Tag Archives: #inspiration

Free Speaking Game for the Self-Gamification Happiness Formula

March 10, 2021Self-Gamification#anthropology, #audiobook, #ebook, #formula, #fun, #gamification, #happiness, #inspiration, #kaizen, #motivation, #novelapproach, #OptimistWriter, #paperback, #selfgamificationvica

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Here is the second 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, Self-Gamification Happiness Formula: How to Turn Your Life into Fun Games.

I am reading a paragraph from “Chapter 9. The Starting Point and the Next Step.”

Here it is if you want to read along, prior, or afterward.

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The prompting paragraph from the
Self-Gamification Happiness Formula

I could do the following in those “odd” places where I don’t have all the tools needed to make progress with my project; and these are the things I could prepare or use before going to those places. (Examples: put a notepad with a pen in the bathroom, print out the chapter of my thesis I am working on to take and read on the commute, download a free app to plot my novel, put a dictionary in the kitchen to look up the words for kitchen appliances in the language I want to learn, in the small breaks while cooking):
__________________________________________________________________

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The next step

To take this game to the next level, I invite you to read the book and try out the exercises inside it. To look at Self-Gamification Happiness Formula and buy it on Amazon, click on its title or the image below. Please note that you can buy the book as an e-book, paperback, or audiobook:

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. Since the beginning of February, the Self-Gamification Happiness Formula is one of these.

Enjoy your day and make it gameful!

Happy Spring 2021

March 1, 2021Self-Gamification, True Story#5minuteperseverancegame, #basedonatruestory, #boats, #gamefulwriting, #helpforyou, #hope, #inspiration, #march, #martisor, #novel, #OptimistWriter, #selfgamification, #spring, #writing, #writingtips, memoirvica

My little Martisori treasure chest (Image courtesy of the author)

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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:

This year’s Martisor project/art (Image courtesy of the author)

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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!

Martisor, the symbol of the Spring (Image courtesy of the author)

What is the Setup for Your Real-Life Games?

May 13, 2020Gameful Practice, Self-Gamification#inspiration, board games, card games, Gaming, Life, Mindfulness, Self, self-gamification, video gamesvica

Photo by Adi Goldstein on Unsplash

(An excerpt. Read the full article on Medium)

Definition of a setup

So, we have a great goal in the Self-Gamification game. Now, it’s time to think of a setup defining the frames, in which the Self-Gamification game player in you can reach the goal of making your project feel like a brilliant game for the project game player part of you.

Before looking at the setup of the Self-Gamification game, let’s find out what the word “setup” means in general and in games.

In general, a setup is:

“the way in which things are organized or arranged.” — Cambridge Dictionary

In video games, it would be the hardware and the software you need to set up to play a specific game.

In a board or a card game, these would be one or more boards, decks of cards, dice, figurines, and possibly others.

The description of how to lay out the tools you have so that you can start playing the game also belongs to the setup.

The setup in the Self-Gamification game

So what is the setup in the Self-Gamification game?

Hm, that is a tricky question.

Once, I wrote a little book, 5 Minute Perseverance Game, and I wrote it before I had heard about gamification. I structured this book as a description of a board game. Like most board game descriptions, it has a section called “Setup.” It’s short in the book, so I quote it in full length here, and I also add the title and the beginning of the subsequent section called the “Flow of Play and Rules.”

“Setup

You put yourself in front of what your project demands to be carried out. That could mean a notebook and a pen or a computer for a writer, a guitar and sheet music for an aspiring musician, or a dictionary and exercise book for a language learner and so on.

Then you sit, stand, lie down, or take whatever other starting position you need to work on your project. And…

Flow of Play and Rules

You play.

Well… you work on your project. “

— Victoria Ichizli-Bartels, 5 Minute Perseverance Game

Thus, anything you need for the project would be a part of your setup also in the Self-Gamification game.

But this is not all.

Anything you are aware of about your project game player (yourself), especially at the moment of turning that specific project into a fun game (or a set of games), is a part of your setup.

(Continue reading on Medium)

The Goal of Turning One’s Life into Fun Games

May 5, 2020Gameful Practice, Self-Gamification#inspiration, Gaming, Life, Relationships, Selfvica

(An excerpt. Read the full article on Medium)

An acronym: SG = Self-Gamification

The goal, the mission, and the win-state of the SG game

Thus, let’s define the goal of the SG game and find out what is your mission in this game.

The ultimate goal in the SG game is to make your reality engaging, entertaining, and fun.

You choose a target (which can be a challenge, a project, or activity) and take on a mission to turn this target into a fun, self-motivational game, which is enticing for the player (yourself) to engage and enjoy.

You could say, the SG game is mostly a game designer’s game. You play the role of the self-motivational game designer. But also that of your first player testing your games.

The win-state in the SG game is the state of flow.

“There is virtually nothing as engaging as this state of working at the very limits of your ability — or what both game designers and psychologists call ‘flow.’ When you are in a state of flow, you want to stay there: both quitting and winning are equally unsatisfying outcomes.” — Jane McGonigal, Reality is Broken

So, you, as a designer of your self-motivational games, are on a quest to design (or re-design) your challenges, projects, and activities. And do that in such a creative way that it facilitates the player (yourself) to enter the state of flow willingly and effortlessly, whatever the challenge, project, or activity game might be, and whatever the player (yes, yourself) might think of it.

(Continue reading on Medium)

How to Conquer the Information Overload Gamefully

May 4, 2020Gameful Practice, Self-Gamification#gamification, #inspiration, Business, Creativity, Productivityvica

(An excerpt. Read the full article on Medium)

The challenge

In the internet interconnected world, the information becomes a much too easily accessible good.

There is even a well-known term for that — the information overload.

“Information overload (also known as infobesity, infoxication, information anxiety, and information explosion) is the difficulty in understanding an issue and effectively making decisions when one has too much information about that issue. Generally, the term is associated with the excessive quantity of daily information.” — Wikipedia

Today, during the COVID-19 pandemic, when most of the world is online for big chunks of the day (especially during the working hours), there is even more information every day. Those of us, who don’t work on the “front line” during the pandemic, can express our generosity mostly online nowadays. So there are valuable short and long bits of information in all possible digital formats. These come from official sources, press, entertainment industry, our families, friends, bosses, employees, colleagues, communities we joined, and social media we frequent. But there are also libraries giving free access to books, films, and more, museums, zoos, culture centers, and theaters offering online tours and performances, and so many more.

The workdays for all of us have become a fusion of our work and personal lives.

The oncoming information, especially the one about the COVID-19 situation, lockdowns, and reopening, affects both our work and personal lives, and it has never been more challenging to draw a line between them.

The main effect of that multidimensional information overload is a profound confusion and a feeling of being lost.

How can we handle all this overflow of the information, especially when we start a workday?

The gameful solution

A perspective change is often the best solution in confusing situations.

How can we view the information flow differently?

I discovered that the gameful approach to life provides effortless and joyful resourcefulness in all areas of our lives and most circumstances, including times of crisis.

While writing the Book 1 of the “Gameful Life” series, Gameful Project Management, I have discovered that what I was creating with my non-fiction books and articles on Self-Gamification, were not the ideas to replace the well-establisher others. Instead, I was creating “awareness boosters.”

Even the subtitle of the Gameful Project Management book has the phrase in it: Self-Gamification Based Awareness Booster for Your Project Management Success.

To find out what an awareness booster is and how information coming upon us can become such a booster, we need first to identify what awareness boosters are. Let’s start with awareness.

(Continue reading on Medium)

Win any challenge by turning it into fun games!

Tag Archives: #inspiration