I use my phone to manage many parts of my life. I use an alarm clock to keep track of my daily work routine. When COVID closed all of the gyms last year, I downloaded the Nike Training App to find new workouts and keep me active and motivated. When I started to fall into less healthy eating habits, I downloaded My Fitness Pal to help get me back on track. I thought now would be the time to try a new app for a problem I have struggled with for most of my adult life. I have a hard time waking up and motivating myself in the morning on my days off. My current work schedule is 11 hour days, 4 days a week, so I am gone 13 hours on workdays including my commute. Work days leave little time for much else beyond dinner, walking the dog, working out, showering, and bed. Working full time, taking graduate courses, and trying to maintain a house and life means I need to be productive on my days off. I decided to download an application on my phone to help manage my daily tasks.
I downloaded Habitica, which is a game to help with daily activities, to do lists, and habits. I get rewards for completing any of these tasks and am rewarded based on the difficulty of the task. It is broken down into multiple categories and tasks can be repeated daily, weekly, or monthly. The more days in a row you complete the tasks, the more you are rewarded. The Nike Training App congratulates me based on how many workouts completed, the type of workout, etc. and I enjoy that. I stopped using My Fitness Pal because it only offered negative reinforcement about what I was eating, no matter how hard I tried to be healthy. I feel as if Habitica's positive reinforcement of coins and prizes, which I can then spend on various items for my avatar, would encourage me to continue to use the app. I am trying to make positive changes and want to feel good about myself and the choices I am making, not be admonished for being less than perfect.
I like that this app offers a lot of freedom in deciding frequency and difficulty of tasks. Everyone is different and tasks vary in difficulty from person to person. It is simple and made for one purpose, to form better daily habits with the freedom to prioritize what I see as important. Things that are all encompassing such as Google Keep can be overwhelming with little to no positive reinforcement. Notes apps offer little to no organization or accountability and can easily be forgotten or overlooked. I feel as if on my days off, this could really help keep me organized and more productive. Typically at this point in my day off, I would be working on my readings. Instead, I have already crossed several items off of my to do list and am finishing up my second blog thanks to Habitica. I hope that Habitica can offer the level of organization and reinforcement I need to be more productive with my limited free time in the future.
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