As I play with Habitica as my habit creating tool, I find that there are subtle ways of manipulating the system. I don't know that they are detrimental to the system, but I am documenting them because I find them interesting.

Because you get less XP from more established habits (Habitica's mechanic for habit growth), the system incentivizes you to focus on the habits that are less established. This is good.

But it also means you start prioritizing which habits to do at the end of a day when not everything can get done. For example, I haven't done my exercises for physical therapy yet, nor will I get both sets done.

My HP will be depleted if I don't do any of them. But I can write a zetel (a habit I'm really bad at) to get a bunch of points to level up before midnight. Then I can take the hit for the things I haven't done yet.

Similarly, in the to-do list (the one-off catergory), I created some todos several weeks back. They are horribly red because I haven't done anything with them yet. The redder it is, the more points I get. So I'm somewhat incentivized to create todos and not do them so I can get more points.

Weird.

Gaming Habitica Can Misplace Focus (Habitica #citation)

#toolong