I rediscovered Habitica at the start of this year, 2019, and fell in love with it. Despite reviewing it in 2017, and using it for some time, my use of Habitica eventually tapered off as the year wore on. However, I’ve started using it again, specifically with the Pomodoro technique. If you want to find more about either Habitica, or the Pomodoro technique, I have posts on both of them.
At the start of this year I started using both the Pomodoro technique, and Habitica again, and I wanted to go over how I use the two together. There are different ways you can do this, including integrations with third-party apps and tools, however I do it manually. I find this is a lot more efficient, and takes out the hassle of automating it for not much gain.
There are various ways that you can plugin apps into Habitica, and automate the use of the pomodoro technique, but I don’t do this. I’ll cover this later in the post, but first I’ll go over how I use the Pomodoro technique with Habitica.
I have one habit that tracks how many pomodoros I have completed and how many I have broken. When I complete a pomodoro, I click on the plus button to up the habit by one. If I break a pomodoro, or do not complete it, I hit the minus sign. This does damage to me, and loses me mana. At the bottom of the habit, you can see a plus and minus section. This shows me how many pomodoros I have completed, and how many I have broken during that day. It lets me keep on top of how much I am working, and how many pomodoros I have completed and how many I have broken.
In addition to this, I use the dailies feature where I have a target for the amount of pomodoros I want to hit. This is usually four for the week day, as I don’t count school, which is most of my day, in, so it means I do two hours of work when I get home on average. For the weekend, it’s two as I don’t do as much work in the weekend. Also note that I use the pomodoro technique when I want to concentrate for a large amount of time – sometimes I do a little work, something else, and so on, so how many pomodoros I do does not accurately reflect the total amount of time I work.
Of course, the daily for the weekday is not active on the weekend, and the one for the weekend is on active in weekdays. These dailies help me do a set number of focused work a day, as if I don’t complete it I’ll take a lot of damage.
I then use Tomato Timer, which is a completely free and simple website to time my pomodoros. I only really use the pomodoro timer, as I don’t usually time my breaks unless I am doing something like revision.
That’s how I use Habitica with the pomodoro technique. It’s relatively simple, and I like it as it lets me get on with my tasks and not have to fuss with various third-party apps, and end up just micromanaging the pomodoro integration with Habitica that it uses up more time than it saves.
Third party extensions
There are third-party extensions that allow you to more closely integrate Habitica with various pomodoro tools. Please note that I haven’t used any of these, so I’ll give you a brief overview but I won’t be able to rate or recommend a certain method. I’ll be using the Habitica Wikia, specifically the Pomodoro section, to give you some of this information.
Chrome extension
Update: As of March 2019, the Chrome extension has been removed from the Chrome store, as the developers are focused on improving bugs and user experience.
With the Habitica Chrome extension, you can sync Habitica with two websites, Pomodoro Tracker and Tomatoes. Despite the integrations being subject to bugs, the Tomatoes one is the suggest integration as it is more functional. These integrations allow you to automatically log your done pomodoros, and if you break the pomodoro, to mark it as broken.
Android
If you are an Android user, there are third-party scripts available which work with the Tasker app. Then, you can use the Tasker-habitrpg code, which can be found here, to link Habitica to the Tasker app. Tasker can then be configured to trigger Habitica tasks automatically if you use a compatible pomodoro timer on Android such as Clockwork Tomato.
If you want to do this, the Habitica has an entire page dedicated to guiding you through the process, and I strongly suggest you view that here. Note that this cannot be done on iOS.
There are a few other options, for MacOS and Google Tasks, however these have not been updated in a while and updated.
I find that by linking the pomodoro technique to Habitica, it allows me to stay on track and do a certain amount of pomodoros. This keeps me on time and on track, and I suggest you give it a go. If you want to read more on Habitica, I have a full review here.
If you want to find out more about the Pomodoro technique, you can view my introduction to it here, and find out if it is right for you here.
For those struggling to stay on top of things and form new habits, I would suggest both Habitica and the Pomodoro Technique – you’ll see your productivity dramatically increase.
