I’ve been fascinated for years about gaming, and more importantly, the mechanics behind why games are so addictive, and how can we use that to our advantage.
There are lots of resources out there trying to help with this, and if you want to go deeper on it, two books I’d recommend are:
Super Better by Jane McGonigal – Amazon Link – this explains gamification in life
Indistractable by Nir Eyal – Amazon Link – this guy taught silicon valley how to make people addicted to things, and its the manual on “how to stop being addicted to things” (ie helping you cope with the addiction daily tech brings)
And as I keep researching this, I came across quite a cool video about gamifying your life – it’s easy to understand, and I’ve laid out the steps below as a summary for you:
The video is here
And here’s the summary of it:
Step 1 – have a target or goal that you’re aiming for – like rescue the princess – or write a book – what’s your target? What will your ACHIEVEMENT be?
Step 2 – Break the goal into mini achievable chunks – every time we complete a step towards our main goal, we’ll get a dopamine hit, and we’ll enjoy the feeling – this is an ACHIEVEMENT LOOP
Step 3 – Make your progress VISIBLE – in a game, you’ll have a progress bar – how can you make your own progress visible each day? write it down!
Step 4 – REWARD yourself for your achievements – you’ll get a prize when you kill the dragon – but find a reward that rewards you back (like new running shoes if you enjoy running (versus eating cake to celebrate lots of exercise!), or putting your savings in investments to grow it, versus buy a new phone (that goes out of date every couple of years!).
Step 5 – MIX IT UP – add variety to your day/process/project/work to give different challenges – if you were to play the same game level 8 hours a day 5 days a week, you’d be bored – don’t do that – mix it up!
Step 6 – CHALLENGE YOURSELF – when you start in your game, you don’t go up against the biggest and baddest boss – match the difficulty to your skill level – if its too hard, break it down into manageable pieces – if its too easy, add a time constraint to make it harder!
And now you’ve either watched or read through the six steps, let me ask you this:
Is it helpful?
Did you grow up surrounded by games (like me), and now you want to take what you absorbed from games to help you be even more successful?
Could you apply any of this to your life?
I’ll leave it with you, but hopefully it’ll help you,
Speak soon
Jamie