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