10.17.2012

Gaming Motivation

I've added another agent to my staff lately. It was inspired by a technique Jerry Seinfeld used to motivate himself to write jokes everyday in order to improve his craft.

Stuff we want to do daily doesn't fit well in a typical to do list. It's not very motivational to see the same reminders over and over, it feels more like a hamster wheel than a productivity booster. But with a simple change it can become addictive as well as rewarding.

The change is called a 'chain.' Joe's Goals is a simple, and free, implementation of the idea. Which is basically this:

On the left you have a simple list of things you want to do or not do. New habits, essentially. On the right, you have the days of the week. You may have something on the left like: exercise, meditate, stop smoking, eat more vegetables, etc. On the right you have the days you want to do this: everyday, every other day, work days, Fridays, etc.

Now you just click the day you did the thing you wanted to do. Or, if it's something you want to stop doing, you can also flag the times you slipped. On Joe's Goals it might look something like this:





This changes the game, psychologically. You start seeing a picture of your successes and by giving yourself a little gold star (in the form of a green check) you create little chains of accomplishments that become more and more motivational as they accumulate.

It could probably be enhanced by adding accomplishments you can unlock when you accrue a chain of a certain length, which may perhaps change the green check icon to something of higher status, and/or put some sort of badge on the row. And if you're into peer pressure, maybe an option to push an unlocked accomplishment to social media.

Make this your home page and it's game on!

1 comment:

  1. Nice one -- I've always appreciated Seinfeld's approach, but never seen a simple implementation of it like this. Thanks.

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