Habitica Update

So, it's been almost a month since I joined Habitica, the site that helps you build good habits, break bad ones, and get your to-do list done. Check out my first post about Habitica for a description. I figured the first day of a new month was a good time to report on how it's going.

It's going great! I wrote at least a few hundred words every day in September from the fifth on, and I wrote 34,280 in total -- a little over 30K on the novel I'm working on, plus a short story I wrote in the middle of the month. That's almost half my total for the year! Which is both depressing and exciting at the same time. [wry smile]

I've also been drinking more water, eating veggies more often, doing more Italian lessons, and replying to people's e-mails faster.

I'll admit I haven't been working on my to-dos as fast/much as I wanted, but the way I have it set up, just doing my dailies takes a while, and I've been doing well with most of my habits. To-dos are one-time projects, and I have clicked off on a bunch of them. I'm finding more free time as I go -- I only played one session on a computer game since starting Habitica, and that only for a little over an hour -- so I'll get to the rest of them eventually.

The important thing is that the shiny hasn't worn off yet. :) I'm still just as enthused as before, and it feels good to get so many things done, which makes me feel better about doing more, and around we go in a spiral of productivity.

Seriously, if you're any kind of a gamer geek, such that earning gold and experience, and levelling up your character is a strong motivator for you, give this a shot. :)

If you'd rather focus on writing (which you can totally do on Habitica, if you want; it's fully customizable) I've heard of another site called 4TheWords that's a game just for writers. I checked it out and it gives you points and such for the actual numbers of words you write. It seems to focus a lot on producing X number of words within Y time, though, sort of like a NaNoWriMo WordWar? I'm not into that -- IMO pushing to write faster than your brain wants to naturally produce story is how the whole "banging out crap" thing happens, and that doesn't work for me -- but if you are, give 4TheWords a look.

Heading off to write (and kill some goblins),

Angie