One of my favorite hobbies is to make to-do lists. The only thing more enjoyable than making a to-do list is to check off everything on that list.

One app in particular can make your to-do list and New Year’s resolutions that much more exciting. I present to you HabitRPG. If you’re a writer or a list-maker and you’ve got some stuff to do this year, here’s a look at how this app can not only help you accomplish these goals, but how to make it insanely fun and quite possibly addictive.

1. Set Effective & Reasonable Goals

In honesty, it’s all about the wording and the due date. You can make it as specific (write 3 pages a day) or as vague (work on manuscript) as you please. This can help goals seem manageable. Some days you have amazing you-can-do-it days, and other days you’re sick and can’t lift a finger. You know what you can and can’t handle, so give yourself some credit where it’s due.

The timing also helps you know what needs to get done and when. This app helps you manage your goals in three columns: habits, dailies, and to-do tasks.

• Habits are little things you want to be better at every day. These are things like 1 hour of productive work, eat something healthy, or give a compliment. They’re things you wish you were better at, but they can happen as many times as possible in a day.
• Dailies are the things you want to do every day, such as write 3 pages or edit for an hour. They are things you want to achieve every day, rather than once in a lifetime. I throw in fun things like read and post on Instagram along with things like drink enough water and morning exercise to remind myself of fun and challenging things I want to do.
• To-dos are those mega-monumental things that you need to get done. That manuscript being one. This is probably where you can put most of your resolutions such as travel, get a promotion, graduate, or whatever you hope to accomplish in 2015.

  

2. Reward Yourself

The main plug for this app is that you can reward yourself—from making healthy eating choices to cleaning the whole house. Every time you do a task, you get experience points and money (not really, but wouldn’t it be nice to get paid for keeping up with the dishes?)

You can use this money to buy gear for your avatar, just like any RPG game. If you fail to do a task, your health gets docked a few points, depending on the severity of the task (you can set this yourself).

You also get random rewards that fall like manna from heaven. This comes in the form of eggs of various pets, potions to hatch them, and food to turn them into steeds. It turns into a game of collecting these items.

The most important thing about setting a goal, is to actually reward yourself for doing it. If you go through life and count up all the things you didn’t do, then how can you expect to enjoy the things you actually accomplished? Be sure to reward yourself through the game—and real life!

3. Do ALL the Things

As mentioned, the point of making goals is to achieve them, right? HabitRPG has been a major help to me, because I have the lists right there as a constant reminder of what I want to do and when it should be done. How often have you set resolutions, only to remember what they were on December 31st?

The good news is, you don’t have to do it alone. You can team up with friends and create a party so you can see how your friends are doing on their goals. You can complete quests together by working together to complete your tasks.

All I can say is that this app is ridiculously fun and rewarding. I hope that my explanation made sense. Throughout this post, I’ve made some links to their FAQ so you can read further to make sense of it all.

What are some of your resolutions, and what are you doing to punch them in the throat accomplish them?