There are many generous bloggers and writers, who offer detailed information mapping their earnings and how they achieved that for the past week, month, season, or year. I would like to offer here another kind of transparency. The observation of my thought processes and lessons learned during the gamifying process of my life.

Here are the projects which I took into the May 2017 round of the 5 Minute Perseverance Game and the experiences I made:

1. Blogging on the 5 Minute Perseverance Game.
   This activity is probably the most prominent project with most results in this past month. I noticed that the project, recorded as the first on the list, progresses well in a month, so I often put there the activity, which I want very much to improve, but which I often procrastinate. After blogging very irregularly in the past few months, I wanted to revive this activity. And besides that, I very much wanted to blog a book again. After a few posts on the 5 Minute perseverance game and gamification, I noticed that I still have something to say in this respect and also that I want to dig into, learn about, and experiment with this subject more and more. The result of this work in May: 6 blog posts (not counting this one).
   Points earned in this project: 26 out of 31 possible.
2. Finish publishing a technical book (S1000D Issue 4.1 & Issue 4.2) and after that book update (where necessary) and book marketing, including preparing training courses based on my books.
   I’ve finished publishing “S1000D Issue 4.1 and Issue 4.2 Navigation Map”. Then I updated the e-book of the “5 Minute Perseverance Game” to align with the paperback (which was in a more updated and improved state) and published it. I’ve updated and had the brochures advertising my books printed. And I am well on my way to developing two training courses based on “Take Control of Your Business” and “5 Minute Perseverance Game.” So, yes, praise for the creative part of me here as well.
   Points earned in this project: 24 out of 31 possible.
3. Voluntary work for the S1000D community: work of Change Proposal Forms on behalf of the Business Rules Working Group, for which I serve as its chair.
   This work is one of the projects, which I didn’t manage to attend to on all of the days in May, as I wanted to. Nevertheless, I managed to finish a long-term mask ahead of suspected date, which I thought would be June. This project will stay on the list in June too, and I might even move it up on the priority list to facilitate the progress. Or it will at least stay where it is.
   Points earned in this project: 20 out of 31 possible.
4. Work on “Cheerleading for Writers” -> incorporation of self-edits made on paper into the electronic version of the book.
   I sometimes have this idea that I don’t like self-editing. However when I am in the process, then I very much enjoy it. I guess one of the reasons for this erroneous idea is that when I incorporate changes I need to be completely present and attentive to what I do to make any progress, and my brain doesn’t have space to think of something else then. The result is that I think I don’t want to do it at all. Teaming up with friends to work on the cover does remind me of the commitment I made with this book. So I managed to incorporate changes for more than half of the book (right now having to count slightly more than 35000 words).
   Points earned in this project: 15 out of 31 possible.
5. Voluntary work for the S1000D community: administrative tasks for the S1000D Business Rules Working Group and feedback to the work of other S1000D working groups and task teams.
   As task 3 above, I didn’t manage to do this one every day. But having this as one of the projects in the game helped me to make progress and reduce the number of the unanswered e-mails in my Inbox related to it.
   Points earned in this project: 12 out of 31 possible.
6. Work on new or potential projects: “Everywhere At Home” (forthcoming short memoir compilation), pitching and updating proposals for new projects in the S1000D area and beyond, learning how to write query letters to send to various magazines.
   A lot has happened in this block. Mainly the preparation of pitches for new projects progressed very well, and June will show whether they have been successful or not. One of the proposals has been reviewed and got constructive feedback for the next update. And the new non-fiction book, which will be a collection of memoirs, “Everywhere At Home” started to take shape. I have selected a few stories and gathered ideas how to structure it. Although I feared that this activity would fall behind, it turned out to be successful. Especially when I let myself this task to be not only about the book project but to be about planning and creating new projects in general.
   Points earned in this project: 22 out of 31 possible.
7. Learning Danish.
   I live in Denmark since 2008, and I do speak Danish. But it’s far from fluent yet. One of the possible reasons might be the fact that I don’t use it during the most of my day. My work occurs mostly in English; at home, we speak German; with my mother, my sister, and my niece, I speak Romanian. My son chooses to talk in English with me time to time, just for fun. So my Danish gets short time slots while bringing my children to school and daycare and during shopping. Recently, I started using it also with the Danish partner companies and customers. It improved ever so slightly, but in the end of April, I got an offer to teach two training courses in Danish. Scared, terrified, but I said yes. Also because I very much want to learn this language and be able to understand my Danish friends and to communicate with them better. The results for this month of learning Danish: I’d read more than a half of a novel by Nora Roberts translated into Danish, and I discovered myself talking longer Danish and even explaining technical topics in Danish.
   Points earned in this project: 19 out of 31 possible.
8. Taking care of the family and personal (official) matters.
   The main result of this project is that the game helps me to bypass the traditional annoyance with having to attend to the necessary issues like applying for a passport, or registering myself or my children for one or another thing, communicating with doctors, accompanying my mother to health checks, etc. I become less and less upset that I have to do all that and I also sigh about it much more rarely. Even if the thoughts appear shortly, like “Oh, there is always something to do,” there is this knowing, “I just need to do it at least for 5 min and then I will get the point.” Besides, the fact that if I want this point then I need to do this and see that everything in this regard is taken care of, I am even searching and looking forward to doing this tasks, because if I follow the instructions given by various instances, they are often straightforward to do. Yes, biggest results here are the removal of drama, fun factor in doing something simple and straightforward, and gladness of witnessing the visible progress in those necessary things.
   Points earned in this project: 28 out of 31 possible.
9. Household.
   That one is similar to the task above. Thanks to the game it went much smoother and with fewer complaints, especially the duties I think as tedious, for example cleaning the house or tidying. Another great thing is that only one point for my “escape to” tasks like laundry helped me stop these activities for the day and attend to other also important tasks.
   Points earned in this project: 28 out of 31 possible.
10. Meeting and communicating with friends and family.
    I am very glad about this one because of the two reasons. First, it reminded me to answer emails I forgot to answer in the everyday hectic. And the second is that I often didn’t notice that I took time with friends and family. I just was there with them and enjoyed them and my time with them. Only on two days of this month, I haven’t recorded a point for this activity. I suspect that I simply forgot to do so. Especially the discovery that I took care of my loved ones and devoted time to them without looking on the clock, brought me much joy, as I was looking at my day and counting the points. This project/activity is one of the sweetest ones and it showed me that I do not forget my loved ones while still following my passion with my work and personal projects. A note aside: even if this project was placed at one of the last positions in the list of the eleven projects, it still got almost all possible points and earned more than any of the other projects in this round. Wherever it stands, the fact that I am drawn to do something here shows that my heart’s wishes are much stronger than my Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO) and doing something wrong.
    Points earned in this project: 29 out of 31 possible.
11. S1000D and Business blog posts.
    This activity has been one of the three more procrastinated projects, or to say more precisely the projects where I earned less than half of possible points. This project, or rather two projects, since it is about writing posts on two different topics, has brought me only 13 points out of 31 possible. I have delivered the committed article, but those that I wanted to do because I thought I wanted or had to, didn’t work. Or only slightly worked, since I sketched a few words in a notebook for a post, but didn’t do anything with that after. There are of course many reasons for that, both plausible and implausible. The other projects, inability or rather lack of a wish to focus on this (when uncommitted). Maybe also I am a bit too ambitious in what I want to achieve. Or maybe my brain simply needs a project that goes “badly.” Now as I recall I had never earned all possible points in a month, even when I had only one project. So there is some braking force that says, “You can’t manage all that,” which is probably all right in itself. I’m wondering whether I will ever manage to have all points, independently how many projects I take in. If not, is it because I am afraid that I will not be willing to play the game anymore if I rich the most possible and earn the maximum available points? Hmm, I don’t know. I am curious what I will think on this in a month, year or more time.

The overall lesson learned: it looks like my life in May 2017 was successful and balanced. Giving myself points for each activity and looking closer how I did in each of them surprised me of how well I did.

Projects for June 2017:

I discovered another quirky idea my brain has produced. That I have to limit the number of projects I gamify. But now I realize that I don’t have to do so and just can observe which projects are relevant for me this month. Such an approach is nothing else than time- and project-planning. The difference is that I don’t have to force myself to do it. Instead, this task is now fun to do, and I am looking forward to the end/beginning threshold of a month to plan the next round.
So here are projects I am taking into the June round.

1. New Projects (“Everywhere at home”, writing proposals on new projects, and pitching them to potential customers)
2. Cheerleading for Writers -> self-edits
3. BRWG CPF work
4. BRWG Admin work and other S1000D work
5. Book update and marketing
6. 5 Minute Perseverance Game Blogging
7. S1000D and Business blog
8. Learning Danish
9. Learning Chinese
10. Meeting and communicating with friends and family
11. Family and personal (official) matters
12. Household and un-cluttering (including the hard disk on my computer)
13. Sports or workout (at least 1 exercise)
14. Sleeping at least 6 hours per night
15. Doing something purely for fun

What is your opinion? Do you think such an overall gamification is too much? Or can it be just fun testing out? If you would gamify all projects and activities in your life for this particular month, what would these be?

On the picture above: there are various paths to my daughter’s daycare, and Emma likes to take one on one day and another on another. We discovered these white flowers recently after not having gone the path for a couple of days. It is simply amazing how much nature manages by simply being there.

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 is progressing for various projects:

Results for days 29, 30, 31 of the round May 2017 of the 5 Minute Perseverance Game (5MPG): 8, 8, 9 points out of 11 possible for each day.

Results Total for the last 3 days in May 2017: 25 points out of 33 possible

Results Total for May 2017: 236 points out of 341 possible = 69 %; my creative and optimistic self has won made 236 points and the procrastinating self made 105. This round goes to creativity and well-being. 🙂

Results for days 1, 2, 3, 4 of the round June 2017 of the 5MPG: 9, 11, 8, 9 points out of 15 possible for each day.

Results Total for the first 4 days in June 2017: 37 out of 60 possible (more than 50 %)

Copyright © 2017 by Victoria Ichizli-Bartels

Results for days 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28  of the round May 2017 of the 5 Minute Perseverance Game (5MPG): 10, 11, 11, 8, 5, 3, 3 points out of 11 possible for each day.

Results Total for week 4: 51 points out of 77 possible (more than 2/3).

Writing a blog post is different from writing short comments on how my game in any given round is progressing. With this new project you are reading now, I challenged myself to think and research on gamification more and more. When I published my little book on the

When I published my little book on the 5 Minute Perseverance Game, I haven’t even known of such a term as gamification. And now my Kindle is full of book samples on gamification and game design.

Right now, I am reading a book “Reality is Broken” by Jane McGonical, a well-known game designer, who is widely known beyond the gaming community for spreading the joy and value of games in all areas of our lives. Many of her videos on YouTube including her TED talks had many hundreds of thousands of views.

In the “Reality is Broken,” she defines a game as the following,

“What defines a game are the goal, the rules, the feedback system, and voluntary participation. Everything else is an effort to reinforce and enhance these four core components.” Jane McGonical in “Reality is Broken.”

When I read this, I thought, “Is the 5 Minute Perseverance Game really a game?”

Here is what I discovered when I read further about each of a game’s main components: (1) a goal, (2) rules, (3) a feedback system, and (4) voluntary participation.

(1) A goal

“The goal is the specific outcome that players will work to achieve. … The goal provides players with a sense of purpose.” Jane McGonical in “Reality is Broken.”

After a text search for the word “goal” in my book about the 5 Minute Perseverance Game, I found the following,

“The goal is to persevere for 5 minutes a day, for as many days within the given round — which can run for a month for example — as possible.” “5 Minute Perseverance Game”

And this sentence,

“Your goal is to gather as many points as possible along two different scales during each round.” “5 Minute Perseverance Game”

So, yes, there is a goal.

What about the rules?

(2) Rules

“The rules place limitations on how players can achieve the goal. By removing or limiting the obvious ways of getting to the goal, the rules push players to explore previous uncharted possibility spaces. They unleash creativity and foster strategic thinking.” Jane McGonical in “Reality is Broken.”

The rules in the 5 Minute Perseverance Game are straightforward and can be seen already in the title and the subtitle of the book describing the game. You have to work 5 minutes on the project you take into the game every day over the time of one month. If you manage to work these 5 minutes on your project, you get one point. If you work a bit, but less than 5 minutes, then you get half a point. If you work more than 5 minutes, you still get only one point. The points and half-points you haven’t earned go to your procrastinating self. So yes, there are precise rules for this game as well as also the guidelines for possible variants.

(3) A feedback system

“The feedback system tells players how close they are to achieving the goal. It can take the forms of points, levels, a score, or a progress bar.” Jane McGonical in “Reality is Broken.”

The 5 Minute Perseverance Game has two feedback systems. One in the form of points (described above) and one in the shape of progress in the project or projects you take into the game. If you chose a writing project, then the second scale would be word counts, if you project is to learn how to play a music instrument would be then the number of songs or pieces of music you have come to play. And so on.

(4) Voluntary participation

“Finally, voluntary participation requires that everyone who is playing the game knowingly and willingly accepts the goal, the rules, and the feedback. Knowing-ness establishes common ground for multiple people to play together. And the freedom to enter or leave the game at will ensure that intentionally stressful and challenging work is experienced as safe and pleasurable activity.” Jane McGonical in “Reality is Broken.”

To illustrate the voluntary participation of the “5 Minute Perseverance Game”, I would like to quote a 5-star review given to the book by Michael Hanko, a reader of the book, and a player of this game:

“Great tool for overcoming procrastination!

I’ve been using this game in writing a submission for a book. I combined the Game with the principles of Menna Van Praag’s Sentence Game as the author suggested, which was a wonderful combination.

I was amused to discover that even with these amazing tools, I am able to resist working on something that I actually wanted to do! But I have to say that the Game helped me to overcome my trouble getting started and also to not take myself so seriously in the process. It made writing feel manageable and FUN. I will be returning to this game in the future for big and small projects that I just can’t seem to get started on.

Thank you, Victoria Ichizli-Bartels: Your little book has changed my life.”

While reading this review, I realized something. Not only this game requires voluntary participation as any game, but playing it facilitates voluntary participation in our lives’ projects. It also helps us experience the work on our projects as a “safe and pleasurable activity.”

What is your opinion? Will any gamified activity have all these four components — a goal, rules, a feedback system and voluntary participation — or can any of these be neglected? Does any of the activities need rules to be fun? Or the opposite? Is the need for evaluation so acutely urgent to us that a feedback system is unavoidable? And what about routine activities? Do they have goals too? And what if we try to gamify the (supposedly) unwanted activities? Are we voluntarily participating in doing (playing them) or did we just let someone make us do them?

On the picture above: This past weekend, my husband and I uncluttered our garage, and I found these notes I took in Russian in preparation for my physics of semiconductors studies back in the 1990s in Moldova. As I re-discovered them, I realized that I had much fun compiling them out of many excellent textbooks on semiconductor physics, some of which I inherited from my father. And I also realized that in a way I did play 5 Minute Perseverance Game already back then while preparing for my studies. I worked in chunks, used colors to not only make the text easily readable but also pleasant to read (and also because it was simply fun to do so), and I did it over a longer period. My reward during the preparation for the tests: homemade chocolate by my mother.

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

Results for days 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21 of the round May 2017 of the 5 Minute Perseverance Game (5MPG): 11, 10, 11, 8, 9, 4, 6 points out of 11 possible for each day.

Results Total for week 2: 59 points out of 77 possible (more than 2/3 and more than in previous weeks of this month).

I mentioned in one of the previous posts on the 5 Minute Perseverance Game that the point system I have used in this game helped me to step over my procrastination when I thought a task was too hard to do.

Giving myself points helped me also to avoid hanging out for too long with other duties because those were so cozy to be with, while the other projects waited for their turn. Only one point per project per day turned out to be a brilliant way to maintain the balance in progressing between preferred and not-so-much-preferred projects.

When I share this approach with others, many tell me that I am tricking my mind. My usual answer is a cheerful yes.

Only in retrospect do I see that the statement about tricking my mind might be considered as an accusation of being dishonest with my brain, being dishonest with myself. That I don’t solve or overcome my procrastination but trick my mind into doing what I want to do.

Contemplating now on this possible argumentation, I would again have to agree with some of these statements.

No, I don’t overcome my procrastination and probably never will. And yes, by playing the 5 Minute Perseverance Game and giving myself daily a point for each step in each project of the game, I do the trick my mind into forgetting or bypassing the fretting thoughts and into fulfilling of what I want and have to do. Moreover, I trick it to do this step-by-step, with less drama around each task and with more fun.

Am I dishonest with myself when I do so? I don’t believe so. The positive results provide arguments for such a “cheating-the-brain-game.” But let us for a moment consider who is who in this game.

What is the difference between me and my brain? Is there any?

Award-winning self-help and personal growth authors Ariel and Shya Kane, have written the following in their acclaimed book “Practical Enlightenment”:

“If you want to be clear about what is a thought and what is ‘you,’ it’s simple. Any sentence that you say to yourself containing the word “I” is a thought:

• I like / I don’t like
• I don’t understand
• I can’t
• I want
• I won’t
• I am

Most people think that they are their thoughts. They believe that the voice they listen to, the voice that speaks to them about how they are doing, about how life is showing up, what they want or don’t want, is really them. They don’t think that they are listening to some disembodied commentary, one that is sometimes accurate and sometimes not.

…

You are not your voice. You have a voice. And when you can make the distinction between the one who listens and the voice, you get control over the mechanical nature of life.”

That means that anything put in words about how I am doing or who I am are thoughts produced by my brain.

Then what about our heart’s desires? What are those visions we long for and which draw our attention, leave us sleepless at night, and eager to achieve those visions in the mornings? Who produces them?

A well-known American brain researcher, Jill Bolte Taylor, who experienced a stroke and shared her experience shortly before, during the stroke and the recovery in her acclaimed book “My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey,” wrote the following intriguing words in this respect,

“Many of us speak about how our head (left hemisphere) is telling us to do one thing while our heart (right hemisphere) is telling us to do the exact opposite. Some of us distinguish between what we think (left hemisphere) and what we feel (right hemisphere).”

And a before that in the same paragraph she wrote,

“It appears that many of us struggle regularly with polar opposite characters holding court inside our heads. In fact, just about everyone I speak with is keenly aware that they have conflicting parts of their personality.”

That means that everything produced inside me, either thoughts or feelings, either they appear in my head or my heart or anywhere else in my body, either creative and uplifting or depressive and dragging, all that is produced by my brain. By different parts of it, but still by the same physical entity of my human body.

So, the same poor “girl”, that is my brain, is doing all the struggling, and wages all the wars in my head.

We all learned at school the story about the ancient Olympic Games and the idea behind them. We’ve heard that all wars and conflicts were stopped for the opponents to step into peaceful competitions in frames of the Olympic games. They got points, scores, and laurels.

So, if the creativity fights a battle with the fear in my head, why not let them put their wars aside and instead organize games. Why not give each of them points as they progress as well as laurels and applauds at the end of each round for whoever won and praise also for the other who gave her best but lost?

Yes, why not? By this, I will show respect to both opponents in my head, the one driving and the one pushing on breaks. I will show them this regard by organizing Olympic games for them. And not only for a short time but continuously and I will vary types of the games to keep them going and having fun, and me along with them. And if a war will erupt between them for any reason again, then I am sure that it will not last long, because these wars are not fun at all, while playing games is.

What is your opinion? Do you thinking giving points ourselves and praising for each step on the way to carry out tasks is cheating or is it a way for boosting motivation and creativity? And if it is cheating, is it so bad to let our brains to be cheated by themselves, since their fearful parts are tricking us into trembling and upsets quite often anyway? Does finding our ways for each moment in our lives need to be serious and hard work or can it be playful? Or is this game designing exercise for oneself a pure waste of time?

On the picture above: Credits: Photograph ©librestock.com under the keyword “Olympic.”

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

Results for days 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 of the round May 2017 of the 5 Minute Perseverance Game (5MPG): 10, 10, 7, 7, 3 points out of 11 possible for each day.

Results Total for week 2: 56 points out of 77 possible (more than 2/3).

In the book 5 Minute Perseverance Game, I offered several arguments why 5 minutes is an appropriate portion of time to make a small but visible step in any given project.

“The general recommendation is not to make the time for each move shorter than 5 minutes. You need some challenge, however short. And 5 minutes are long enough to manage something and short enough to put some pressure on you to actually do the work and do it quickly.” 5 Minute Perseverance Game

To give you an idea what can be done in this amount of time, here is an example. I have experienced many times that even very new and reluctant writers manage to write a couple of paragraphs in this amount of time.

In another chapter titled not entirely seriously “Warning on Addition,” I wrote the following,

“If you notice yourself getting too serious about the project you took into this game, it might then happen that you don’t work on it for 5, 10 or even 15 minutes, but for one, two or more hours a day. If you have the time for it and don’t have other wishes or commitments on the given day, then enjoy this creative time. In this case, you can use the moves in the 5 Minute Perseverance Game as a warm-up before a more intensive immersion into the project.

But if you have other things to do and you find yourself using the project in this game as an escape from other commitments, or if you are trying to get finished with this project, so that you can start another one soon, then playing this game for hours wouldn’t be helpful. In fact, the game you’re playing will lose its FUN factor.

What is a solution in this case? Set your timer for 5, 10, or more minutes, but definitely less than 30 minutes. Work on your project during this time, and then pack it away and forget about it for the rest of the day. You will discover a lot of energy and longing to do those other things you had to do, and you might even find fun in doing them.”

What would I recommend today after playing the game for almost a year day-in-day-out? I would still recommend at least 5 minutes and no more than 30 min for first timers per project a day.

But for those who played this or a similar game on habit development, I would suggest to become your own game designer and play with various parameters of the game, both times and types of projects. For example, a friend used this game to motivate herself to paint the walls in her house. The task always took more than an hour, also because she needed some time to prepare the actual “move” of painting, but the earning of a point motivated her and helped her to make considerable progress every day.

I rarely put timer nowadays feeling when a step is over. It can sometimes take only a few minutes, or last more than an hour. I learn more and more to observe when the fun in the given task reduces, and the tiredness appears. So, I either find ways to motivate myself to continue the work, when I need to meet a deadline, or I stop working on the given project until the next day.

What is your opinion? If you have a project or projects that you contemplate to take in such a game, what is the minimum amount of time you would need for a move? Why? What would take most time of your each move? The actual preparation of the utensils (as in the above example of painting rooms in a house) or contemplation of how to perform the move?

On the picture above: I did include spending time with family and friends as one of the activities/projects into the game this month, but I often forget to start these times intentionally. They come naturally and by themselves. Whether by visiting my sister and her husband, a week ago, or sitting in our garden and enjoying being “shot at” with a soap-bubble gun by my daughter, this past weekend. Only later, at the end of the day, I see that I earned a point there too. And I am glad to say that this one is present every day. My sister took this picture of me in front of a tiny waterfall in front of her and her husband’s house; she calls it lovingly and not without pride “our Niagara Falls.”

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