is a website/app that helps you organize your life and turns it into an RPG. You get a little character avatar to represent yourself and then you add your to do lists - Dailies, general To Do List and Habits. When you complete something on the to do lists you are rewarded with experience and in-game coinage, however if you fail to do the tasks you loose health points etc. as you would in a traditional RPG. It also helps you track and adjust your habits, if you want to do more or less of something.

So I've signed up to it. It's free so why the hell not. Hopefully this will fulfil my wish of becoming a kick-ass dark elf......I mean...of becoming more productive. I'll do a progress report post in about 2 weeks to see how this has gone.

1st day on Habitica. I've lost health as I've already done a naughty....