Establishing Your Tasks



Experiment: Don't be afraid to start one way and change things around later.

HabitRPG is flexible. Parties or Enterprise Editions may have special rules, but for most users HabitRPG is your "game", defined by your tasks. You can even ignore a feature's intended use, albeit with side-effects: listing wish-I-could tasks as dailies may lead to frequent deaths.

The following sections offer some ideas for setting up HabitRPG, whether you're starting out or revitalizing your lists.

Beginning= First-timer? Try this:


 * 1) Write down some things — off the top of your head — that you want to do today.
 * 2) Optional: Add a reward or two, if you can think of any. You might want short term and/or long term rewards (e.g. cookie, timed break, watch a movie, get a dog.)
 * 3) Add more items as you think of them.
 * 4) Start doing your tasks.
 * 5) Optional: Take brief rewards every so often, but don't use up all your gold. Save some for the movie tonight, and the dog later.
 * 6) As you work with HabitRPG, begin experimenting with the details (tags, difficulty, etc.)
 * 7) Adjust. Not earning your breaks often enough? Lower the prices. Earning them too soon? Raise them.

Start small, work your way up.

In HabitRPG, Start Small may mean keep your dailies list short at first. If you have many tasks you want done every day or most days before you go to bed, consider making some of them grey, so you can check them off, but you won't be penalized if you miss them. Later on, challenge yourself by assigning some of those grey tasks to a day or days of the week.

Be realistic. If you find you're missing tasks or dying often, re-evaluate your commitments. What is most important to do every day? Maybe some of your current dailies would be better off as habits, or even off your task list altogether. Focus on your current tasks and struggles.

You can also use an Active and/or time of day (morning, evening) filter to help you focus on what you need to do now.

See also Naming Your Tasks

Consider your current tasks and struggles.
 * -|What to List=''

If you're looking for a planner, or something to balance work/play, you may want to add most everything: habits, scheduled tasks, chores, tasks, recreation, etc.

If you're trying to establish a routine, you may want to list all the elements of that routine either as individual items on a checklist or in the notes section (visible on mouseover).

If some of your tasks are already tracked in project management software, determined by others, or thoroughly mastered, you may want to limit your list to one specific area.

For example, you might limit your To-Dos to next actions or critical items. You might limit your Dailies to neglected items. You might use HabitRPG for single area of focus: Fitness or Health.


 * -|1 Task or 2?=If being faced with lots of tasks is overwhelming, or you want to challenge yourself:
 * Combine tasks always done together into one single item: Morning Routine, Clean Kitchen. You can lists steps in a Checklist or in the notes area.

If you're having trouble getting started or overlooking steps, try:
 * Break tasks into smaller chunks.
 * Habit [Dashes]. Create an easy habit with the smallest quantity or time (set a timer) for a task. Start. Don't stop before the minimum. If you want to go on, do + for every extra round.
 * Enforced Breaks. In this case, pick your amount of work or time to work. Stop when the minimum is completed. Take a break. Do not skip the break! Go on only after a break. The Pomodoro Technique is an example of this. Lord Growl has provided an excellent description of how he integrates pomodoros with HabitRPG.

If you're under-performing with time-based tasks, consider result-based tasks.

Big/long project? No clear milestones? Consider listing Sessions & Final Result, e.g.,
 * Daily Project X for 20 minutes and To-Do Finish Project X
 * Habit 15 pages of reading, To-Do Read Book X and To-Do Read Book Y


 * Aim for excellence. Don't just wash dishes, shine the sink. Don't just wash the car, polish until it's gleaming. Do it to the point that you take pleasure in the completed work. This offers its own rewards.

This can be the exception to the rule that less is easier to start with. Sometimes more frequent is easier to remember, and/or means less to do at once.
 * -|How Often?=

The best way to work out how often to do a repeatable task might be to experiment. Pick something that seems likely to be memorable and achievable, and be ready to reevaluate.

If you have trouble keeping up with a task, changing the frequency or schedule might make it easier to get it done.

Tracking Infrequent Tasks

To-dos: if easy to remember and done infrequently and/or at unpredictable intervals, you can enter it as a to-do.

Dailies: if hard to remember, a daily (or habit) to check if the task needs to be done may help. Check if Trash is full, empty if needed can be completed even if the trash does not need to be taken out. Gain points for checking, penalty for failing to check or do when needed.

Daily Checklist: penalties for unavoidable obstacles (storm, cannot hang laundry outside) can be circumvented by adding a checklist with one item (e.g. raining). Mark checklist item done, not the task.

Adjusted Due Dates: for tasks done every 1-7 days, adjust the daily's due date manually. Example, every 2 days: if the task was done Saturday, and needs to repeat every 2 days, set due to M, W, F. If you miss it on Monday, then on Tuesday mark it as due T, T, S, M.

Challenges: a workaround for biweekly, monthly, seasonal, quarterly and yearly tasks exists, see The Keep:Monthlies in HabitRPG. This can also be used for school season/off-season (vacation) tasks. However, editing will have to be done on the challenges page.

See also: Trello Feature Request for more repeats.

If breakfast is disagreeable or difficult, set Difficulty to Hard, reap the extra points, enjoy the rewards and never mind that Johnny Habiteer says it's easy—unless you are in his party.
 * -|Difficulty={| border="1" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="article-table" style="width: 300px; float: right;"
 * +What Determines Hard?
 * }

Using the Advanced Options Difficulty setting:

It's meant to be simple. If the task is harder for you to get around to, or harder for you to do, label it Hard. If it seems easy, use Easy. Ignore if this seems tedious. It's designed to motivate you, not add extra work.

If you're tracking gold earnings closely, figure Hard at twice as hard as Easy. Medium is 1.5 (Subject to change.)

Tracking Difficulty through Checklists:
 * Daily Checklists items are worth one part of the whole. So, if you have five checklist items on an Easy task, each will be worth one-fifth gold. This is a fine way to track easy-to-forget and easy-to-do tasks, such as elements of a morning routine.
 * To-do Checklists are worth the same as the to-do. Example: new task Read Book set to easy with checklist items, Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3. Chapter 1 is worth 1 gold. Big hard projects can be tracked this way.

Tracking Difficulty with Habits:
 * A single + Effort Habit, clicked as many times as seems appropriate. Example: Wash Dishes daily. Usually you complete the daily, but after a party, you might click + Difficult habit to account for the extra effort. If desired, use the - for a slack job.
 * Several habits with Advanced Options difficulty set to HARD, MEDIUM or EASY habit which you click as appropriate. Bonus: Rapid Task Recording. Did five little tasks and don't want to bother to enter them as to-dos? Just click the easy habit five times. Spent 5 hours on a super-hard to-do? + HARD.
 * Individual habits to match some of your dailies and/or to-dos for specific amounts of extra effort. + 1 page Dull Difficulty book, + 1 hr Project X, + 15m exercise.

You can drag-and-drop items in your lists to reorder them. Here are a few ideas for ordering them.
 * -|Sort=
 * Chronologically or Routine: according to when you expect to do them.
 * By Priority or Urgency, so for example your top three MITs (Most Important Tasks) would be at the top of your to-do or daily list.
 * By worst (dark red) to best (green).
 * Mix and match:
 * such as Habits by worst-to-best, Dailies by Routine, To-Dos by Urgency.
 * or Top Three Urgent/Important Tasks followed by expected order of completion.

+ Habit, good for establishing, regular activity: + ''Read instead of TV. - Habit, severely restrict, penalize an activity: - TV during work/study time. Rewards, activities to balance: e.g. 1 gold for 1 hr. work, in 3 hours, you can afford 3 gold for ½ hr Reading/Rest. Reward Prices, encourage one form of recreation/reward over another: 5 gold 1 hr reading, 10 gold 30m web surfing.
 * -|Rewards={| border="1" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="1" class="article-table" style="width: 250px; float: right;"
 * +Quick Guide to Rewards & Habits
 * }

Don't Forget Custom Rewards explains the theory behind the rewards list. Basically, the Rewards list balances your tasks and habits, helping you balance work and breaks, and making room for play without idle procrastination, etc..

How Much for My Rewards? Consider: how often do you want to take breaks? How often do you want to be able to take treats?
 * To earn 1 hour rest for 4 hours work: if your tasks are about 1 hour long, your 1 hour reward should cost 4 GP, a 15-minute break would be 1 GP.
 * If your tasks are cleaning rooms in your house, and you want 1 reward for every two rooms cleaned, 2 GP reward.
 * If you want 1 sweet treat for 1 trip to the gym or X calories burned or 3 servings of vegetables, 1 GP for a cookie, etc..

Tip: If you find yourself taking rewards without recording them, or feel you do not have enough money for game rewards, your custom rewards might be priced too high.

What if my tasks are different? For example, what if I have tasks that are the same amount of time, but one's much harder and requires more breaks?
 * Use the difficulty feature: 1 hour of housework, hard; 1 hour of typing, normal (or vice versa).
 * Enter different amounts: 30m housework, 1 hour typing.
 * Just see how it goes, adjust values as needed.

See also Sample Custom Rewards

Tavern Tip: If you respond more to the thought of losing gold than losing health, try listing the bad habit in the rewards column.

Tavern Tip: Find rewards that are things you want and maybe would not treat yourself to normally.