Monthly Archives: May 2020

What is the Setup for Your Real-Life Games?

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Photo by Adi Goldstein on Unsplash

(An excerpt. Read the full article on Medium)

Definition of a setup

So, we have a great goal in the Self-Gamification game. Now, it’s time to think of a setup defining the frames, in which the Self-Gamification game player in you can reach the goal of making your project feel like a brilliant game for the project game player part of you.

Before looking at the setup of the Self-Gamification game, let’s find out what the word “setup” means in general and in games.

In general, a setup is:

“the way in which things are organized or arranged.” — Cambridge Dictionary

In video games, it would be the hardware and the software you need to set up to play a specific game.

In a board or a card game, these would be one or more boards, decks of cards, dice, figurines, and possibly others.

The description of how to lay out the tools you have so that you can start playing the game also belongs to the setup.

The setup in the Self-Gamification game

So what is the setup in the Self-Gamification game?

Hm, that is a tricky question.

Once, I wrote a little book, 5 Minute Perseverance Game, and I wrote it before I had heard about gamification. I structured this book as a description of a board game. Like most board game descriptions, it has a section called “Setup.” It’s short in the book, so I quote it in full length here, and I also add the title and the beginning of the subsequent section called the “Flow of Play and Rules.”

“Setup

You put yourself in front of what your project demands to be carried out. That could mean a notebook and a pen or a computer for a writer, a guitar and sheet music for an aspiring musician, or a dictionary and exercise book for a language learner and so on.

Then you sit, stand, lie down, or take whatever other starting position you need to work on your project. And…

Flow of Play and Rules

You play.

Well… you work on your project. “

— Victoria Ichizli-Bartels, 5 Minute Perseverance Game

Thus, anything you need for the project would be a part of your setup also in the Self-Gamification game.

But this is not all.

Anything you are aware of about your project game player (yourself), especially at the moment of turning that specific project into a fun game (or a set of games), is a part of your setup.

(Continue reading on Medium)

More on Turning Life into Fun Games

Books

“Gameful Life” Series

Gameful Project Management
Self-Gamification Based Awareness Booster for Your Project Management Success
(Book 1)

Gameful Healing
Almost a Memoir; Not Quite a Parable
(Book 2)

Gameful Isolation
Making the Best of a Crisis, the Self-Gamification Way
(Book 3)

Standalone Books

The Who, What, When, Where, Why &
How of Turning Life into Fun Games
A Compressed Version of the Self-Gamification Happiness Formula

Self-Gamification Happiness Formula
How to Turn Your Life into Fun Games

5 Minute Perseverance Game
Play Daily for a Month and Become the Ultimate Procrastination Breaker

Online Course

Motivate Yourself by Turning Your Life Into Fun Games
Practice Self-Gamification, a Unique Self-Help Approach Uniting Anthropology, Kaizen, and Gamification
(on Udemy)

The Goal of Turning One’s Life into Fun Games

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Image by the author

(An excerpt. Read the full article on Medium)

An acronym: SG = Self-Gamification

The goal, the mission, and the win-state of the SG game

Thus, let’s define the goal of the SG game and find out what is your mission in this game.

The ultimate goal in the SG game is to make your reality engaging, entertaining, and fun.

You choose a target (which can be a challenge, a project, or activity) and take on a mission to turn this target into a fun, self-motivational game, which is enticing for the player (yourself) to engage and enjoy.

You could say, the SG game is mostly a game designer’s game. You play the role of the self-motivational game designer. But also that of your first player testing your games.

The win-state in the SG game is the state of flow.

“There is virtually nothing as engaging as this state of working at the very limits of your ability — or what both game designers and psychologists call ‘flow.’ When you are in a state of flow, you want to stay there: both quitting and winning are equally unsatisfying outcomes.” — Jane McGonigal, Reality is Broken

So, you, as a designer of your self-motivational games, are on a quest to design (or re-design) your challenges, projects, and activities. And do that in such a creative way that it facilitates the player (yourself) to enter the state of flow willingly and effortlessly, whatever the challenge, project, or activity game might be, and whatever the player (yes, yourself) might think of it.

(Continue reading on Medium)

More on Turning Life into Fun Games

Books

“Gameful Life” Series

Gameful Project Management
Self-Gamification Based Awareness Booster for Your Project Management Success
(Book 1)

Gameful Healing
Almost a Memoir; Not Quite a Parable
(Book 2)

Gameful Isolation
Making the Best of a Crisis, the Self-Gamification Way
(Book 3)

Standalone Books

The Who, What, When, Where, Why &
How of Turning Life into Fun Games
A Compressed Version of the Self-Gamification Happiness Formula

Self-Gamification Happiness Formula
How to Turn Your Life into Fun Games

5 Minute Perseverance Game
Play Daily for a Month and Become the Ultimate Procrastination Breaker

Online Course

Motivate Yourself by Turning Your Life Into Fun Games
Practice Self-Gamification, a Unique Self-Help Approach Uniting Anthropology, Kaizen, and Gamification
(on Udemy)

How to Conquer the Information Overload Gamefully

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Image by the author

(An excerpt. Read the full article on Medium)

The challenge

In the internet interconnected world, the information becomes a much too easily accessible good.

There is even a well-known term for that — the information overload.

“Information overload (also known as infobesity, infoxication, information anxiety, and information explosion) is the difficulty in understanding an issue and effectively making decisions when one has too much information about that issue. Generally, the term is associated with the excessive quantity of daily information.” — Wikipedia

Today, during the COVID-19 pandemic, when most of the world is online for big chunks of the day (especially during the working hours), there is even more information every day. Those of us, who don’t work on the “front line” during the pandemic, can express our generosity mostly online nowadays. So there are valuable short and long bits of information in all possible digital formats. These come from official sources, press, entertainment industry, our families, friends, bosses, employees, colleagues, communities we joined, and social media we frequent. But there are also libraries giving free access to books, films, and more, museums, zoos, culture centers, and theaters offering online tours and performances, and so many more.

The workdays for all of us have become a fusion of our work and personal lives.

The oncoming information, especially the one about the COVID-19 situation, lockdowns, and reopening, affects both our work and personal lives, and it has never been more challenging to draw a line between them.

The main effect of that multidimensional information overload is a profound confusion and a feeling of being lost.

How can we handle all this overflow of the information, especially when we start a workday?

The gameful solution

A perspective change is often the best solution in confusing situations.

How can we view the information flow differently?

I discovered that the gameful approach to life provides effortless and joyful resourcefulness in all areas of our lives and most circumstances, including times of crisis.

While writing the Book 1 of the “Gameful Life” series, Gameful Project Management, I have discovered that what I was creating with my non-fiction books and articles on Self-Gamification, were not the ideas to replace the well-establisher others. Instead, I was creating “awareness boosters.”

Even the subtitle of the Gameful Project Management book has the phrase in it: Self-Gamification Based Awareness Booster for Your Project Management Success.

To find out what an awareness booster is and how information coming upon us can become such a booster, we need first to identify what awareness boosters are. Let’s start with awareness.

(Continue reading on Medium)

Self-Gamification is an Art and a Game

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Image by the author

(An excerpt. Read the full article on Medium)

Self-Gamification is an art

Self-Gamification is an art of turning whatever we are up to into fun and engaging games for ourselves. It is the application of game design elements to our own lives.

It is also a self-help approach showing us how to be playful and gameful, and bringing anthropology, kaizen, and gamification-based methods together.

In Self-Gamification, we are both the designers and the players of our self-motivational games, which are the challenges, projects, and activities turned into games.

But wait a minute! It is an activity too. You need to be active in the design and play of the self-motivational games.

So it is also a game.

Self-Gamification is a game

I was surprised to have had this epiphany only recently, after gamifying my whole life for three years consistently, and parts of it for an even longer time.

But on the other hand and when looking at it anthropologically, it is not surprising at all. I wasn’t thinking that much about the game. I was playing it. And that is the only way to experience it as a game.

Only when I was challenged to play another game, the game of explaining how Self-Gamification works could I see it more clearly. That is a paradox. Which is why it makes sense since we humans are highly paradoxical beings.

Some time ago, I recalled how, when I was young, I rarely referred to what I was doing in my games or play as such. I was busy with some activities. I might have called them “games” or “play,” but I didn’t think of the terms when I was playing.

However, outside of the game’s or play’s realm, the gameful and playful activities seemed safe, and I could easily imagine doing them than a chore my mother had asked of me. Only when she shaped the idea of the chore as something enticing did I agree to give it a try to be entertaining. And I must admit that it did happen more often than not.

(Continue reading on Medium)

The Real-Life Role Playing Games

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Image by the author

(An excerpt. Read the full article on Medium)

Let’s address the first of the three tools that Self-Gamification brings together. This tool is anthropology, which is

“the scientific study of the origin, the behavior, and the physical, social, and cultural development of humans.” — Free Dictionary

When applied to myself (I’ll address this idea in a second), this approach helped me to discover my many quirky thought patterns. These can be so much fun when observed non-judgmentally and with open-minded interest.

I discovered I had the idea that I didn’t want to learn to play Role-Playing Games (RPG), because I judged them as being too complex.

Only recently, I became aware that we all play many different Role-Playing Games every day.

“A role-playing game (sometimes spelled roleplaying game; abbreviated RPG) is a game in which players assume the roles of characters in a fictional setting.” — Wikipedia

You could say we all have real-life role-playing games. We are parents, children to our parents, bosses, employees, students, assistants, and many more. And many of these roles overlap every day. Especially now when we are together with our families at home, helping our children with homeschooling, working, supporting our elderly parents by calling them many times a day, maintaining a household, cooking, and so much more.

In Self-Gamification, too, we play specific roles. These are the roles of designers and players of our self-motivational games, which are the projects, activities, or challenges we turn into games.

“A self-motivational game is a real-life project or activity that you adjust in such a way that it feels like a fun game with which you are eager and happy to engage, both in terms of its design and the playing of it.” — Victoria Ichizli-Bartels, Self-Gamification Happiness Formula

But there is another Role-Playing Game, which I’ve loved playing ever since I heard about it.

I learned about this possibility from award-winning authors, seminar leaders, radio show hosts, and dear to my heart friends, Ariel and Shya Kane. Here it is:

“You can create a game where you pretend you are a scientist or an anthropologist discovering the way that a particular culture functions or operates. Don’t take anything that you discover personally. It isn’t personal. Many of your prejudices were absorbed from the culture you grew up in, and unconsciously you have internalized these cultural values without the benefit of seeing whether they are honestly true for you.” — Ariel and Shya Kane, Working on Yourself Doesn’t Work

So along with the other roles you take on during the day, I suggest that you play the anthropologist’s role-playing game.

(Continue reading on Medium)

This was also an excerpt from my book Gameful Isolation: Making the Best of a Crisis, the Self-Gamification Way. I hope you enjoyed it. If you would like to get access to the vlog accompanying the book then check out this page: victoriaichizlibartels.com/gameful-isolation/.