Tag Archives: Life

What is the Setup for Your Real-Life Games?

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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)

More on Turning Life into Fun Games

Books

“Gameful Life” Series

Gameful Project Management
Self-Gamification Based Awareness Booster for Your Project Management Success
(Book 1)

Gameful Healing
Almost a Memoir; Not Quite a Parable
(Book 2)

Gameful Isolation
Making the Best of a Crisis, the Self-Gamification Way
(Book 3)

Standalone Books

The Who, What, When, Where, Why &
How of Turning Life into Fun Games
A Compressed Version of the Self-Gamification Happiness Formula

Self-Gamification Happiness Formula
How to Turn Your Life into Fun Games

5 Minute Perseverance Game
Play Daily for a Month and Become the Ultimate Procrastination Breaker

Online Course

Motivate Yourself by Turning Your Life Into Fun Games
Practice Self-Gamification, a Unique Self-Help Approach Uniting Anthropology, Kaizen, and Gamification
(on Udemy)

The Goal of Turning One’s Life into Fun Games

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Image by the author

(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)

More on Turning Life into Fun Games

Books

“Gameful Life” Series

Gameful Project Management
Self-Gamification Based Awareness Booster for Your Project Management Success
(Book 1)

Gameful Healing
Almost a Memoir; Not Quite a Parable
(Book 2)

Gameful Isolation
Making the Best of a Crisis, the Self-Gamification Way
(Book 3)

Standalone Books

The Who, What, When, Where, Why &
How of Turning Life into Fun Games
A Compressed Version of the Self-Gamification Happiness Formula

Self-Gamification Happiness Formula
How to Turn Your Life into Fun Games

5 Minute Perseverance Game
Play Daily for a Month and Become the Ultimate Procrastination Breaker

Online Course

Motivate Yourself by Turning Your Life Into Fun Games
Practice Self-Gamification, a Unique Self-Help Approach Uniting Anthropology, Kaizen, and Gamification
(on Udemy)

Self-Gamification is an Art and a Game

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Image by the author

(An excerpt. Read the full article on Medium)

Self-Gamification is an art

Self-Gamification is an art of turning whatever we are up to into fun and engaging games for ourselves. It is the application of game design elements to our own lives.

It is also a self-help approach showing us how to be playful and gameful, and bringing anthropology, kaizen, and gamification-based methods together.

In Self-Gamification, we are both the designers and the players of our self-motivational games, which are the challenges, projects, and activities turned into games.

But wait a minute! It is an activity too. You need to be active in the design and play of the self-motivational games.

So it is also a game.

Self-Gamification is a game

I was surprised to have had this epiphany only recently, after gamifying my whole life for three years consistently, and parts of it for an even longer time.

But on the other hand and when looking at it anthropologically, it is not surprising at all. I wasn’t thinking that much about the game. I was playing it. And that is the only way to experience it as a game.

Only when I was challenged to play another game, the game of explaining how Self-Gamification works could I see it more clearly. That is a paradox. Which is why it makes sense since we humans are highly paradoxical beings.

Some time ago, I recalled how, when I was young, I rarely referred to what I was doing in my games or play as such. I was busy with some activities. I might have called them “games” or “play,” but I didn’t think of the terms when I was playing.

However, outside of the game’s or play’s realm, the gameful and playful activities seemed safe, and I could easily imagine doing them than a chore my mother had asked of me. Only when she shaped the idea of the chore as something enticing did I agree to give it a try to be entertaining. And I must admit that it did happen more often than not.

(Continue reading on Medium)

The Real-Life Role Playing Games

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(An excerpt. Read the full article on Medium)

Let’s address the first of the three tools that Self-Gamification brings together. This tool is anthropology, which is

“the scientific study of the origin, the behavior, and the physical, social, and cultural development of humans.” — Free Dictionary

When applied to myself (I’ll address this idea in a second), this approach helped me to discover my many quirky thought patterns. These can be so much fun when observed non-judgmentally and with open-minded interest.

I discovered I had the idea that I didn’t want to learn to play Role-Playing Games (RPG), because I judged them as being too complex.

Only recently, I became aware that we all play many different Role-Playing Games every day.

“A role-playing game (sometimes spelled roleplaying game; abbreviated RPG) is a game in which players assume the roles of characters in a fictional setting.” — Wikipedia

You could say we all have real-life role-playing games. We are parents, children to our parents, bosses, employees, students, assistants, and many more. And many of these roles overlap every day. Especially now when we are together with our families at home, helping our children with homeschooling, working, supporting our elderly parents by calling them many times a day, maintaining a household, cooking, and so much more.

In Self-Gamification, too, we play specific roles. These are the roles of designers and players of our self-motivational games, which are the projects, activities, or challenges we turn into games.

“A self-motivational game is a real-life project or activity that you adjust in such a way that it feels like a fun game with which you are eager and happy to engage, both in terms of its design and the playing of it.” — Victoria Ichizli-Bartels, Self-Gamification Happiness Formula

But there is another Role-Playing Game, which I’ve loved playing ever since I heard about it.

I learned about this possibility from award-winning authors, seminar leaders, radio show hosts, and dear to my heart friends, Ariel and Shya Kane. Here it is:

“You can create a game where you pretend you are a scientist or an anthropologist discovering the way that a particular culture functions or operates. Don’t take anything that you discover personally. It isn’t personal. Many of your prejudices were absorbed from the culture you grew up in, and unconsciously you have internalized these cultural values without the benefit of seeing whether they are honestly true for you.” — Ariel and Shya Kane, Working on Yourself Doesn’t Work

So along with the other roles you take on during the day, I suggest that you play the anthropologist’s role-playing game.

(Continue reading on Medium)

This was also an excerpt from my book Gameful Isolation: Making the Best of a Crisis, the Self-Gamification Way. I hope you enjoyed it. If you would like to get access to the vlog accompanying the book then check out this page: victoriaichizlibartels.com/gameful-isolation/.

How to Turn Something or Anything into Games

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Image by the author

(An excerpt. Read the full article on Medium)

Self-Gamification is a lifestyle

The question is how to turn something or anything into games.

The answer is multi-faceted, and in a way, the “how?” embraces the answers to all the “W” questions: “who?”, “what?”, “when?”, “where?” and “why?”.

But the most important facet of how to turn our lives into games is that the gameful approach to life, Self-Gamification, just like those for our health, well-being, and happiness, is not a one-time pill to fix a problem once and for all, but a lifestyle. Because:

“Happiness is not a destination. It is a way of life.” — Anonymous

What is Self-Gamification?

So, what is this new approach to increasing self-motivation and bringing ourselves back on our happy path? And why the need for a new term?

First of all,

Self-Gamification is the art of turning our own lives into games.

Self-Gamification is not the same as gamification, although, as the name suggests, the former is based on the latter.

Gamification has become a buzzword, but many people, especially non-gamers but sometimes gamers as well, are still confused when they hear it. They recognize the “game” part, but not the word in its entirety.

One of the most common gamification definitions is

“the use of game design elements in non-game contexts.” — Deterding, S., Dixon, D., Khaled, R., & Nacke, L. (2011). From game design elements to gamefulness: defining gamification. In Proceedings of the 15th international academic MindTrek conference: Envisioning future media environments (pp. 9–15). ACM

Following on from this, therefore,

Self-Gamification is the application of game design elements to one’s own life.

You could also say that,

Self-Gamification is a self-help approach showing you how to be playful and gameful.

I felt the need to coin this new term for gamifying one’s life when I realized through self-observation that there is more at stake here than just learning from games and game design.

One of the gamification pioneers, Yu-kai Chou, pointed this out when he said that gamification is

“more than points, badges, and leaderboards.” — Yu-kai Chou, Actionable Gamification

The same applies to Self-Gamification.

Beyond this, there is an essential feature that distinguishes Self-Gamification from gamification as it is currently known. Here it is:

In Self-Gamification, you are both the designer AND the player of your self-motivational games.

So as a designer you take responsibility for how the game is developed. On the other hand, as a dedicated and highly interested player, you are responsible for playing the game, as well as giving the designer feedback on how it could be improved.

The design part is critical — which is taking responsibility for how fun and engaging your games are for yourself as a player. Without judging the player, you must create the best games for them, i.e. for yourself.

This is the primary difference between the Self-Gamification approach and the games and gamification frameworks designed by others. In Self-Gamification YOU, and no one else, have to develop your short (minutes or hours long), also daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, etc. games. You’ll do well playing other people’s games, but you will inevitably give your personal touch to each of the games when you play them, and it is your choice and responsibility for how you mix these games with those of your own design. Nobody else could do it for you even if you or they wanted to.

Now, let’s consider the three approaches Self-Gamification brings together to help you turn your life into fun games and have fun with everything or anything you are up to.

(Continue reading on Medium)

This was also an excerpt from my book . I hope you enjoyed it, and it inspired you to turn something into fun, for you, games. I invite you to check out the other resources on Self-Gamification here: .