Here is the main lesson learned in July’17 Round of my 5 Minute Perseverance Game.
I realized that I needed to write one more article before I was going into details of various use cases of self-gamification in my work and personal life.

And this article is about the necessity to be interested in the game-design.

If you, for example, are a manager and gamify the processes at work, then you will design games to motivate your colleagues and co-workers to carry out a task. When you gamify your life, you need to develop the games for yourself.

The interest in game design can, in fact, come naturally, and without effort. We all tried to bend the rules in our favorite games when we were children, or also later. We had that question looming over our heads was, “What if we play it another way?”

Sometimes we found that our changes made the games we played, even more, fun, and sometimes less.

So, we are natural game-designers. We might just not be aware of that.

Right after deciding to write the book “5 Minute Perseverance Game”, I started reading various books on game design. These books were later joined by books on gamification and Kaizen.

In Brian Tinsman’s book “The Game Inventor’s Guidebook: How to Invent and Sell Board Games, Card Games, Role-playing Games & Everything in Between!”, I saw the following passage about Richard Garfield, the inventor of the game “Magic: The Gathering”:

“For years, Richard had been playing around with ideas for a game that was ‘bigger than what came in the box.’ Drawing inspiration from a classic science-fiction strategy game called Cosmic Encounter, he envisioned a game that set up rules, then let every card in the game break them in different ways. Further, no player would really know all the powers every card might have — players would constantly be surprised. Only a genius could bridge the gap between imagining such a game and actually designing it. ‘I had no idea if such a game could be designed.’ Richard recalls, ‘But I decided to give it a shot.’”

“Wow,” I thought, “Isn’t it what a successful manager, a great boss, a brilliant entrepreneur, or an amazing project manager is? A genius who can bridge the gap between having an idea for a product, service, or business or personal development and doing it and demonstrating how this can be done? And aren’t our daily lives at work (and at home) the games having certain rules but with so many surprises breaking almost each of the rules?”

After I realized that, I sat there for a few seconds with an open mouth. I was in a public place when I had this epiphany, so I hurried to close my mouth and take on a nonchalant look as soon as I observed what I was doing.

A bit later I understood that the more I considered my work as a strategic game the more creative, and the more serious about the task I became. Truly serious, that is without drama but with utter concentration and attention for the task at hand. I’ve discovered a new (seeming) paradox for myself. The more I considered my work as a game and took with that care that I had fun while attending to my duties, the more diligent and efficient I became.

Here is the list of reasons why I think everyone should learn how to design games:

• Saying it with words of a chapter title in Brian’s Tinsman’s book on the game design, where he addressed one of the reasons why someone would want to develop a game, “It’s Fun.”
• You’ll relax, and the task at hand will lose that dramatic scent we all are perfumed with when we take our lives and our work much too seriously.
• You will have a glimpse into an incredibly fun and — in an inspiring way — strange industry, a magic land of its own.
• You might find out how your favorite games were designed and by that learn a little about yourself and why you like them.
• You might also find a connection between your favorite board or computer games and the job you are doing.
• You’ll discover new ideas and be inspired to create your own ideas for the task at hand or your team.
• Your newly won playful manner will make the people around you smile.
• You’ll relax and be more and more pleasure to work and be with.
• There will be less drama when something unexpected happens. You’ll be simply immersed in making the best possible next step of the game. In other words, you will be efficiently searching for a solution and realize it without wasting time on complaining of how the life turned out.
• You will enjoy the time and project management because you will recognize what these previously annoying and routine tasks of time, project and self-management are, that they are the components of your own game-design. And suddenly, you’ll have fun attending to them.
• And much more.

Another interesting thing I realized in July was that there was so far not a single round in the past fourteen months I play this game that I lost to my procrastination. Even in summer holidays. And a mirrored realization: I have not won it to zero either. Somehow I feel good about this. That is what probably a balanced life is: a constant improvement and also always enough space for further development, even if that space is organized sub- or fully consciously by my brain.

That also means I can also relax and become less critical about my abilities to design my own game. Or to worry, what is right and what is wrong when I plan a round. I can simply discover what ideas I have for every new game round, even if they might seem to repeat themselves. Because in truth they never repeat themselves, since every round, every project, every moment is new and shines in a new light if I only choose so.

So here are the results for July’17 round, which mainly consisted of fun, health and slowing down projects:

• Do something for fun, which is neither reading nor writing. -> 29 points out of 31 possible
• Develop content for “Tools” page on my site. -> 15 points out of 31 possible
• Finish “Cheerleading for Writers” / Work further on memoir collection “Everywhere at Home.” -> 11 points out of 31 possible
• Draft blog posts for Writing (especially, 5 Minute Perseverance Game), S1000D, and Business Rules. -> 11 points out of 31 possible
• Reading about, brainstorming, or acting on book (and other) marketing, publishing, writing craft improvement. -> 12 points out of 31 possible
• Sleeping at least 6.5 hours per night. -> 21 points out of 31 possible
• Straight posture for at least 10 seconds a day. -> 31 points out of 31 possible
• Sports, workout, or dance (at least two exercises). -> 29 points out of 31 possible
• Read a book in Danish. -> 8 points out of 31 possible
• Read a paperback book. -> 22 points out of 31 possible

Results Total for July 2017: 189 points out of 310 possible = 61 %.

With this report for July, I am stopping a detailed report on my projects. I will continue to play on multiple projects and report on the total points and the lessons learned. I realized that it might be hard for you to understand the details of each project I take into the game without an additional load of information. In order not to tire you, I will just share the lessons learned and epiphanies gathered along the way.

I also avoided reporting on lessons learned from each project in July. Instead, I will make a summary of the experience gained for each of my use cases of the 5 Minute Perseverance Game.

I will also post this material now on a more rare basis: about once a month. Again, in order not to tire you, but also to be able to provide content in other areas, I am working on.

For August, I am taking 21 projects into the game, of which 10 are concrete projects (as writing a certain book), and 11 are repeatable activities such as volunteer work, to develop a habit or to relax (exercising, keeping straight posture, taking care of the household and other).

References in this article:
* A part of this post’s content has been published in a slightly different form in an earlier blog post titled “Business Epiphanies: Managers Should Play Games and Learn How to Design Them.”

What is your opinion? Do you agree or disagree with the idea above that everybody should get some skills or at least a notion of game design? And why?

On the picture above: I discovered the results of this hobby project last Sunday as I walked downtown Aalborg past a hobby store with my family and friends. This large picture of a fairy tale princess made out of iron beads struck me with a beauty and realization: it was also done step-by-step, bead-by-bead. Most of the hobby projects take time and are often realized by taking small steps. Our satisfaction with the progress and sometimes sharing and showing the results to others are our rewards. And most of the time, there is no drama, no problem when we plan and realize the project. There is no fuss. Just the knowledge that we are doing it for fun and that we love what we do. So what would happen if we would treat any job, any task at hand at least a little bit as if it was one of our hobby projects?

What is this blog series about? You can find this out in its first blog post called “5 Minute Perseverance Game – Moving my Favorite Game to my Writing Blog.”

Copyright © 2017 by Victoria Ichizli-Bartels

Another month of open gamification of my life went by. I’ve played and learned a lot during this past month. Some projects in June (see the list below) were concrete projects, but many were generic activities. I found it sometimes challenging to distinguish among what I did during the day and attribute that to one or another activity taken into the game. For example, I found that some tasks could be assigned both to “Book marketing” and “Pitching new projects.”

My eagerness to gather as many points as possible led me to take more and more projects into a monthly round of the game. I wanted to challenge myself and see if I can achieve more. Well, this is typical for lives, and this is also standard for games. We always want to step up to the next level.

I might have jumped, thought, a little too high this past month. I did gather in total more points than in May (271 in June and 236 in May), but was that the goal? Or was the goal to manage the higher fraction of the projects I have taken over for the given month. Because if so, then I did worse. In May, I earned 69% of all possible points, and in June 60%. I can’t say how well my performance was in the months preceding May of this year because before that I haven’t analyzed my performance in the 5 Minute Perseverance Game as I did in the past few months. In the coming months and with more recordings, the picture will become clearer.

But the question about the goal of the game started occupying me. I thought having fun was the main aim. And it is. But I also noticed that I had to have a good overview of the game plan. Otherwise, I become overwhelmed and start having less fun. So stepping on a too high of a level might reduce the fun.

This need for a good overview is important in any game. I remember how in a board game where you build a map of a country with cards, I used to lose overview and become pretty restless as I noticed hanging more and more behind my rivals. And I also remember how I was having less and less fun in such situations.

So, taking on too many projects can reduce fun.

What is then the right number of projects for me?

I looked at my game book (see the picture above) for months preceding May and found that I didn’t take on more than ten projects. In April I even had only seven in that round. But I seemed not to have enough and took eleven in May and in June even fifteen.

There were many days when I was frustrated that I wasn’t getting “enough” points, “enough” probably meaning all, although I would probably not want to admit that on any of those days. I do now.

The question I have for myself today is, do I really need to gamify every activity I carry out every day? Even if only theoretically? In practice, it is impossible to do so because I can’t foresee at the beginning of the month (when I plan each round) what surprising commitments might arise in the middle or end of a month. But is it even important?

Yes, I did discuss before that even private projects might work well when gamified, become gratifying and fun both in recognition of what we do but also in making unlikable tasks fun. But do I have to take every single repeatable activity into the game? I don’t do it already today. There are things, which I do organically, like taking a shower, brushing teeth or preparing myself a cup of Espresso. I don’t give myself points for those activities, even if some of them might sound unusual for other people.

No, a game is about taking on a challenge. A manageable challenge, but a challenge nonetheless. OK, brushing teeth might appear a challenge at times, but I am not talking about those cases.

Now, I have it! I am speaking here about a fun challenge. Just as the Bob the Builder in the famous children’s cartoon asks, “Can we make it?”, I find myself curious about whether I can make some of the tasks, which at first glance seem daunting. My competitive spirit awakes and shouts cheerfully, “Yes, I can!”

The best thing about the 5 Minute Perseverance Game and its rounds go for a month, is that I can adjust my strategy for the next move or phase in the game as I want to, without attributing too much drama to what I managed or not during the previous month. I can just try out various strategies and adjust them along the way. Approaching time management as a game, was one of the best and gratifying discoveries I made in the past two months of blogging on self-gamification.

So for July, I have a new challenge for myself: to slow down, to relax and simply have fun. I am still taking a few work (including writing) projects into this round, but these are my favorite and doing them relaxes and entertains me.

Below are the results for June round of the 5 Minute Perseverance Game and my plans for the July round, with a few words why I am taking on one or another project/activity.

Results for June for each of the project (in points and percentage):

1. Working on new Projects: 26 points out of 30 possible = 87%
2. Cheerleading for Writers -> self-edits: 17 points out of 30 possible = 57%
3. BRWG CPF work (voluntary work in a professional community): 5 points out of 30 possible = 17%
4. BRWG Admin work and other S1000D work (voluntary work in a professional community): 6 points out of 30 possible = 20%
5. Book update and marketing: 22 points out of 30 possible = 73%
6. 5 Minute Perseverance Game Blogging: 26 points out of 30 possible = 87%
7. S1000D and Business blog: 9 points out of 30 possible = 30%
8. Learning Danish: 9 points out of 30 possible = 30%
9. Learning Chinese: 7 points out of 30 possible = 23%
10. Meeting and communicating with friends and family: 25 points out of 30 possible = 83%
11. Family and personal (official) matters: 20 points out of 30 possible = 67%
12. Household and un-cluttering (including the hard disk on my computer): 19 points out of 30 possible = 63%
13. Sports or workout (at least 1 exercise): 30 points out of 30 possible = 100%
14. Sleeping at least 6 hours per night: 20 points out of 30 possible = 67%
15. Doing something purely for fun: 30 points out of 30 possible = 100%

Projects for July 2017:

1. Do something for fun, which is neither reading nor writing.
   Reading and Writing comes very naturally to me, but I must admit that my eyes and my brain need sometimes to switch off from the pages patterned with letters. Images, views, or objects having nothing to do with text (like beads out of which I made two bracelets for my children yesterday) are the welcome but also challenging break. Challenging because if you ask me what I do to relax, my automatic reply is, “Read a book.” Even putting this activity in the first place for the list of projects in this round was a challenge. 🙂
2. Develop content for “Tools” page on my site.
   This task is work, but more like a riddle-solving-game and I simply love it. Especially, because I realize that the results of it will be used by other people, who asked for it.
3. Finish “Cheerleading for Writers” / Work further on memoir collection “Everywhere at Home.”
   I sent “Cheerleading for Writers” to my editor on July 1st, so the rest of the month in this project will be devoted to my friends Marcy’s and my memoir collection, which I call “Everywhere at Home.” I am quite excited about selecting stories and drafting new ones for this book, which I am going to publish next year. A happy gamer (that is me) can report today that she had a great idea for the structure of this book, which was not quite clear until now.
4. Draft blog posts for Writing (especially, 5 Minute Perseverance Game), S1000D, and Business Rules.
   Since I won’t manage to stop my brain from thinking about the future, then I could use its drive creatively and let it come up with ideas for the content which I will post in the future for you.
5. Reading about, brainstorming, or acting on book (and other) marketing, publishing, writing craft improvement.
   I find myself very insatiable after learning and brainstorming on something new. And since I would like to improve my book marketing habits and possibly also try my foot in traditional publishing, then I want to learn about it as much as I can during this month. Articles saved and printed, books downloaded. Now it is time to learn. Summer holidays are perfect for this purpose. Even during my school years, I remember being more eager to study during summer break than during the regular school days.
6. Sleeping at least 6.5 hours per night.
   I’m trying to increase the time here as I noticed that my idea of not needing much more than 6 hours a day of sleep didn’t confirm. I found my usual headaches recede after a longer sleep night. Even if I was very reluctant to see this at first. So now I am challenging myself to sleep a half an hour longer each night. From the first three nights in July, I managed to do this only once. So this is definitely a challenge. But I am up to it.
7. Straight posture for at least 10 seconds a day.
   I’m standing or walking around like a question mark. I tried several times to straighten my posture once and for all, but it never worked. So now I call for help kaizen and the minute-or-so-perseverance game for help. The task this month is to manage at least 10 sec a day to sit, stand or walk straight during another activity. I am doing it now and earning my first points this month. 🙂
8. Sports, workout, or dance (at least two exercises).
   I am moving here to the next level by adding one more exercise since this activity was very successful in June (100 % done).
9. Read “Heksens Arving,” a book in Danish by a friend and award-winning YA fantasy writer Sascha Christensen.
   I would like to improve my Danish, also because I will teach in September two training courses in it. And what is a better way to improve one’s language than by reading a book written by a good friend?
10. Read a paperback book.
    I usually read on my Kindle, but I have many paperback books which I wanted to read and then give them further because I usually don’t keep books. I like sharing them. So, I would like to support a habit which will with time make some of our bookshelves a bit lighter.

I will be posting less during the summer vacation in July. However, I will continue playing the game and report about at the end of the month. I will recommence my work end of July, as well as blogging.

If you play this or any other game, then have fun with it, and all you do.

What is your opinion? What is the primary factor that helps you keep an overview of all your projects and activities? Is it also fun? Or is it something else? And why?

On the picture above: My score sheet for June 2017. Just recording and counting the points is already fun, and then seeing the results is simply uplifting.

What is this blog series about? You can find this out in its first blog post called “5 Minute Perseverance Game – Moving my Favorite Game to my Writing Blog.”

And now on how my 5 Minute Perseverance Game (5MPG) is progressing for various projects:

Results for days 26, 27, 28, 29, 30 of the round June 2017 of the 5MPG: 10, 10, 10, 9, 9, points out of 15 possible for each day.

Results for days 1 and 2 of the round July 2017 of the 5MPG: 10 and 9 points out of 10 possible for each day.

Results Total for the week 26 (end of June and beginning of July) 2017: 48+19=67 out of 75+20=85 possible (79 %)

Results Total for June 2017: 271 points out of 450 possible = 60 %. That is more points than in May but less percentage of what I managed of the total possible.

Copyright © 2017 by Victoria Ichizli-Bartels

The traditional way of learning a new skill is first to learn about it then try it out. This approach applies to learning how to drive, how to play various games, how to use a computer. Of course, there are exceptions, and the 5 Minute Perseverance Game was such an exception for me.

After having played it for more than a year, I am still learning about it. I have discovered recently that there is some fundamental wisdom to why it is working.

One of these pearls of wisdom known for a long time is Kaizen.

Here are some definitions of Kaizen:

• “Japanese term for a gradual approach to ever higher standards in quality enhancement and waste reduction, through small but continual improvements involving everyone from the chief executive to the lowest level workers. Popularized by Masaaki Imai in his books ‘Kaizen: The Key To Japan’s Competitive Success.’” *
• “Kaizen (改善?), is the Japanese word for “continual improvement.” In business, kaizen refers to activities that continuously improve all functions and involve all employees from the CEO to the assembly line workers. It also applies to processes, such as purchasing and logistics, that cross organizational boundaries into the supply chain. It has been applied in healthcare, psychotherapy, life-coaching, government, banking, and other industries.” **

I didn’t know about kaizen when I first played the game, which I would later call the 5 Minute Perseverance Game. In fact, I wasn’t searching for it to understand why the game was so much fun for me. I just played it and had fun.

An activity that always been fun to me since my school and university years is reading. So it was reading, or rather a curiosity about a book that did the trick.

I lived in Denmark (as I also do today) and was about to start a project for a big Danish company on behalf of another Danish company. So when I heard of a seminar called “Danish Workplace Culture,” I immediately wanted to attend it. The workshop was fun, valuable, and eye-opening in many respects. The seminar instructor reminded me of a book, of which I’ve heard previously but forgot to check it out. The anecdotes the instructor shared from the book ignited my interest to such an extent that I checked on the book as soon as I was back home that day. I downloaded a sample, and a short time later, I bought it.

The book is “The Year of Living Danishly: Uncovering the Secrets of the World’s Happiest Country” *** by Hellen Russel. In it, a British journalist reports on her experience of settling in a country with a different mentality and working culture from the one she grew up and learned. And the title of the book says it all: it is about understanding why the Danes are so happy and well in themselves, even if they have some of the un-coziest weather conditions in the world.

I loved the book so much that I checked whether Hellen had written some other books too. And she did. Her second book is titled “Leap Year: How to make big decisions, be more resilient and change your life for good” ****. The book is as fun and as revealing as the first one written by Hellen. However, the chapter with the title “Finance — Go Money On My Mind” rang the loudest bell for me.

This chapter is where I first learned about kaizen and how the philosophy of small steps can improve any area of life including personal finances. At least, this is what Hellen applied it to. Hellen learned about kaizen from Dr. Robert Maurer, Director of Behavioral Sciences for the Family Practice Residency Program at Santa Monica, UCLA Medical Center and a faculty member at the UCLA School of Medicine, whom she interviewed for this chapter of the book.

I kept coming back in my mind to the concept of kaizen and the fact that it seemed to be so well proven and well-used approach, but still so little heard of. I decided to make a search kaizen at the largest online book retailer. The first book that appeared and seemed to be most purchased and most liked was “One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way” written by the same person, whom Hellen Russel has interviewed for her book. Robert Maurer was the one who wrote it and several other popular books on small steps and kaizen.

I downloaded a sample of the “One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way” and started to read. I couldn’t stop at first. Only the necessity for a sleep and family and other commitments calling helped me stopped reading. As I read the book, a realization came, again and again, that this is what I am doing with my 5 Minute Perseverance Game. I am applying kaizen.

Here is how Robert summarizes his book “One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way”:

“The succeeding chapters are devoted to the personal application of kaizen and encompass six different strategies. These strategies include:

• asking small questions to dispel fear and inspire creativity
• thinking small thoughts to develop new skills and habits — without moving a muscle
• taking small actions that guarantee success
• solving small problems, even when you’re faced with an overwhelming crisis
• bestowing small rewards to yourself or others to produce the best results
• recognizing the small but crucial moments that everyone else ignores.”

When I looked at this list I saw that the 5 Minute Perseverance Game answer with a Yes to each of the above, including the information in the introductory sentence:

• I apply the 5 Minute Perseverance Game to myself. I self-gamify my life. So it is a personal application.
• When given only with a short amount of time (5 minutes, for example) to address a task, I can only ask myself small questions.
• The thinking of “small thoughts” occurs all by itself, as I move further from the beginning of any game round. At the start of a month, when I start a project (or a phase of a project) I do still think “big thoughts.” But the limited time again comes to help, and every day it becomes easier and easier for me to make the next move in the game, and the thoughts about it become smaller and smaller, quieter and quieter, and by that more and more pleasant.
• Again the 5 (or less or a bit more) minutes limit the actions that can be taken.
• The brilliance of a short time allows addressing only the small problems.
• The points I give myself are the small rewards, and I discovered that gathering and counting them, as well as the seemingly hard work and challenge to gather as more of the points as possible, brings much more fun than supposedly big rewards of recognition by someone else.
• Limited time helps me to concentrate on the given moment because I want to make this little step work, otherwise, I get no point. With this, I notice more and more the small moments, small events on the way. And the project becomes an enjoyable process and path, instead of being a goal, something to be finished with.

It is amazing to discover that something you do and have fun with, appears to be based on a fundamental and well-tested wisdom. It feels empowering and reassuring.

I am grateful to have discovered about kaizen and gamification, and that unknowingly to myself I have applied both simultaneously to my life.

Inspired by Robert Maurer’s approach in his book “One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way,” in a number of the following posts I will consider various examples and scenarios where the 5 Minute Perseverance Game can be applied.

What is your opinion? Robert Maurer compares small steps (kaizen) to large steps (which he calls innovation). Which do you think are more efficient to address a challenge: small or big steps? When and why?

On the picture above: Plants are amazing kaizen masters. Their gradual and almost invisible progress gives amazing results. Here: a majestic yellow beauty at the Aalborg Zoo.

What is this blog series about? You can find this out in its first blog post called “5 Minute Perseverance Game – Moving my Favorite Game to my Writing Blog.”

Results for days 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25 of the round June 2017 of the 5 Minute Perseverance Game: 12, 10, 10, 7, 7, 7, 9 points out of 15 possible for each day.

Results Total for the 3rd week in June (week 25) 2017: 62 out of 105 possible (59 %)

References in this article:
* http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/kaizen.html
** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaizen
*** http://www.helenrussell.co.uk/books/the-year-of-living-danishly/
**** http://www.helenrussell.co.uk/books/leap-year/

Copyright © 2017 by Victoria Ichizli-Bartels