Gamification has been popular lately. Turning life or unwanted tasks into a point based game system. I think this can be useful, but I don’t think it should be the first option. Coming up with a point based system leads to those points being optimized, and that’s easy to become corrupted (see Goodhart’s Law).
There’s another version of gamification that’s interesting, where you simplify a situation and add constraints to increase the repetitions while focusing on a specific outcome. I came across this in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, through Rob Biernacki. As an example, a game could be passing someone’s guard, with limitations on the passer or the passee to vary the difficulty. This lets you practice a specific situation in close succession rapidly. It reminds me of the revolution in speed that Chip Kelly had in college football. He would plan practices to maximize the number of repetitions each player had. This had the benefit of not only getting more practice in, but the players had more conditioning.
Creating a habit gives me a new tool for playing. This is what I am reading - and by the way, I want to make my newsletter/posts shorter and more dense like this one. Just enough to set me on an adventure but short enough to keep me from feeling tied down. There's a gift in sticking with a thing, to be sure, and yet- I sure love to fly!
So I will honor the gift of this newsletter by creating a new habit. I'm going to make my newsletters shorter. I will repeat the action of giving myself this challenge. I will game my writing by bringing in a new "rule" that I can "enjoy": shorter and more essential.
Happy new year!
I used gamification differently. I didn't have a point-based system, so I never optimized for it. Instead, I could just redeem a reward when I did the task.
But lately, I just let my procrastination take over. Usually, it's a good indicator of stuff I am genuinely not interested in.