Habits

Habits are one of the three main types of tasks in Habitica, along with Dailies and To-Dos. The player's Habits can be found in the Habits list, located in the leftmost column of the main tasks page.

Rewards and Losses
Habits in Habitica can be either good or bad, just like real habits. Good Habits, denoted by a plus sign "+", are rewarded by experience, gold, and mana.

Bad Habits, denoted by a minus sign "-", are penalized by health loss. A loss of as much mana as would be gained by clicking the "+" button also occurs, but the player's mana value cannot decrease below zero.

A single Habit can be just good, just bad, or both. Habits that are both positive and negative can be used for goals that players can both make progress on (rewarding themselves) or fail to make progress on (penalize themselves).

Habit Colors
New Habits start with a task value of zero. Completing good Habits — clicking "+" — will increase the task value, eventually turning the Habit from yellow, to green, to blue. Similarly, clicking the "-" on a Habit (either for indulging a bad Habit or failing to keep a good one) will decrease the task value, eventually turning the Habit dark red. (For a more detailed explanation, see task colors.)

Habits with both "+" and "-" options enabled will not change value without the player's input, nor do they penalize the player for leaving them uncompleted. However, Habits with only a "+" or a "-" will become more yellow over time as their task values return to zero. For more information, see Ways Task Value is Affected.

Difficulty Level
The player can also set the difficulty level of a Habit. The levels of difficulty are trivial, easy, medium, and hard, with easy being the default for a new Habit. A higher difficulty setting for a given Habit increases the experience and gold (but not mana) players will be rewarded when they click "+", and increases the amount of health (but not mana) they will lose for clicking "-".

Attributes
The player can also set the attribute of a Habit, choosing from physical, mental, social, and other. Attributes can only be selected if the task-based auto-allocation feature is turned on. The default attribute is physical. It can be altered in the Advanced Options section of the editing panel.

Default Habits
When a player first creates an account on Habitica, three default Habits are shown. These are placeholders for illustrative purposes. They are:
 * Eat junk food: With only a "-", this is an example of a bad Habit. The player cannot gain anything from eating junk food, but they can lose health points and mana points.
 * 1h productive work: With only a "+", this is an example of a good Habit. The player cannot lose health for not working, but they can gain experience points, gold, and mana for working.
 * Take the stairs: With a "+" and a "-", this is an example set up to tackle both developing a good Habit (taking the stairs) and breaking a bad Habit (ride the elevator). If you take the stairs, you gain experience, gold, and mana. If you take the elevator, you lose health and mana.

These sample Habits are all very open and flexible. Players will interpret them differently and hold themselves accountable differently. That's fine – do what works for you! One person may consider "Take the stairs" to mean walk up ten flights of stairs while another may consider more or fewer, up and/or down. Someone using crutches may reverse the "+" and "-" because they know it would be dangerous for them to take the stairs! The possibilities are endless. If you need more ideas, check out the Sample Habits for suggestions. See the "Setting Up Your Habit List" section below for tips on how to get started and the in-depth walkthrough for even more detailed help.

Setting Up Your Habit List
To set up your own Habit list:


 * 1) Edit or delete the default Habits. You may find that some of them work for you. In that case, feel free to keep them, but don't worry too much about deleting them. You can always add them back if you change your mind.
 * 2) Add one or more habits you want to work on. Try starting with a few and build up as you go. It's easier to add more later as you gain confidence in changing your habits. For tips on whether your task should be a Habit, a Daily, or a To-Do, see Should this task be a Habit, Daily, or To-Do? in the FAQ.
 * 3) Positive or negative? Decide whether this Habit is a good one, a bad one, or a bigger project that has the potential for both progress and little failures from giving into temptation. By default a Habit is both good and bad. To make it just a good Habit, click on the minus sign ("-") to disable it. To make it just a bad Habit, click on the plus sign ("+") to disable it. In general, you can toggle the "Directions/Actions" option by clicking on either button in the web app, or toggling the checkbox in the mobile app.
 * 4) Add tags. Tags are used to specify a specific time period or area of your life that a task is relevant to. By default, you can assign a time of day to a task by selection "morning", "afternoon", or "evening" from the tags list. Add your own tags to the tags list, found just under your avatar in the upper-lefthand corner of the page. Some other possible tags include "school" and "exercise" – see the Sample Tags page for more ideas.
 * 5) (Advanced Options) Specify difficulty. Changing the difficulty of a Habit, which by default is set to easy, can help you motivate yourself to complete Habits that are a little harder or time-consuming to perform. There's no set way of determining whether a Habit should be trivial, easy, medium, or hard, but a good strategy would be to assign a higher difficulty level to Habits that are harder to do, take more time to perform, or are just generally unappealing. The higher the difficulty of the Habit, the more gold and experience you will be rewarded when you complete it. The amount of mana earned will not increase with the difficulty.
 * 6) (Advanced Options) Attributes: If you use the task-based auto-allocation feature, the Advanced Options menu will give you four options for "Attributes": Physical, Mental, Social and Other. The attributes will not appear in the Habit edit screen unless you have the task-based auto-allocation feature turned on.
 * 7) Start tracking! Click "Save & Close" to save your customization and start getting productive!

Add New Habit




Here are more detailed instructions on how to add a Habit to your Habits list:

1. To begin, simply type the title of the habit into the white box below the "Habits" heading and click the "+" button. For instance, if you want to encourage yourself to study chemistry for 30 minutes, type "Study chemistry - 30 minutes" into the text field.

2. Clicking the plus button puts the new Habit at the top of the list of current Habits.

3. If you have trouble with chemistry, you might want to change the difficulty to Hard. Click on the pencil icon next to the task to bring up the task editing screen.

And that's it! You've added a new Habit. See the "Setting Up Your Habits List" section above for details on what the options are for customizing your Habits and how to do so.

Adding Multiple Habits


To add several Habits at once, click the "Add Multiple" link. A box will open where you can enter several Habits. Click the "+" button when finished.

To add multiple Habits with tags, select a tag, then add your Habits.

Rearranging Habits


Habits, like Dailies, Rewards, and To-Dos can be rearranged by dragging and dropping them in their new position, or by clicking the Push to Top button.

Help Button
The help button is in the top right corner of the Habits column. This button, when clicked on, will reveal some quick information about Habits and how to get started with making tasks, etc. This is a faster way to help with Habits, but this wiki page is just a more in-depth information provider.

Habit Tabs
You can declutter your list using the tabs at the top and bottom of the Habits column. Options are All, Weak, and Strong. Clicking the Weak tab shows only those Habits which are yellow, orange, or red. Clicking the Strong tab shows only the blue and green Habits.

Checking on your Habits
There are times when you may want to check on a Habit to see if you have already done that Habit today or not. One way to check on your Habit for the day is to click on the tracking graph-bar icon for the Habit in question. Look at the bottom right of the tracking graph to see if today's date shows up. Also look at the steepness of the slope of your graph line, up or down, to see if perhaps you have clicked on your Habit more than once that day.

To determine precisely if your Habit has been clicked on during a given day, hover your arrow over any change in direction on the line of your tracking progress graph. It will show you information about the date and the task value at that point in time, which will also make it clear if you have clicked on the Habit that day or not, as well as giving indication of how many times you have clicked it.

Other ways to check the progress of your Habits are the Data Export tool and the Data Display Tool.

There are some limitations on stored data, which are explained in Data Export. While the explanation is referring to exported data, it's also true of the data that you can see in the progress graph since the same data set is used for both.

Using Habits for Reminders and Quotes




Habits can be used as reminders for items that don't need any action but that are good to keep in mind. For example, a player might find an inspiring quote or a tip that is helpful for improving their life.
 * 1) Create a Habit containing the quote or tip.
 * 2) Edit the Habit to disable both the plus ("+") and minus ("-") signs.
 * 3) Optionally add an emoji to make the Habit stand out; perhaps :elephant: because elephants never forget!
 * 4) Drag the Habit to the top of the Habits list or use the Push to Top button to increase its visibility.

Using Habits as Dividers


Similarly to using Habits for reminders or quotes, adding directionless Habits in conjunction with Markdown formatting can give players an easy way to reorganize their Habits. See the Markdown Cheat Sheet for help with formatting.

Habit Added by a Third-Party Service
Sometimes a Habit appears with text that looks similar to a3cb20b3-c655-4a9d-ade1-609cdda07e88, and a description of "This task was created by a third-party service...". It is known that Habitica itself creates these Habits, not a third-party service, but it is not (yet) known why. The Habit is harmless and no damage has been done to your account.

Solutions: Delete the Habit.