Results for Day 2 of the Round May 2017 of the 5 Minute Perseverance Game (5MPG):
5 points out of 11 possible.

Results for Day 3: 7 points out of 11 possible.

Are there any projects or types of activities unsuitable to be gamified, or in this case, taken in the 5 Minute Perseverance Game?

I don’t know an answer to this. Or rather my answer changes over time.

I used to think that contractual projects, as well as time with my family, are too “sacred” to be gamified.

But interestingly enough the point system help me often to stop commentary in my head when I have to perform some tricky or lengthy tasks.

For example, I had to analyze a long document and provide a written report on it. At another time I feared to implement self-edits into one of my books projects. In both cases, giving a point for each bit of the task done (a section or paragraph analyzed or edited) did the trick, and at some point, I forgot to give myself and record the points. The work went then smoothly. And it became a fun task to do. On top of that, telling about that approach to my customer served as a brilliant small talk and ice breaker at a meeting. My excitement (and possibly also quirkiness) brought smiles, and we could dive into the documents I analyzed with ease.

OK, you might say. Those experiences have to do with work. But what about your personal life and your family?

I haven’t played the game when it comes to playing with my children or spending free time with me. These come naturally, and I simply enjoy those times.

But I do use the game when it comes to taking care of official matters for my children, my mother, our vacation planning and other. This month I have a project/activity I attend to and give myself points for doing a bit of it (about 5 min) every day. I call it during this month “Family matters (including vacation planning).”

I have also played the perseverance game to develop healthy habits. When it comes to having enough sleep, I do allow my inner teenager or child take over, and as a result, I go too later to bed, while I still had to wake up early in the morning. So for two months in a row, I gave myself a point each day if I slept at least 6 hours that day.

I did the same with sports, although that one didn’t work out (yet) as well as with sleep.

So what do I think now after playing this game every day for almost a year with one or more projects every day? I believe that my experience will change every month or even every day as I play every project and every round of the game. For example, some of the projects were a bit tricky at the start of the round and went easily toward the end. The others like sports got a lot of enthusiasm from me at the beginning but then went for some longer sleep.

The great thing about this game I love the most is that I never have to finish it. I can try various projects and at different times of the year, different circumstances in my life and altering states of my mind.

Giving them 5 minutes a day for a whole month offers these projects a real chance for progress. And when I play the game then those changing circumstances, one of which is my mood, don’t bother me anymore but instead help me to investigate various strategies of the game in varying conditions.

What is your opinion? Do you also think that any project can be played in such a perseverance game or do you think that there are limits to gamification?

On the picture above: My son inspects the results of a longer project – growing crystals in a salt solution. Initial dismay that there were no larger crystals visible lifted when he discovered some perfect and glittering cubes at the end of the thread. Finding and saving them in a box helped to verdict the project as a fun one. 🙂

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”.

Next blog post will address the main helping factor for success in perseverance game and gamification as a whole.

Copyright © 2017 by Victoria Ichizli-Bartels

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

Almost a year ago, in May 2016, I published a little booked called “5 Minute Perseverance Game: Play Daily for a Month and Become the Ultimate Procrastination Breaker”.

It is a game I play every day and which became my favorite. This game consists of making little steps in various, especially large and taking a long time, projects. These projects are especially those large “things” we want to pursue but seem not to find time to do them.

My dear friend and writing teacher Menna van Praag introduced the game to her writing students, including me. We were all scared of our writing projects failing to succeed in continuing or finishing them. Menna suggested that we write each day for five minutes and support each other in the process. The game helped me to step over my fears and procrastination as I wrote my first novel “The Truth About Family.”

Then I shared the game with my fellow writers in Aalborg, Denmark, where I live with my family. My fellow writers were hugely inspired by the game, and I was blown away by the result I achieved while moderating the first round of the game in a little Facebook group I created for this purpose. I managed to write more than 6000 words just by writing 5 minutes, at times a bit less, sometimes a bit more, but never longer than 15 minutes, and sometimes not writing at all, every day during a month.

One of the friends reported that this little game helped her break her writer’s block and finish the manuscript of the book, which was long overdue to be sent to her editor. Another writer reported that after a long break she started writing again. Seeing their experience and mine inspired me to write the book above.

I structured the book as a description of a board game. Thus, I had to develop a system of how to play this game. I had big fun developing the rules, and writing the book. In the book, I have suggested that the progress in the projects you take into the game earns you points, which you can count by the end of the month and find out who, you or your procrastination, and what is the exact score.

So, in the process, you don’t have to fight your procrastination in a serious way. You simply play a game with it and melt it in the process.

Thus as mentioned above, I have organized the Facebook group, where we played the game until recently. I called this group Procrastination Breakers’ Club. And just like in the ice-breakers during the team building events, where you melt the ice among the participants by playing a short and fun game, we in the Procrastination Breakers’ Club (or as I love to abbreviate it, PBC), melted the ice of procrastination by playing the fun 5 Minute Perseverance Game (or 5MPG).

And today I bring both, the game and the club, onto my blog. So there is no commitment as it is often in a group. You can follow, join or not into the conversation as you like and I will continue reporting about progress in my projects and especially about lessons learned. Because the best learning, as I found out while researching for in my little book about the 5 Minute Perseverance Game, is done through the playing games.

Happy 5 Minute Perseverance Game (or however you call the game of pursuing your projects) to you!

On the picture above: My little book on perseverance in the company of the many board games we have at home.

Copyright © 2017 by Victoria Ichizli-Bartels