Focus Bear vs. Habitica: Does Habit Gamification Work?

‍

The internet is a distracting place, and in comes a variety of productivity apps to help. Focus Bear and Habitica do their job a bit differently but share the same goal of helping their users be productive and stick to their habits.

‍

Which app is better? Let’s explore the features.

‍

Focus Bear

Focus Bear is a desktop and phone app that blocks distractions and makes habits easier to follow.

‍

Focus Mode

To make it easier to get into deep work, Focus Bear offers customizable focus modes for any activity or work you are doing. Start your Pomodoro session and get work done.

To keep distractions away, you can block websites and apps that aren’t relevant to the type of work you’re doing. During a focus session, you can configure the app to block every website and app besides the ones that you definitely need for work. This “allow-list” only approach can work better for people who are easily distracted.

Habit Stacking

You can set morning and night routines to start your day on the right foot and develop good habits.

Most habit apps send you push notifications to remind you to do your habits. These can be too easy to ignore so Focus Bear covers the entire screen of your phone and computer instead so you’re definitely in the zone to do your habits.

Progress Tracking

The app will automatically track your progress on set goals, so you can improve and adjust them according to your needs and understanding.

Productive Breaks

Breaks are essential to productivity and staying focused, especially if you are working at a desk and have bad posture. Focus Bear recognizes that and will notify you every 20 minutes to get up and stretch and even do pull-ups. This reminder also takes over your entire screen.

But, don’t worry, it won’t interrupt calls or pop-up during meetings because it automatically detects if your microphone or camera is in use. You can also enable “office mode” for appropriate break exercises that you can do around other people (doing a set of pushups in the office might raise a few eyebrows).

Habitica

If you want your productivity apps to be more adventurous and unique, Habitica might be for you. It is an RPG-based productivity app that offers more than improving your productivity.

To-Do Lists & Daily Goals

Habitica uses gamification as an incentive to complete tasks and goals. The more tasks you complete, the faster your character level ups. You can also create daily goals and time them to maintain a productive day.

‍

Habit Tracker

The app makes great use of its RPG theme by rewarding the users with experience points and in-game gold for upgrading gears for doing the task for the day or pressing “+” and reducing the character’s health bar for pressing “-” or not doing the task.

‍

Rewarding System

Rewarding yourself is just as important as taking breaks, and Habitica lets you set your rewards. You can exchange the in-game currency for a reward set by you or get items for your avatar. There is also a feature to do “quests” with friends.

Which App Works Better?

Both Focus Bear and Habitica shine in their own way. If you’re a gamer, Habitica might be right up your alley. But gamification isn’t for everyone and some might find the character-building incentives distracting.

‍

It’s worth adding that the reliance on push notifications to remind you to your habits may not work for some people. Focus Bear was designed by a guy with ADHD and is well suited for people who get distracted easily and might otherwise forget to do their habits.

‍

Try out Focus Bear and Habitica and see which one resonates more with you.