Daily Logging and Spending Habitica Gold (Day 4)

Revisiting Sleep

Today is the third morning of your sleep training!  Congratulations!  Last night should be the last night of sheer misery you have to put up with.  I hope you were particularly lucky and last night you actually fell asleep quickly.  If not, don't worry - tonight is hopefully your night.  Turn to your SLEEP page and fill in your best guess as to when you fell asleep last night and when you woke up today.  Jot down a note or two about how you feel - are you better rested?  What's the worst part of this process?  Don't be afraid to vent - it will just help you feel more grateful when this problem is licked!

Nagging To-Dos

I imagine at this point you have some to-dos that are hanging over you - either things you've put in Habitica, or just nebulous "should"s that pop into your mind at awkward times.  (Why is it always when you can't do anything about them?)  Before we start knocking them off, I want to make sure you get the right credit you deserve for doing them.

First, we're going to start a Daily Log in your notebook or paper.  (If you've been using paper for this, I hope you've found some kind of clip to keep it together so the pages don't get scattered).  If you've been thinking about switching to a notebook, now is a great time!

Start a fresh page.  You can title it DAILY LOG if you like, but I don't bother since it's obvious what it is as soon as you start writing in it.  On the first line write today's date, the day of the week, and any appointments you have today (if you are doing this in the evening, feel free to start with tomorrow instead).

Try and capture some of those to-dos.  If there is no progress you can make on them right now, think about what the next physical action would be for them, and add it as a to-do in Habitica.  (Sometimes there is a phone call you have to make during business hours, for example).  If there is something you could do to move the to-do forward, you have a choice.

1. If it doesn't seem too overwhelming, do the thing, then write down that you did it in your daily log.  These are just bullet points, so keep it simple. Just write "-email supervisor re: meeting time for Friday", or whatever.  No need to write a story!  Since you've done the thing, put a checkmark over the dash for it.
2. Now, there's a good chance the thing you've thought of is too overwhelming, which is why it remains to-do instead of having been done.  Here's what I do, and what I recommend you try.  Set up a Habit in Habitica called "Five minutes of anti-procrastination", or something similar that speaks to you.  We're going to do exactly what it sounds like - we're going to set a five-minute timer, and start working on the to-do.  When the timer goes off, STOP!  This is not a way to trick yourself into starting, hoping you will continue.  If you lie to yourself like that, I don't believe it will serve you in the long term.  Click the habit to get your gold for the five minutes you spent and congratulate yourself for starting on it.  If you actually did get inspired and want to keep working on it, first get up and walk around for a minute.  Then set another 5-minute timer and go for it.

Spending Your Gold!

If those goes well you'll have some Habitica gold to spend, and you should have gold already from your bedtime routine the previous few nights.  You can see how much gold you have at the upper right corner of your screen.  It looks like this:

I have 17 gold right now, plus some pennies.  How do you spend it?  First, set up a reward for yourself.  This is the right-most side of the screen.  There will be some rewards there already, that are things to wear or mounts you can use.  If those motivate you, by all means, buy them!  The real power of Habitica comes in rewarding yourself with things you actually want.

What would you be doing right now if you weren't reading this?  What are the actual fun ways you spend your time?  Not the things you think should be fun, but the things you actually choose to do when you decide it's okay to stop work for the day.  I have a lot of art projects that are started but not finished, and I had to admit to myself that starting an art project is fun, but finishing it is not.  So rewarding myself with a half-hour of working on one of them doesn't work as a reward, because I don't actually want it in my heart of hearts.

One classic thing you can do is reward yourself with watching TV.  Pick a show you love and would like to re-watch from the beginning, but not one you love so much that you can't stop once you start.  (I'm looking at you, The Good Place.)  Maybe you'd like to re-watch Breaking Bad from the beginning, or maybe there's a gently funny show like Brooklyn 99 you'd enjoy revisiting.  Either way, choose carefully, because you will ONLY be allowing yourself to watch it when you have the gold to do it!

I implement this by having a reward that's "One unit of TV", which costs 15 gold.  If I watch a single episode of a half-hour show (isn't it funny that we still call it that, even though they're only 20 minutes long?), that's one unit.  An hour-long episode is two units.  For the rest of the day, give this a try.  Work your habits (remember each one can be done multiple times a day!), your dailies, and your to-dos.  As soon as you have enough gold to watch an episode (whether that's 15 or 30 gold), hop up and watch it.  Watch it without guilt, knowing that you earned it!

Note that you might need to adjust the amount of gold that your reward costs. Remember that this is all up to you.  If it feels like it takes forever to earn an episode, reduce the amount of gold needed.  If it feels like the balance is off the other way and you're constantly watching TV, increase.  You've got this!  Also, note that the reward for a habit has to immediately follow the action.  So when you click your habit or to-do, notice your gold going up and remind yourself "I'm that much closer!".  If you get in the habit of thinking "ugh, still not enough", it won't work as a reward.  Part of the beauty of Habitica is that you reward yourself twice - once with gold, and once with a bigger reward!

You may not feel that you have time to watch TV at all, or not have the capability. There are plenty of other ideas for rewards you can implement instead, that might work better for you.  One common type of reward is a treat to eat - something you wouldn't normally have, like a bowl of ice cream in the middle of the day, or a special kind of tea you enjoy.  The other common kind, if you have more money than time, is rewards that you buy.  So there might be a pair of shoes or a book you've been wanting - you can set them as a reward, and watch yourself get closer to earning them with your hard work!  There are some ideas and a good explanation at the Habitica wiki link for Rewards; but do take note that there are some items that moralize about food and exercise, so if you have any issues with disordered eating, you'll want to make sure you're in a good space before visiting the link.