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

Games are often facing a prejudice to be a comfortable place to flee to from the serious and really important assignments. But interestingly enough the “work” we do while playing games is not easy at all. It is in truth hard work. Doable, but not easy at all. At least not in the long run. Otherwise, no one would play the games if they would not challenge us.

Jane McGonical, whom I mentioned already many times in this blog series, and who is a well-known gamification advocate and game designer, has addressed this very specific characteristic of games in much detail.

In her book “Reality is Broken,” Jane McGonical quoted the playwright Noël Coward, who said,

“Work is more fun than fun.”

She has supported this statement by referring to a psychology research method known as the experience sampling method, or ESM, which concentrates on finding out “how we really feel during different parts of our day.”*

These studies show that the widely agreed relaxing or indulging activities, such as eating sweets, watching a movie, or just doing nothing, don’t make us feel better. However, the events where we are challenged, and where we see the task as doable, then we are detected to be the happiest.

Jane calls this kind of work “hard fun.”

She says, “Hard fun leaves us feeling measurably better than when we started [playing**]. So it’s no surprise, then that one of the activities from which ESM subjects report the highest levels of interest and positive moods both during and afterward is when they’re playing games — including sports, card games, board games, and computer and video games. The research proves what gamers already know: within the limits of our own endurance, we would rather work hard than be entertained. Perhaps that’s why gamers spend less time watching television than anyone else on the planet.”

The last post on the 5 Minute Perseverance Game titled “The ‘Unnecessary’ Obstacle of the 5 Minute Perseverance Game and Why it Turns an Overwhelming Task into Doable” could appear contradicting the above statements of the hard work inside games. We discovered there that the limiting time of working on a project makes it doable, that is easier than if we were doing it in one piece. So, is the 5 Minute Perseverance Game an exception and it is all ease and “piece of cake”?

Not exactly. We still need to work on our projects. The ones we procrastinated, those challenging us so much that we both yearn to do them and at the same fear as hell the results of our work. So the work is still hard, but the 5 minutes adjusts this overwhelming task into the “the limits of our own endurance” and unknowingly to us we start loving the job at hand instead of dreading or even hating it. Thus, even the tasks, which we have to do but have the idea we don’t want to do, become doable and even enjoyable because we manage to do them. We might find ourselves doing them for a longer period of times, or taking more tasks into the game. And when the game becomes too much, and we overdrive ourselves, we can choose to play differently, just like in other games we can leave one game and search another that satisfies our interests and “endurance.”

So the relativity of the 5 Minute Perseverance Game is also its paradox. On the one hand, we still need to make an effort and challenge ourselves to work through the 5 minutes. But on the other hand, by delimiting the time we invest into any project during any given day, we can reward ourselves much sooner than if we worked the whole day, or week, or month on the same task. In other words, we experience the job at hand as easier to manage than when we thought of it at the beginning. At the same time, it presents itself as engulfing and engaging as it could ever be.

What is your opinion? Do you agree with the concept of the “hard work” and “hard fun” in a game in general and in the 5 Minute Perseverance Game in particular? What is the hard work in the projects you take into your perseverance games?

On the picture above: I often experience cooking as “hard fun.” It is challenging me, but my enjoyment of the process grows as it progresses and the more I leave the past events of the day behind. I cannot, however, take the credit for this beautiful and utterly yummy salmon creation. My niece and her life partner have cooked this and several other gourmet dinners for us during their short stay with us this June.

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 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 of the round June 2017 of the 5 Minute Perseverance Game: 6, 7, 6, 8, 8, 11, 11 points out of 15 possible for each day.

Results Total for the 2nd week in June (week 24) 2017: 57 out of 105 possible (54 %)

References in this article:
* Jane McGonical, “Reality is Broken” (E-book Location 562)
** added by the author of this article

Copyright © 2017 by Victoria Ichizli-Bartels

The well-known game designer and gamification advocate Jane McGonical quotes many philosophers and game & gamification fathers and influencers in her works. Bernard Suits is one she seems to admire much, and whom she referred to many times in her widely acclaimed book “Reality is Broken.”

Jane claims that the following quote is “the single most convincing and useful definition of a game ever devised”:

“Playing a game is the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles.” Bernard Suits, quoted by Jane McGonical in “Reality is Broken.”

As I read this definition, I didn’t quite understand what the word unnecessary in the context of a game meant. But then it clicked as I read the following paragraph in the Jane McGonical’s book “Reality is Broken”:

“As a golfer, you have a clear goal: to get a ball in a series of very small holes, with fewer tries than anyone else. If you weren’t playing a game, you’d achieve this goal the most efficient way possible: you’d walk right up to each hole and drop the ball in with your hand. What makes golf a game is that you willingly agree to stand really far away from each hole and swing at the ball with a club. Golf is engaging exactly because you, along with all the other players, have agreed to make the work more challenging that it has any reasonable right to be.”

In the 5 Minute Perseverance Game, there is only one unnecessary obstacle. And this is that you are not allowed to work on your project in one run and do all at once. You have to work on the project you took into the game only for 5 minutes on any given day and then stop until the next day. If you hadn’t this obstacle, you would try to finish the task on the same day or do it in one piece over a couple of days. This latter approach might seem as straightforward, but it is much more stressful. The seemingly unnecessary obstacle of limiting your work on a given project only for short periods of time can work miracles.

The seemingly unnecessary obstacle of limiting your work on a given project only for short periods of time can work miracles.

First, it takes the pressure off of a big and overwhelming task. “I can do 5 minutes”, is the most common response I get when I introduce the game to someone who has never heard of it or similar games before. So the game turns hard and overwhelming tasks into doable.

Furthermore, the 5 Minute Perseverance Game provides continuity and brings well-being (since it reduces stress). Projects seize to be goals, something to be finished with and instead become paths to go, which is much more enjoyable as many find out also about happiness. If the happiness is a way, then you just make sure you take that path always, or if it were an accessory, then you always take it with you wherever you go. But if it is a goal you never know if you reach it. Making projects being enjoyable and fun paths enriches life, and we simply enjoy what is happening along the way amazed of the many adventures we have during one single day.

I re-discovered this to be true recently as I was preparing a presentation for a large conference. I realized how much I wanted this presentation to be excellent and how scared I was that I wouldn’t manage that. So I called the 5 Minute Perseverance Game for help since I already made the experience of it taking away many of my fears and being able to bring me back into the current moment. As soon as I had the instructions from organizers, I took the making of the presentation into the game and started working it for about 5 minutes a day, completing one or two slides on that day. What I hoped for happened. I stopped being concerned and worrying how the presentation would turn out at the end and instead was glad to create those few slides each day. I had fun trying various things like playing with the layout design, searching for illustrations, and adding the suitable text. The break between the days helped me realize what the weak points were and also helped me see the valuable points of the reviewers of the slides and let my defensive thoughts, which appeared after the first reading of the e-mails with comments and change suggestions, fade into the background.

The main lesson learned here is that the seemingly unnecessary obstacle of limiting the time of work on a project becomes a necessary condition for both to make the project doable in its best and efficient way and to make it real fun.

What is your opinion? Do you think that such unnecessary obstacles are helpful to have fun in a game or activity? What unnecessary obstacles do you introduce (maybe sometimes also unknowingly) in your daily routine to make it more fun, more dynamic, and progress? An example of latter from what I do: I set up a timer to, for example, 15 minutes to do some chores (whether for myself or together with my son) and then work against the clock. I love doing this time to time especially with household tasks. And my son seems to have more fun cleaning up his room when the timer is running. Do you do something similar? And if yes, what exactly?

On the picture above: As I searched for a picture for today’s post in those I made recently, this one with the elephants we saw last week in Aalborg Zoo caught my attention. The hay being placed above elephants’ heads on a chain is quite an unnecessary obstacle. The zookeepers could have put the hay down as I saw at other visits to the zoo. But that would be so much less fun. The elephants had fun catching this cube of hay and pulling it and branches with fresh leaves stuck into it.

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 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 of the round June 2017 of the 5 Minute Perseverance Game: 8, 11, 11, 9, 11, 8, 9 points out of 15 possible for each day.

Results Total for the 1st week in June (week 23) 2017: 67 out of 105 possible (more than 60 %)

Copyright © 2017 by Victoria Ichizli-Bartels