The Habitica Planner is a central feature used to organize the user's Dailies, Habits, and To Do's. Users can view these tasks and click them when completed for Experience Points and Gold Points.
- In the Habits section, the user can see how many times they've done a particular habit that day. Positive habits are marked as (+number), and negatives marked as (-number) at the bottom of the Habit. The user can also tab between the "All" tab, which shows all of their habits, the "Weak" tab, which shows all of the user's weaker habits in yellow, and the "Strong" tab, which shows all of the user's stronger habits in green and blue.
- In the Dailies section, the counter is similar, but measures the user's current streak with a particular task. The user can tab between the "All" tab, which shows all of their dailies (complete and incomplete), the "Due" tab, which shows which dailies remain due, and the "Not Due" tab, which shows completed Dailies, or Dailies that are not due on that day.
- In the To Do's section, the user can see all active To Do's that still need to be clicked in the "Active" tab. If a To Do has a checklist, an additional display shows the number of checklist items completed. The user can tab between the "Scheduled" tab, which shows tasks needed to be done in the future. These can be added and edited to include a date by using the "Show More" option by scrolling over a task. The "Complete" tab shows all the To Do's the user has completed.
- In the Rewards section, the planner shows items that are available for purchase once enough Gold Points have been earned. In the "All" tab, the user can see all Rewards that are either set automatically by level and unpurchased equipment, or items set by the user. In the "Custom" tab, the user can see custom rewards that they've chosen. In the "Wishlist" tab, items on the user's wishlist can be seen.
Above the planner, the user can use the search bar to search for a particular task, which can be helpful if the user has a large list in their planner. Next to the search bar is the Tags drop-down, which can be used to view tasks by their tags. Read more about tags and tag filters here.
Even though the Habitica Planner is very useful in increasing productivity, it has some weaknesses. In particular, it is not appropriate for tasks with complex hierarchies and dependencies between items or tasks that involve coordinating multiple contributors. Below are some examples of ways you can utilize the Habitica Planner:
Combined Approach[]
An example that follows the combined approach
Scheduled events and actions can be entered as items in the Habits list.
Tasks that repeat monthly, such as specific bills, can be entered as Habits or as To Do's in a monthly challenge.
Dated actions and events can be entered as To Do's. One's regular schedule items can be entered as Dailies. Unscheduled tasks can be listed either by priority above or below the schedule, or in between by order of completion.
Side-by-Side Calendar[]
Browser Calendar[]
To view Habitica tasks alongside a calendar, install a browser add-on, such as the Chrome extension Google Calendar (by Google) or Checker Plus for Google Calendar for Firefox. Alternatively, use a split browser extension, and display a web calendar in one pane and Habitica in the other. Firefox allows you to set a bookmark to load in the sidebar. Windows users (with Windows 7 or newer) can achieve a side-by-side split window by having the tabs of their browser open in different windows, and dragging the windows to opposite side of the screen one at a time.
Projects[]
Example methods of tracking time. The first two examples are To Do's, the third is a Daily and the last two are Habits.
Tracking simple projects in Habitica:
- Add a unit of time, a step, milestone, and/or next action for each project to Habitica. In this case, the sub-steps would be tracked elsewhere. This works well for moving forward projects that are difficult to break down into steps (e.g. writing and revising a book) or contain multiple repeated actions.
- To Do: Take Car to Garage (next action) for project Road Trip to Alaska
- To Do: work on Project X 1 hour
- Daily: one document for Prepare Documents for Client Q
- Habit: next step in Project Z
- Habit: work on Project Y 2 hours
- See more ideas on the page GTD with Habitica
- Checklists can also be used to keep track of steps toward a larger goal. In order to help motivate yourself and personalize your task, markdown can be used. In addition, tags can be used to group a certain task together across multiple columns of the Habitica Planner.
If you're putting most or all of your tasks into Habitica, tags and tag filters can be a big help. For example, active or urgent tags can be used to filter out tentative and on-hold items. You can also use tags to separate different projects.
Additional Resources[]
- Tips and Tricks: Check out the Dailies page for how to implement tasks that repeat every X days or occur on certain days of the week.
- Integrations: See the Extensions, Add-Ons, and Customizations page for programs that allow Habitica to interact with third-party programs or apps (these are classified as "Integrations" under the Type column). Extensions like Zapier are great for working with existing calendar tools, as are Google Apps Scripts.