Most days, my brain feels like it is constantly on overdrive. I struggle to exist happily in silence, everything tries to get my attention, and I have a bad case of magpie syndrome where I get lost in the rabbit hole for hours when I should be focusing on important work. As a result, I've been doing a lot of research lately on productivity crap, but how on earth can I become a better, more solid adult?

Spirit City Earlier this week, Lofi Sessions was released on Steam. It's a productivity tool disguised as a cute and cozy video game that lets you design your very own Lofi Girl or Synthwave Boy and place them in a customizable bedroom. You can even choose a little spirit pet to nap with you. In fact, it has shaved half an hour off my work day.

I dressed Virtual Molly in a cozy hoodie and sweatpants combination and decorated the room with tons of fairy lights and Polaroid photos (somehow it has to look a little like real life). I could take a nap and let my virtual self join me in bed, or I could let her knit by the fireplace. For now, she's sitting at her desk tapping away at the keyboard, just like me. It's neat.

To add to the cozy lo-fi vibe, Spirit City comes with a playlist of beats you can listen to when the game is open. I chose "Uplifting Spirit Infusion" in the hopes that it will give me the energy I need to get some work done while I'm slowly getting over my third cold of the year. In other words, look at what I have written so far. I bet it will work.

OK, sorry, no more gamey talk. This is really helping now. Spirit City's big productivity tool is the Pomodoro Timer. The Pomodoro Timer basically divides up your work time so that you can take as many breaks as you want before a time to fully focus on the task at hand, a short break, and a longer break to recharge. This is becoming an increasingly popular technique, and I myself have found success when I remember to actually take advantage of it.

Spirit City's Pomodoro timer is quite adjustable, so I set up three rounds of 20 minutes of work and five minutes of rest. In addition to that, there is a habit tracker and a to-do list. The former allows me to check off tasks that I intend to do repeatedly throughout the week. I now make sure to drink a glass of water every morning before I drink my coffee.

Everything work-related, such as writing this article, is on my to-do list. Every day I check things off the list, and when I finish the timer, I get a little extra experience based on my spiritographer level. I can use that experience to buy new clothes or decorations for my pad. In other words, in the near future, you will offset a little of your productivity by looking even better than you do now.

Down the road, you can also tinker with various settings and collect new spirit pets. By changing the activities of my virtual self, the time of day in the game, and adding sounds of rain, vinyl, and wind, I can attract new creatures that will happily lounge around with me. This is a clever way for me to experiment with different vibes and find my perfect goober companion.

I confess that I am quite susceptible to this kind of gamification of life. Maybe that's why my brain is always unusually fussy, but things like "Spirit City" step over the line between gaming and life support in a way that I really rock at. Besides, I always wanted to be a lo-fi girl with a cool spirit animal companion. Now I can.