A serious game for students to acquire productivity habits Wouter Raateland, Konstantinos Chronas, Tim Wissel, Tim Bruyn, Bertan Konuralp, Mijael Bueno, Nestor Z. Salamon, and Rafael Bidarra Delft University of Technology, Delft, Netherlands Abstract. In recent years there has been an increasing shift from tra- ditional work to knowledge work. Students are not always well prepared for such a work mode and struggle with time and energy management, leading to stress and long unhealthy study sessions. There are many ap- plications aimed at developing productivity habits. A few of them are somewhat gamified, although they are especially focused on real-world to-do lists, lacking a strong narrative and appeal, especially to students. We present the serious game BusyBusy, specifically designed for college students. The game revolves around the capture and reflection steps of David Allen’s Getting Things Done methodology. By simulating aspects of student life, BusyBusy facilitates students to practice capturing action- related thoughts in their real life and reflect upon study activity choices in an entertaining and engaging environment. Keywords: Serious games · Getting Things Done · Habit building · Personal productivity · Mobile games 1 Introduction The rapid growth of globalization and the evolution of technology has created an overwhelming amount of information that people have to adapt to. One part of society that struggles to adapt are academic students, who face the challenge of balancing their academic goals and other activities in their life. The cur- rent education system falls short in preparing students for knowledge work [16]. Hence, an increase in anxiety and procrastination among students is being no- ticed [13,7]. Traditionally, procrastination is defined as the undesirable behavior of irrationally delaying a course of intended action, with the understanding that it may result in not ideal outcomes. Nonetheless, researchers found out that 50% of students procrastinate consistently at university [18]. Students who often pro- crastinate generally encounter less stress at the beginning of a semester, more stress later on, and generally suffer more often from anxiety than the ones who do not [20]. A common reason for stress is the overload of information and possible activ- ities. As the amount of time is finite, this overload means a number of potentially important items can no longer be processed. This creates a lack of control that results in stress [9].