Saturday, February 16, 2013

Habit RPG: To-Do List RPG

For quite some time I have wanted to create a to-do list App that is also an RPG. I have many index cards with UI concepts written on it, equations for EXP, general story progression, and so on. Although these ideas were there, I did not know any programming and had no desire to commit a great deal of time to something that might not work.

Anyways, I have always imagined a to-do list RPG that makes my life more efficient (EpicWin was a good attempt at it, but it was a VERY thinly veiled to-do list), but recently I found someone creating just the app I wanted, and it is called "Habit RPG." It is a to-do list with the form factor and features of an RPG.

As you accomplish tasks, you get rewarded with gold and EXP. Get enough gold to buy items that make it slightly easier to level up (Sword that gives a +5% EXP bonus) OR items to recover HP. Get enough EXP to get access to more stuff. If items linger in your to-do list for too long, your HP and EXP takes a hit.

The system itself is surprisingly robust, and I am very excited for the future of this app. Their Kickstarter is nearly over, and it is fully funded (There will be native Android and iPhone apps on the way). Video games do a great job at addicting us to negative behaviors (Wasting time but feeling like we've accomplished something), and it's about time that those same shots of dopamine be used to make ourselves more productive.

I only post this because I wanted to do something like this for a long time.

3 comments:

  1. I'm going to try it out. Also looking into supermemo.

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  2. Hi there!

    My name's Gabriel, 'nice to meet you'. Sometime ago I discovered your blog and since then I have been following it. I have already read all of your posts. First of all, let me say that we share the same passion for the SRS and its raw potential. I believe that if it is used in the right way ALONG with some other specific methods it can totally change the 'rules of the game' (I hope you know what I mean).

    Reading your blog I came to the idea of making a blog about X stuff and 'SRSing' every post on it (I think you talked about it in some post so I can't literally say that it's 'my idea') . In my case the 'X stuff' would be 'education stuff' since it is directly related to my career. After that I would attach the file with the SRS cards to the post so all the fellow readers would be able to download it. The main idea would be that they would be able to acquire the useful info posted in the blog in a more easy and straight way. The question is: what would be the best model of SRS card for this? Let me explain it.

    At first I thought that I would put a sentence per card and maybe I would cloze a word or some part of it for the purpose of making my brains work when reviewing it.

    The problem is that after doing X cards about a concrete topic it was quite hard to visualize mentally the links between all the cards. I could tell multiple small bits of information about a certain topic but I was unable to recall a solid web of links in certain circumstances like a formal conversation.

    After a while I came across the Tony Buzan's books series. I have to say that I learnt a lot of them. One of the most valuable learnings I made was to find out about the power of mind maps and how they represent the natural way of our 'mind's flow/thinking process'. Because of this I started to do a new kind of SRS cards: mindmap cards. After doing them I clozed small parts of it doing multiple cards of the same map. This helped me to acquire a strong mental image of the mindmap making me able to recall all the links in it at any occasion.

    The problem that I found is that all my mindmaps represents my personal mental pictures about Y/B/... topics and thus I don't consider that other people would have the same picture I have about Y/B/... topics. So, is sharing these kind of SRS cards worth of it? Or are they personal and untransferable?

    In conclusion, my questions are: which model of SRS card do you think would be better for 'SRSing' a blog post and sharing it with other people in a clear way? The first model? The second model? A third option?

    I know this is a quite a long e-mail, so I really would appreciate if you answer it. I think you are a person with a valuable opinion about these kind of topics, so I am going to be waiting for your answer. Thank you in advance.

    My best rewards,

    Gabriel.

    ps. I am from Spain, and you could say I self-taught myself English, so excuse me for my poor language skills and the lack of clarity in some paragraphs.

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  3. LittleFish, LittleFish, wherefore art thou?

    I hope ye ha' not given up on writing. I can also attest to how difficult it is relinquish even small amounts of SRS time for the purpose of writing.

    Alas! Please keep writing.

    Best,

    The Lord

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