My Story with Self-Improvement
How I initialted self-improvement system and how it got improved
Before I will really go into explaining what I mean by Gamifying Life, let me lead you through my story with productivity and self-improvement. This will make easier for you to understand what I mean by gamified self-development without even trying to define it (I will do it in the next article).
Here is the outline of phases (gamified or not) that I went through in last years:
Unconcious Systems (Autopilot Game)
Small Steps Approach System (Procrastination Game)
Experiments Phase
Single Resource System (Energy Game)
Two Resources System (Energy-Dopamine Game)
Gamified Systems with graphical interface
Unconcious Systems (The Autopilot Game)
Until August 2017
In earlier stages of my life I had an illusion that I have a control over my life. By control I mean that I can decide and execute on concious level what I would like to do or achieve in medium to long term period.
Since my early 20’s I read many self-development books. Although they increased the level of my knowledge, they didn’t lead to any changes in my life. And I didn’t know how to overcome it.
Changes in my life were dictated by two forciful sources: subconcious mind and environment.
Subconcious Mind
There were sometimes weird events that made me to commit some long term activities without actually knowing why it was so easy for me to do them.
I remember one day more than 10 years ago when I entered the garage. In that very moment I had the abrupt illumination that I will be exercising and go on diet. Since that day I immediately start both exercising and dieting and my commitment was so strong that I stayed under this regime 2-3 years.
How was it even possible? I don’t know - this was just some strong subconcious directive. And I just executed it.
I call such situations a fool’s luck - without full understanding why, you change abruptly a behavior. You can’t reproduce it whenever you want for whatever you desire to achieve.
Environmental (Social) Influence
I don’t have anything really insighful here to write. Society and external conditions has huge impact on the way people lives. I am not any exception. Pressure or lack of it greatly influenced that I started/finished university, job and tens of other activities.
I would live this “life of Non Playable Character” until now provided I didn’t do some fortunate decision on August 17, 2017.
Small Steps Approach System (The Procrastination Game)
August 2017 - May 2021
Small Steps Approach System is, in my opinion, one of the most important aspects in self-improvement. There will be a special article dedicated to it.
Rules
Define very small thing you want to do every day.
Add it to the daily list.
If you did it - mark it in the notebook. If not - cross it.
Repeat every day.
Onboarding Stage
One usual but impactful day on August 2017 I finished Robert Maurer’s book The Kaizen Way and being under it’s influence I created, on a loose sheet of paper, a daily actions to do to every day.
And I started doing them, day by day.
This method was primitive and simple but it just worked. I started to do things I planned.
After few weeks when I established this habit, for the first time I had this great feeling of empowerment - feeling where you know that you are capable to do more than you were able to before switching to the new system.
Saturation Stage
Over months I started utilizing this method for everything - every aspect of my life. The number of “daily items” grew and grew up to 40 items to do every day.
Over months I started utilizing this method for everything - every aspect of my life. The number of “daily items” grew and grew up to 40 items to do every day.
I keep doing them and still thought this is the method that I just need to stick for years and I will have anything I want thanks to it.
However as time passed, it became clear to me that there is something wrong. Although I can manage to execute things I planned - are these actions meaningful? Do they really lead to results I desire?
Decline Stage
At some point of time, when I got employed and I hand’t that much time anymore, the method just collapsed. I couldn’t do all of planned items so I had to remove more and more items until there was less than 10 things to do and they were just habits that I established long time ago. Thus actually there was not need to track them.
There was also something else that was bothering me. Developed habits get corrupted over time. For example I develop a morning stretch habit and keep doing it for months. However with every month I was stretching more and more carelessly and the method didn’t have anything to punish me for this quality decrease.
The system was excellent for me in 2017 but with my progress I didn’t need to have a method was good mostly to launch doing new things. I needed method that makes me better at doing things and prevents activity corruption over time.
Experiments Phase
With the decline of Small Steps Approach System I tried to find a way to replace it with something better. However, I didn’t know what could be better.
I tried many things. Below I described few of them.
Going to a digital medium
April 2019 - today
First thought was to switch from a manual notebook to digital app. I started subscribing Todoist App and (partially) moved there.
There was indeed some improvement because I could for example set notification to remember to do something at desired time. However apart from such minor benefits, the digital form had the same liminations as the manual form.
Spreadsheet Games
2020
At some point I started to experiment with playing “spreadsheet” games where rules of the game were defined in a spreadsheet.
In the picture below you can see such a game that I played to improve my debating skills.
There was something really enjoying to play such games. However using spreadsheets required a lot of manual work from me and the longer I played, the more messy the whose setup was.
My first Game of Life
February 2021 - June 2022
Since I am a software developer I decided to write a program for myself instead of using annoying spreadsheets. At first I concentrated on improving my programming skills. I defined two different actions: learning programming and working on programming projects. I wanted to create a game that will balance these two.
Rules
To learn you need to spend Learning Points.
To get Learning Points you need to Level Up.
To Level Up you need to achieve specific amount of Experience (harder with every level).
To get Experience you need to do Programming Actions (e.i. +1 point for writing a line of code).
Terminal experience from my first gamified self-improvement application
This game actually never worked! This is because rules of the game was broken since beginning. The underlying assumption of the game was that I will prefer learning over working on the project. The truth was the opposite and the game didn’t enforce me to learn programming. It only had a logic to prevent me from learning if I didn’t spend enough time on working on programming project.
Even if the game was a failure I had a feeling that I go in a good direction.
Single Resource System (Energy Game)
May 2021 - June 2022
For a long time I wasn’t able to use my program to utilize a new system that I had in my mind. So I used Habitica for it. This gamified self-development RPG wasn’t designed for that purpose but it could be used for it.
Rules
There is a gold currency.
You receive amount of gold for doing good activities (e.i. programming or exercising)
You spend gold on rewards (for example 1 hour of watching videos on youtube or eating something sweet).
You cannot allow to go below zero with gold currency.
Onboarding Stage
This gamified system really worked and was much less distracting than using older methods. It kept motivating me to work on the project that I wanted to swtich to instead of using artificial setup in Habitica.
Saturation Stage
I manually change difficulty of the game few times so I need to do more in order get the same amount of rewards.
The method definitely worked when considering being better at programming and pusing with a project. I started to be able to do programming during evening and over weekends.
However this method had also side effects…
Decline Stage
First problem was the need to manually adjust the difficulty. Doing this was like punishing myself. So I rarely did it and the game stopped to be challenging.
But there was also second, bigger issue. Since there was only one resource (gold) there was no difference if I earned it by this or that action. This caused that I always prefer to choose one of them - the most comfortable one (programming) and avoid all others (most notably exercising).
After one year of the method I get out of shape and eat junk food almost every day. I didn’t do any exercises.
Clearly I needed a more sophisticated game: Energy-Dopamine Game
Two Resources System (Energy-Dopamine Game)
June 2022 - today
This method will have a special article in the future as of a special importance.
This is the most crucial system for me and it will always have a special place in my heart.
Why?
Because it fix my diet/exercising issues and really pushed the work on my project to time limit. It also eradicated almost all my bad habits.
Rules
There are two resources: Physical Energy and Dopamine.
You need to keep both of them above zero.
There are Energy Boosters activities that increases Physical Energy (e.i. exercising).
There are Dopamine Generators that increases Dopamine but decreases Physical Energy (e.i. Programming).
There are Dopamine Consumers activities that drains Dopamine (e.i. eating junk food).
The cost of every activity can vary every day. It depends on 14-days average of the activity.
Onboarding Stage
First two months of using this game-system was wonderful. It worked like magic - the difficulty of the game automatically increased with my progress and forced me to do more and more beneficial activities. The split into 2 resources didn’t allow me to cheat and abuse only one activity (programming) to get all rewards. I had to play honestly and with a care for my body.
Saturation Stage
The Energy-Dopamine Game slowly lead me through the Dopamine Detox. Slowly because it took one year to get to full time capacity and to eradicate almost all bad habits. It also boost my physical energy. I have never felt so energetic and healthy as nowadays.
Decline Stage
There were few problems with this method that became annoying to me over time:
The maximal time threshold was achieved. I get rid of habits and activities I considered non-beneficial and replace them with beneficial ones. Now there is no time space for further growth.
I started behave like a machine. Everyday I did same things. The method is a rigid one - it doesn’t promote spontaneity. Over longer period of time this is problematic.
The method doesn’t promote efficiency. It promotes pure labour. At some point what started to be more important to me is not to spend more time on some beneficial activity (programming some feature) but spending this time as efficient as possible (programming the most important feature). The method isn’t a good fit for performance improvements. I don’t even mention other techniques like delegating or automating. The method doesn’t have logic to push into such activities.
I needed something better!
Although the system is in the decline state I am “imprisoned” by it. On one hand the system is too good to drop it - it would drastically decrese my performance. On the other hand better games/systems are still under thoughts and programming development.
Gamified Systems with graphical interface
At some point, after hundreds of hours spend on programming, experimenting, reading and thinking I came to realization that I need to expose the software to people and make a business from it. It is evident to me that these types of methods are truly powerful if designed well. And they allow people to unlock the potential that is within them.
More about it in other posts.
To jest naprawdę fajne. Dzięki za tę opowieść.