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Avocation – plan routines, track progress, form habits

Watch your avocado grow as you develop positive habits and routines

Developer: David Joech
Price: Free
Subscription: $9 / £9
Size: 12.5 MB
Version: 1.4.2
Platform: iPhone

Avocation

Avocation is another habit-tracking app that aims to help users create lasting changes to their behavior – for the better. Instead of focusing on helping users to break bad habits, Avocation focuses on making new ones, placing the emphasis on establishing positive routines to improve their physical and mental wellbeing.

As a habit former, it’s not dissimilar from the excellent Streaks app, which also provides custom lists of daily tasks to track. But Avocation comes with a healthy dose of extrinsic motivation in the form of a virtual avocado plant, which grows as you tick off more and more positive, habit-forming tasks – representing your growth in a tangible way. Again, this feature is familiar, reminding us of the daily trees that grow after a good day with productivity tracker Forest.

Related reading: apps that infuse habits into your routine

So, on the surface, this app could perhaps be considered a cross between Streaks and Forest – but there’s a crucial difference. In Avocation, there’s no penalty for missing a day, only encouragement when you do nail those new routines. For some, this won’t be as effective, but the no-punishment model certainly has its appeals for those who don’t take well to negative reinforcement.

Your habits.

This USP may not be enough to warrant switching to Avocation if you’re already using Streaks and/or Forect on your iPhone. But if you’re looking for your first habit-tracker, this may very well tick all the boxes you need. Upon launching Avocation, users get the chance to populate their task list with a bunch of tasks in order to work towards a chosen overarching goal – like feeling less stressed or more physically healthy.

You’ll see items that help you form these new habits appear in the app’s main interface, which you can get to by tapping the central avocado tab. Avocation’s user interface itself is nice, offering cute buttons and a pastel color scheme. Ticking off an item is as simple as tapping it, and you can check on your progress across different habits with the pie chart button.

Tick tasks off.

But Avocation’s most charming feature is undoubtedly the virtual avocado you can watch grow. As you complete items, your avocado plant will grow before blossoming into a beautiful, full-grown horticultural beauty. You’ll be able to celebrate your habit-forming achievements each time you glance at it.

It’s a great visual reminder of your successes, and the developers hope that you’ll soon grow attached to it, Tamagotchi-style.

Grow your avocado.

It’s also useful that Avocation offers a further tab where you can learn more about the power of habit-development. This includes topics like “The science behind habits” and “The power of small changes.” It’s interesting to read through and learn more about the thinking behind Avocation.

While Avocation is a free download, a one-off $9/£9 in-app purchase unlocks unlimited habits, reminders, and more colors. The free version is suitable for tracking a few basic habits, but if you find it useful the premium unlock is needed to open things up further.

Learn the science.

Avocation is cute, functional, and works well. It might be the perfect habit tracker for your specific mindset. Unfortunately, it’s also fair to say that the app offers little in the way of features and functionality that we haven’t already seen before. The app’s avocado plant-based motivator is a nice touch, but your mileage with it may vary.