Using the gamer mindset for steady improvement

[Hemlock]

This post is about a particular method I used to get out of a slump in my productiveness and which has led to slow but steady progress in my life since then.

The Background

About 100 days ago I decided to try the World of Warcraft demo. As you might guess this was during a point in my life of particularly low productiveness. I had just graduated college, was living at home, and was seeing it as more of a vacation then the time when I should be fighting my hardest to get my future in a good position.

Luckily, I managed to avoid falling deeply into that world and only wasted four days, but it was a pure waste of four days and by the end I felt miserable about the waste. My productivity had been decreasing since I got home and this was pretty much bottom of the barrel. I had shifted from video games, to anime, to video games, everytime I wanted to do something productive the want seemed to drag me into a game where I could falsely feel accomplished by leveling up my characters rather than myself.

[Hemlock]

The Insight

Realizing this I decided to make my life more similar to the games that drew my attention. So I introduced a leveling up system to my life. I already believed that life was the best game, it's just really hard to know the goals and whether you have really progressed in it. A leveling system in life makes progress you make more apparant, and provides motivation to keep improving.

The System

The system I use is simple. Every experience point is equivalent to normally doing something good for me. If I do something exceptionally good for me, or in an exceptionally good way I can get up to 2 exp a minute. If I am doing something good for me half heartedly, or something only kind of good for me, but not really what I should be doing, I'll get about 0.5 exp per minute. I can also get bonuses for making good things happen in my life. It isn't that exact, but that's my guideline.

I wanted my leveling to be fairly quick at first and then become harder as I got into it so I made a simple rule that every time I leveled up the next level would take 100 more exp. So it goes like this

To get to level 2 you need 100 exp, 3 needs 200 exp, 4 needs 300 exp and so on. This is of course with the amount of exp returning to 0 every time you level up. So your total experience earned at level 4 will thus be 600 (100 + 200 + 300) and the equivalent of about 10 hours of normal work. Feel free to change this how you please to better match your life, it fit mine at the time.

[Hemlock]

The Notebook

I keep track of all this in a notebook I have on me most of the time. I end up adding my entries of activites and experience gained in the down time between activities which could mean a dozen times a day or just once, or if I'm really busy after two days. My entries tend to look like this

9/21/10 Lvl 20 exp 230

wake up immediately - 25 exp
e-mails - 25 exp
calls - 20 exp
money manage - 10 exp
meditate - 30 exp
clean - 10 exp
get stuff for teaching - 20 exp
research - 10 exp
work on time - 15 exp
teach - 150 exp
talk with people - 15 exp
Chinese work - 300 exp
walk girlfriend home - 50 exp
reply for wedding - 15 exp
brush - 15 exp
asleep by 12 - 30 exp
Total = 735 exp

9/22/10 Lvl 20 965 exp
...

I'm now on Hemlock's life: Book 2, because I also journal in the back so notebooks can fill quickly.

The first few pages I leave as my achievement page which marks my when I leveled and how much experience I've earned. Mine look's like

Hemlock's Life: Book II

Lvl 20 -19,000 exp - 9/21 - Day 78
Lvl 21 - 21,000 exp - 9/24 - Day 81
etc..

[Hemlock]

The Results

On day one of doing this I earned 28 experience, it was day 3 before I was level 2. Slowly but steadily the amount of experience I gain in a day increased. So steadily in fact that throughout it has always been between 2-5 days to level up even though the amount of experience necessary to level up has gone from 100 to 2,400. This is especially impresive as a 4 day average to level up has been the same throughout my 100 days. So now I'm averaging about 600 experience a day, or about 10 hours of work. I still have alot of work to do, but this system has helped me alot and it seems like I will just keep on progressing.

This is more of an opinion, but I think it works so well because every day you know how well you did, you know what activities led to you improving and what wasted alot of your time. You review your day, and you review the importance of the activities you do. So besides effectively triggering that leveling up drive gamers (or ex gamers) like me have, it also makes sure you stay aware of how well you're using your time.

An Important extra: Bonuses

In video games when you reach a certain level new things open to you and you get some sort of gift for being a higher level, usually an ability. I've translated this into a sort of prize system. Basically every five levels I gain I can either go and do something I want to do, but wouldn't normally due to apprehension, or I can add bonuses to the experience gained by doing my most important activities. At level 5 I set up a month long camping trip with a friend and went for it. At level 10 I moved to NYC. At level 15 I introduced a bonus that would last for a month that gave me 100 experience for not reading manga or looking at pornography and at level 20 I allowed myself to spend a fair bit more than I could afford on a wonderful day with my girlfriend to celebrate our 2 year anniversarry.

I really like how this system turned the drive I had to play level up games into a drive for personal development. If it's useful to you use it. If you have any critiques for it, I'd love to hear it. All the best to all of you.

-hemlock

[Hemlock]

Oh and for you math folks who want to find out your total experience when you're a certain level it is (((Lvl -1)^2)/2 + (Lvl -1)/2) * 100)

[AHAInterestingTimes]

Nice insight!

Check out my article "Betatesting life: RPGs as a tool for personal development" in Interesting Times Magazine #1.

Also check out this app, it's a todo-list system with XP, kind of like what you describe: Epic Win - Level-Up Your Life

[ssandra]

Originally Posted by Hemlock

Oh and for you math folks who want to find out your total experience when you're a certain level it is (((Lvl -1)^2)/2 + (Lvl -1)/2) * 100

If you can make his in a software, you might sit on a gold mine

[Hemlock]

Hey AHa, looked over the article, interesting ideas about making game like adventures and goals in life, one of my friends was given a birthday surprise in a similar manner and seemed to really enjoy it, so it seems worth trying out some time. I saw that app when I checked if anyone else used this system a few weeks back, I think it's great that it exists (I was thinking of making it if it didn't) but I still like how versatile my notebook is.

Hey Ssandra, I realized the same thing a few weeks back and checked online to see if it already existed. It wasn't out yet, but the iphone app "Epic Win" seemed similar enough to be more than fair competition. I could make a version more like mine for more than just an iphone admittedly, but I don't know how to currently and having a similar product on the market already makes paying someone to do it much less likely to pay out (I'm guessing). But that's okiday, it works quite well on a notebook and has helped me alot, so it's an idea that has already benefitted me alot.

[curiouslyrandom]

I'm going to share this with my son! Although he'll probably think it's a lousy idea because MOM suggested it.

[Acting Like Godot]

Originally Posted by Hemlock

The Notebook

I keep track of all this in a notebook I have on me most of the time. I end up adding my entries of activites and experience gained in the down time between activities which could mean a dozen times a day or just once, or if I'm really busy after two days. My entries tend to look like this

9/21/10 Lvl 20 exp 230

wake up immediately - 25 exp
e-mails - 25 exp
calls - 20 exp
money manage - 10 exp
meditate - 30 exp
clean - 10 exp
get stuff for teaching - 20 exp
research - 10 exp
work on time - 15 exp
teach - 150 exp
talk with people - 15 exp
Chinese work - 300 exp
walk girlfriend home - 50 exp
reply for wedding - 15 exp
brush - 15 exp
asleep by 12 - 30 exp
Total = 735 exp

9/22/10 Lvl 20 965 exp

There's a free online program that will do all this for you. It's called "Joe's Goals".

[Artelus]

Originally Posted by ssandra

If you can make his in a software, you might sit on a gold mine

I made a very simple program in Java based on his idea. It's just an experiment to implement what I've learned in my course, nothing much. You need the newest version of Java installed on your computer for it to work though.

http://artel.us/pertrack.exe

[DanielMWood]

Haha, great idea.

All us gamers will love to make life a game and a chance to level upp.
Great idea and source of motivation.

I am going to set it up for myself and see what it generates.

[goldberg]

I tried this also, but all that I found was that I would spend time thinking about the rewards, and because it was myself that was imposing the reward system it was too easy to essentially just cheat and buy the reward without doing the work.

[Verlan]

Fascinating! I had given some thought on treating life like a game, but in the end it didn't seem worth the time it to track "exp".
Glad to hear you found a way to make it work!

[EmeraldWolf]

I tried this before and im constantly trying to get something similar to work. Ive had good success for a while but sticking with it is hard and picking the rewards is also tough. I never thought about turning it into an actual game with a front end. Mine always consisted of a excel spread sheet and some desktop backgrounds.