Kindness, Flexibility, and Fun Are the Keys to Successful Self-Gamification – Results and Lessons Learned in the September 2017 Round of the 5 Minute Perseverance Game

Today I will report on the results and lessons learned in the September 2017 round of the 5 Minute Perseverance Game.

Instead of dividing the day into slots reserved for each project as I did in August, having twenty-one projects/activities in total, for September, I’ve split the game plan for a day into eight project areas.

These were:

Voluntary work in a technical (S1000D) community, where I serve as a chair of a global working group.
Content development to offer for sale on my website.
Non-fiction writing (including blog posts in business and S1000D areas)
Fiction and memoir writing (including related blog posts)
Book and content marketing, as well as publishing books and update of already published books, when necessary.
Training, coaching and consulting services/projects (including pitching, carrying out, and marketing them).
Family, personal, and business administrative matters (incl. accompanying my family members to doctors, organizing meetings with colleagues and friends, personal (including that for my mother) and business bookkeeping and similar).
Free time, fun, health, and movement (for my family’s, my friends’, and my own well-being; including sports, getting enough sleep, playing games, etc.)

This very new for me design turned out to be much fun. It was also due to the flexibility I included. There was no more maximum amount of points I could strive to achieve, but I could set records by managing more projects in the same project area. I have also introduced a bonus system. I gave myself two points for each set of 8 points, meaning making one step in a project in each project/activity area. And I gave myself five points for each completed task which included preparation time and delivery to someone externally: sending a draft of an offer to a project partner, sending a manuscript to an editor, answering a customer’s questions in an extensive consulting e-mail, or similar.

At the beginning of the September round, as I was getting used to the new game design, I thought I saw a draw-back of dividing my day into project areas (or groups). When I managed one point in a particular area, I didn’t necessarily urge to do the other projects in the same project group, as for example to work on both of my fiction books on the same day, which I thought I wanted. But to be honest, having multiple projects all written in a flat list as in August (twenty-one bullets) didn’t help to manage more of them either.

There was something else, which became prominent in this round. It also happened before, but I had the feeling that it was stronger this time. Here is what that was. I didn’t always manage to remember to record the points earned, and at the beginning, I thought that it was frustrating. But then I recalled that in video games you didn’t manage to gather all the treasures available out there either. Some of them need to be left behind if I want to move forward and keep going. I loved this realization because it confirmed how often I experience the projects I want to pursue as pleasant and fun games. So the points which I forgot to record where the treasures I didn’t manage to retrieve along the way. But while forgetting those, I gathered the others. And I got the best rewards of all, a smile on my face, warm feeling of achieving and completing something, and happiness of having a perspective of moving forward.

The new design of eight areas worked so well that I want to try it again next month. The bonus system was excellent too. Having to do for example just one thing in book marketing, or one thing for area eight which I call “Free time, fun, health, and movement” to get the point, took the pressure away and with that resistance to try to make progress in each project. I still could get more than one point per area, but the pressure lessened when I saw that most of the eight boxes in the game for the day had at least one check mark in them.

The most spectacular result for me during this round was in the sports/health area. In the last month, I procrastinated doing something in this “project” and earned only a few points during the whole month. In September, I haven’t been doing sports every day, but I did it every week and most importantly I re-discovered fun in it. For a long time, I used to think that I didn’t like jogging. In my opinion, you couldn’t enjoy surroundings while jogging. This September I discovered that to be untrue. Plus, the springy and merry pace of jogging showed it’s happy face to me. That might have also been because the first time I went jogging this September, I did it together with my children, Niklas (almost 7) and Emma (a bit over 2,5 years old).

We ran only a little circle down our street, then to neighboring one, behind our house, and then back, and that with a few walking breaks for Emma and me to catch a breath. But we returned with rosy cheeks and happy. Niklas was skeptical and reluctant before our jogging tour, but after it, he also said we should do it again the following week. The next weekend came. On Saturday I went for a run alone, and on Sunday we went again together. The weekend after, we repeated the pattern: me jogging alone on Saturday, and together on Sunday. And the past weekend my children excused themselves from jogging because they went swimming with their dad instead. It struck me that just after a few times joking together at the end of a week, all three of us embraced our jogging tours as a beautiful and fun tradition. That was quite an immensely pleasant surprise to me.

The same happened with getting-enough-sleep “project.” In August, I had that pressure to sleep close to 7 hours every night, and I only managed that on 6 or 31 nights. In September, I didn’t have that pressure. One check mark in the box for the project area “Free time, Fun, Health, and Movement” already made me feel good that I did something for my well-being. Whatever that was: either playing with my children, getting enough sleep; doing sports, reading a book, watching a film or a TV-show, or anything else.

What I also realized is that the new design allowed space for ambitions, but included kindness to myself, gave room for flexibility, and plenty of room for fun to collect points. I thought of bonus points before, but September was the first time when I dared to implement them into the game. And instead of feeling as if I cheated and gathered the points for nothing as I feared before trying this approach out, I was motivated to do more and more with a growing sense of pleasure.

Here are my results for the September round of the 5 Minute Perseverance Game:

I made in total in September 703 points. In August I made 262 points out of 651 possible. Now there were no maximum points to strive for in September, and I have passed the maximum of the last month, but that of course due to bonuses. But even without bonus points, I reached 457 points. Much more than those gathered in August.

Voluntary work: 50 points
Content development for sale: 23 points
Non-fiction writing: 22 points
Fiction and memoir writing: 18 points
Book and content marketing: 47 points
Training, coaching, and consulting services/projects: 47 points
Family, personal, and business administrative matters: 139 points
Free time, fun, health, and movement: 111 points.

Bonus points:

46 items delivered = 230 points
8 times managed to gather a point in each of the eight project areas = 16 points.

I don’t know if this design would work for everyone, but it definitely worked for me this month.

And since it was so much fun, I will continue with the same design of the 5 Minute Perseverance Game for October as well.

The only change I am going to make is to increase bonus points for managing to make progress on the whole set of eight projects (one in each project area). That would guarantee variety in my day and ambitions to be active in all eight project areas because each of them is fun and worthy.

On the picture above: The new design also meant a new recording system. I caught myself enjoying drawing the nine tiny boxes each day to record my points. Who knew that such a seemingly “silly” activity might raise my motivation and help me see my work as fun? Now I can truly say: I love time management. 🙂

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.”