5MPG, May 2017, Day 1: Number of Projects to Gamify

Results for Day 1 of the Round May 2017 of the 5 Minute Perseverance Game: 7 points out of 11 possible. See the explanation below.

“Gamification is the application of game-design elements and game principles in non-game contexts.” (Wikipedia)

At the time I wrote the book “5 Minute Perseverance Game: Play Daily for a Month and Become the Ultimate Procrastination Breaker” I used to take only one project into the game.

But recently I realized that the point system could benefit many of my projects, not only the writing ones, and not only the ones I wanted to do but neglected. It could also benefit also the consultancy projects, which I did anyway since there were contractual commitments. I didn’t “play” these projects for the whole month, as I do for my book and personal projects. But I did apply the point system to tricky tasks.

However, this game was also perfect for those tasks, which are my escape when I procrastinate something else. These are the “famous” laundry, cleaning, learning something new, while surfing the internet and reading periodicals in my Inbox, etc. I realized that especially in the case of those “escaping-to” projects, the one-point-per-project-per-day system (one for laundry, one learning a topic of interest for five minutes, etc.) is a good braking and stopping point to turn on to the other projects, which hadn’t been attended to yet. I can’t earn more than one point (or another fixed amount of points) per project per day. These are the rules I set for myself at the beginning of every calendar month, which corresponds to the length of one game round. The ambition to earn more points help me to stop doing those escape-to tasks for longer periods and attend to as many projects I want to do as possible on the given day and month.

So for this month, I took eleven projects in several different areas. It means that can earn maximum 11 points a day and 321 points in total now in May.

The number of projects varies for me from one month to another, depending on the seasons and holidays, as well as on the number of important projects. The relevancy is determined by their urgency and frequency of appearance, especially the visual one in my thoughts. Wishes of a heart often come in images.

I will address the art (types) of projects in the next post.

A question to you: How many of your projects would you “gamify”? One or more and why?

On the picture above: My daughter, Emma, in December of the last year, at an indoor playground. These colorful plastic balls and this photograph reminded me of the infinity of the projects that could be exciting for each of us, and which we could take on at various points of our days, months, years, lives. But at any given moment, we can only handle one of them efficiently.

Copyright © 2017 by Victoria Ichizli-Bartels