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The key — and a little hidden purpose — here in this game is learning how to be and experience being kind to yourself.
The Secret Purpose of Turning Life into Fun Games
Tag Archives: #5minuteperseverancegame
One Minute Read from the 5-Year Edition of the 5 Minute Perseverance Game
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Today, I have a special addition to a series of blog posts featuring videos on YouTube, where I read from one of my motivational books for one minute.
My little book, 5 Minute Perseverance Game: Play Daily for a Month and Become the Ultimate Procrastination Breaker, will be soon five years old. Many things have happened since then. Without expecting that, turning life into fun games became a part of my career as a writer, coach, and consultant. To celebrate this occasion, I published a second edition of the book.
In this short video, I am reading the preface of the 5-Year Edition of the 5 Minute Perseverance Game. As with anything else in my life, I turned the reading into a fun little game, a 1 Minute Perseverance Game. 
I hope it is as much fun for you to watch as it was for me to make and play it.
Here is the excerpt I am reading in the video if you want to read along, prior, or afterward.
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Excerpt from the 2nd Edition of 5 Minute Perseverance Game
Welcome to the 5-year Edition of the 5 Minute Perseverance Game!
I can’t believe it’s been five years since I wrote and published this little book. It has been quite the adventure. Shortly after publishing, I began telling my friends about it, one of whom told me she had learned about the approach at its core at university. She called this technology “gamification.”
I thought — or maybe even asked out loud — “Gami-what?”
As soon as I got home, I researched the term online and was blown away by how much there was on gamification and the number of people applying game elements to “real-life contexts.”
Parallel with that, I discovered kaizen and started reading all I could on the subject. Step by step, I began to understand the three approaches or skill sets that formed the basis of the 5 Minute Perseverance Game: being present and studying ourselves as anthropologists do (Credits: Ariel and Shya Kane); breaking everything down into the smallest, most effortless bits possible (kaizen); and approaching everything with a gameful and playful attitude (gamification).
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Where to buy the book
To take a look at the new 5 Minute Perseverance Game and buy it on Amazon, click on its title or image above.
If you want to see where else you can buy it, then go to the book’s page on this website here.
Alternatively, you can subscribe to my page, Optimist Writer, on ko-fi for $5 a month, and besides supporting what I do, you will also get access to all my motivational books, which I share there once a month or each time a book is out. Right now, you can get access to five of my books there — one upon subscription or one-time support and four in the posts solely for subscribers. The first edition of the 5 Minute Perseverance Game is already available, and I will add the new edition within the next couple of days.
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Have a beautiful and gameful day!
Free Speaking Game for the 5 Minute Perseverance Game
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Here is the first blog post in a new series featuring videos on YouTube, where I read a short paragraph from one of my motivational books and use it as a prompt to speak freely. This idea was inspired by the free-writing exercise well-known among writers. I used dice and timer to turn this free-speaking exercise into fun games. I hope you enjoy watching them and maybe trying out this gameful approach for yourself and tasks you want or need to tackle today.
In this video, I read from my book, 5 Minute Perseverance Game: Play Daily for a Month and Become the Ultimate Procrastination Breaker.
I am reading a paragraph from the chapter “Duration of the Game.”
Here it is if you want to read along, prior, or afterward.
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The prompting paragraph from the
5 Minute Perseverance Game
You might have guessed — from many hints above — that according to the design of the 5 Minute Perseverance Game, each round takes one month. When you join in the game, you play every day of the month, including the weekends and holidays. But it is a game, and having FUN is one of the main goals here. So, what better way to spend 5 minutes on a weekend-day than having fun playing the 5 Minute Perseverance Game!?
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Special news
I hope you enjoyed watching me play this little spontaneous creativity game.
Before I finish this post, here is a reminder of the special piece of information I announced in the post “How to Persevere With Joy Instead of Effort.”
I am about to publish the 2nd (5-Year) edition of the 5 Minute Perseverance Game this year. I have to read it one more time, and then it will be good to go. So, I expect it to hit the online bookshelves this or latest next week. The new book will have fifty percent more content, updates, a template for a scoresheet, and links to multiple articles on turning life into games I published on Medium.
Here is its description revealed for the first time:
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Premier of the description for the new edition of the
5 Minute Perseverance Game
5 Minute Perseverance Game
A Self-Motivational Game to Help You Melt Your Procrastination
2nd Edition
Is there something you would like to do but feel you don’t have enough time or strength of will to achieve?
Is there a book you want to write, an instrument you want to play, a language you want to learn, or something completely different that you’ve wanted to accomplish for as long as you can remember?
If you really and seriously want to succeed in this dream project of yours, then play a game. Not a serious game. But a fun 5 Minute Perseverance Game. This short, personal and humorous game will help you melt your procrastination and win any challenge you face.
So, don’t wait any longer. Read this book and invite your procrastination to a round of the 5 Minute Perseverance Game. This little book has helped many turn a procrastinated project into a fun and engaging game.
This 5-year Edition offers even more. The text has been edited and enriched, several tactical variants added, and you will find a scoring sheet for the game you play with your procrastinating self.
In addition, most numbered chapters and sections offer links and short introductions to articles on the art of turning life into fun games. Together these articles have become the 5 Minute Perseverance Game “Wiki.” With this additional knowledge, you can transform this little game into a series of fun self-motivational games you can play and develop further every day.
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A special offer
So, here is my offer to you.
If you buy the first edition of the 5 Minute Perseverance Game before the second is published and send me a copy of your receipt, then within the week of the second edition’s launch, I will send you a link where you will be able to download the second edition of the book as an e-book in a format of your choice. The new book will be more expensive than its first edition through the considerably larger amount of content. So, I highly recommend that you use this offer if you would like to learn more about the 5 Minute Perseverance Game and other possibilities of turning your life into fun games.
Please send me your receipt to vib@optimistwriter.com or in a personal message through one of the channels listed on my contact page.
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Where to buy the book
To take a look at the 5 Minute Perseverance Game and buy it on Amazon, click on its title or this image:
If you want to see where else you can buy it, then go to the book’s page on this website here.
Alternatively, you can subscribe to my page, Optimist Writer, on ko-fi for $5 a month, and besides supporting what I do, you will also get access to all my motivational books, which I share there once a month or each time a book is out. Right now, you can get access to five of my books there — one upon subscription or one-time support and four in the posts solely for subscribers. The first edition of the 5 Minute Perseverance Game is already available, and the new one will appear shortly after its publication.
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Have a beautiful and gameful day!
Happy Spring 2021
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I am taking a little break from my series of blog posts and readings from my books today to honor a Moldovan tradition — Moldova is where I originally come from — and to wish you a happy Spring!
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Mărțișor — A beautiful Moldova tradition
We celebrate this day by giving little signs of love and friendship to members of our families, friends, teachers, and colleagues. These small tokens are called Mărțișori (singular: Mărțișor). In the picture above, you can see my current collection. Some of them I got from my family and especially my sister — she once brought a whole bag of them for me to share and keep. The other I made myself over the years and kept one from each year’s collection as a token to remember and maybe to reproduce at another time.
Here is how Wikipedia defines Mărțișor:
“Mărțișor (mərt͡siˈʃor) is a celebration at the beginning of spring, on March the 1st in Romania, Moldova, and all territories inhabited by Romanians.”
I featured this tradition in my first book, a novel based on a true story of my late father, Mihail Ichizli, The Truth About Family:
” I remembered well how we would all sit together braiding red and white threads into strings, and making little men and women or flowers from the same wool to bind to the ends of the strings. We would give these special talismans, or little Marches, to each other and the teachers on the first of March. Our teachers would have a host of Mărţişori decorating their jackets and sweaters for the whole month.”
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This year’s Mărțișor project
In the past years, I created various designs for the Mărțișori I gave as little gifts to my family. This year, I tried something different and turned it into a little art project. I took a coloring block of postcards and colored only some of the fields with red color, leaving all other white. Then I added one or two Mărțișori on each card.
Here is the result:
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Capture your family traditions in a story
We all have these beautiful traditions from where we come from. If you ever considered writing a memoir or a fictional story based on your family’s or your own story, then I invite you to feature those traditions inside. They will add color to your creations and bring light to the whole story.
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If you need help
Sometimes it can be daunting to start a project featuring your family’s or your story. A memoir can appear daunting to write. I feared writing one for many years, although the wish was significant.
A novel based on a true story might get you going. It did help me. The Truth About Family was a blessing to write; it healed many wounds and brought my mother and me even closer together.
Whatever style you choose, here are a couple of resources that can help you:
If you would like to work with me to help make your memoir or novel describing a personal to you story a reality, you can reach out to discuss how we can collaborate through one of the channels listed on my contact page.
If you are interested in checking out my experience with writing memoirs and novels based on a true story, then take a look at these:
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Happy Spring
All there is to say now is to wish you Happy Spring 2021! We all need the hope the Spring seems to bring with it in these insecure times.
Here’s the little Mărțișor picture I created for my mother this year. And here it is for you!
Happy Spring and Happy Mărțișor!
One Minute Read from the 5 Minute Perseverance Game
Today I start a series of blog posts featuring videos on YouTube, where I read from one of my motivational books for one minute.
Here is the video where I read from the 5 Minute Perseverance Game: Play Daily for a Month and Become the Ultimate Procrastination Breaker.
The extract I am reading is from the chapter “About the Game.”
Here it is if you want to read along, prior, or afterward.
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Excerpt from the chapter “About the Game”
Procrastination means putting off something which needs doing, whereas perseverance is to keep on doing the task whatever it takes.
So procrastination is bad and perseverance is good. Do you agree?
You do? Have you ever tried questioning this statement?
Quite a few people on the Internet do question the supposedly negative side of procrastination by organizing pro-procrastinating fan groups. They rebel and fight the procrastination fighters.
And what do the others, the pro-perseverance say? Many say you need to work hard to achieve something. They search for those inspiring figures throughout history and the present, who achieved amazing heights in various areas, in spite of challenges they might have faced or still face.
You want the same, badly. You want to achieve something, you have a dream. But on the other hand, you like what procrastinators and writers of “Be lazy at work” books say. You want fun, not hard work.
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Special news and a special offer
Before I finish this post, here is a reminder of the special piece of information I announced in the post “How to Persevere With Joy Instead of Effort,” published a week and a half ago.
Here is what I shared there with you:
I will publish the 2nd (5-Year) edition of the 5 Minute Perseverance Game this year. I sent the revised manuscript to my editor this week, and I hope in March, I will publish it.
So, here is my offer to you.
If you buy the first edition of the 5 Minute Perseverance Game before the second is published and send me a copy of your receipt, then within the week of the second edition’s launch, I will send you a link where you will be able to download the second edition of the book as an e-book in a format of your choice.
Please send me your receipt to vib@optimistwriter.com or in a personal message through one of the channels listed on my contact page.
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Where to buy the book
To take a look at 5 Minute Perseverance Game and buy it on Amazon, click on its title or this image:
If you want to see where else you can buy it, then go to the book’s page on this website here.
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Enjoy playing your perseverance, voluntary procrastination, or any other self-motivational and uplifting games!