I Use These Tools to Gamify My Habits so I Can Stay Creative and Healthy

Reading Time: 3 mins

I’m a gamer I admit it.

I love turning things into a game, especially things I usually procrastinate on. This type of gamification keeps me interested and motivated. It’s especially helpful on bad weeks when I can only do the bare minimum to keep myself progressing.

I built this “gamification system” over the last several months using the following tools:

Habits App

This app allows me to add widgets to my home screen to track my habits.

I’ve set up 4 small habits that are easy for me to achieve daily. For instance, one of my habits is to walk 1000 steps. The small nature of this habit is to encourage me to start. Once I’m out walking I’m more likely to keep going.

The habits you set up are completely unique to you but this works well for me once I have them dialed in.

Once I complete a habit, I tap the widget and it’s marked as done. I can see how well I’m doing overall by how complete each ring is. I can also view the progress of each habit in the app.

Having these apps on my phone’s home screen keeps them top of mind which encourages me to tick them off each day.

Fitbit

I wear a fit Fitbit to tell me the time, and to a lesser extent track my step count. At least that was how I initially used my Fitbit.

Now that I use it to its fullest potential I find it’s a great way to gamify my exercise experience. The metrics, charts, and daily goals encourage me to get active throughout the day. I also have a home screen widget on my phone to show my current step progress towards my daily target.

If I don’t reach my step goal by 8 or 9 pm you can bet I’ll start running up and down the stairs until I do!

My Water Bottle

A surprising recent addition to my list is my new water bottle.

Inspired by Ev Chapman’s recent recommendation, I bought a 1 Litre bottle to replace my smaller 500ml bottles. This bottle also has measurements and times printed on each side and this is where the magic lies for me. It’s amazing how something as simple as the times printed on the bottle motivates me to keep sipping away on water throughout the day.

It’s also big enough so I don’t need to refill it very often so it can sit at my desk while I’m working. Highly recommend!

Other Tools Of Note

Todoist - This task management tool has the best interaction when marking a task as complete. Super satisfying.
Notion - My custom Tweet writing dashboard motivates me to interact with it each day to write Tweets.
Pomodoro Timer - When I’m finding it hard to start something, I’ll start a Pomodoro timer to get over that initial hurdle.
Obsidian - My daily note is set up like a list I can cherry-pick things to work on from.
My Changelog website - This has a stats page that shows my audience stats as well as the number of pieces of content I’ve created.

Stuck for ways to make healthier choices and stay creative? Try gamifying your habits and systems.