Tag Archives: #OptimistWriter

What Is the Best Thing About Turning Life Into Fun Games From Game Design Perspective

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Screenshot by the author

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I want to invite you into the world of game designers. Writers and artists are also such designers. All these and other creatives have one thing in common. When they create something for others to enjoy, they have to think about what their customers might feel or wish for.

In one of the sixteen books I am reading right now in parallel, I found the following enlightening quote about the challenge that many game designers and creatives face:

“A great game designer must both predict the actions that players will take within a given game and understand how those actions will make players feel. To some of you, this definition may sound a bit wishy-washy.

“‘We have to talk about feelings?’ Yup, there is no escaping it. Our job as game designers can be described as working in a feeling factory. Only by understanding our own feelings and emotional reactions to games can we empathize well enough with others to do our jobs well. Get ready to get uncomfortable!”

— Justin Gary, Think Like A Game Designer: The Step-by-Step Guide to Unlocking Your Creative Potential

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The best game designers trust their players’ instincts

Later in the same book, I found the following truths about game players:

“In a fundamental way, player perception is reality.”

and

“The best test for knowing whether players liked your game is if they ask to play again.”

And when they play you — as the game designer — pay attention to the following:

“Try and make a player’s natural instincts be (most of the time) the correct thing to do. If your players are constantly taking a certain course of action, embrace it.”

— Justin Gary, Think Like A Game Designer: The Step-by-Step Guide to Unlocking Your Creative Potential

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You have your player right inside you

Game designers have the challenge of guessing and later finding out what their players think by gathering feedback and observing them while the players test the game.

As the self-motivational game designer — the one who turns challenges, projects, activities, and tasks into fun games for yourself — you have an enormous advantage comparing to what the traditional game designers face.

You have your player right inside you. You are the player and the designer of your games.

So, the clue is that you observe how you feel with the game you play (= task you took on or been given to) and then, if necessary, tweak the design of that game in such a way that the player — yourself — can’t wait to engage into this real-life game.

Your tools are awareness, identifying the smallest step you can perform effortlessly and with the resources you already have, and approaching the whole thing gamefully and playfully.

I invite you to reread the quotes above as a self-motivational game designer. Become aware that the player in those quotes is you. Here is the last of the quotes above rewritten to make it visible that the player of your life’s games is you:

“Try and make [your] natural instincts be the correct thing to do. If [you] are constantly taking a certain course of action, embrace it.”

Isn’t this awareness and the brilliant wisdom of a hugely successful game designer fantastic?

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Where you can learn about being both designer and player of your life’s games

The awareness that you have all the tools to make any challenge, project, or activity exciting and fun for yourself can help bring on your natural resourcefulness.

But if you want to take it to the next step, I invite you to check out many of the resources I offer to turn life into fun games. You can find a comprehensive list here.

If you enjoy learning through online courses, then I have a special offer for you.

I have created a coupon to enroll in my online course Motivate Yourself By Turning Your Life Into Fun Games on Udemy for only $9.99 instead of the standard price of $154.99. You save over 90%. To take advantage of this coupon, make sure you redeem it before February 9. Click on the title of the course above or the image below to enroll with this special price:

Image by Alice Jago

Here are the coupon’s data for your convenience:

  • Code: 2A8452A550DDD3B79E3B
  • Expires 02/09/2021 00:02 AM PST (GMT -8)

If you have questions, then you can contact me either by e-mail or on social media. You can find the list of channels where you can find me on my contact page.

How to Answer Questions on Turning Life into Fun Games

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(Image courtesy of the author)

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When we are offered a new idea or a new approach, many questions appear almost all by themselves.

Why should I do it? What is it good for? Who is responsible for making this idea come true? When should I find time for it? Where is it appropriate to do such a thing? Where shall I get resources to make it a reality? Who can help me in the process? And the master of all questions: How shall I do it?

After I formulated my approach to turning life into fun games — which I call “Self-Gamification” — in my book Self-Gamification Happiness Formula (about which I wrote yesterday in this post), I started receiving and answering many questions starting with the six question words: what, why, who, when, where, and how.

Simultaneously, two of the book’s readers have complained about its considerable length — over 90,000 words. The Self-Gamification Happiness Formula considers the approach bringing anthropology, kaizen, and gamification into a strong synergy from multiple perspectives and also shares some of my self-motivational game designs. But what these readers looked for was a short introduction into the Self-Gamification approach, which would concisely answer the what, why, who, when, where, and how questions.

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The 5W&1H book is born

And so the idea was born. I had enormous fun compiling a little book called The Who, What, When, Where, Why & How of Turning Life into Fun Games. You could say, I disassembled the Self-Gamification Happiness Formula, as you would a castle or other big construct built out of LEGO® bricks delivered in a set with an instruction manual. Then I selected many of the bigger book’s “bricks,” took a few from a book I have published shortly prior, Gameful Project Management, and created something completely new.

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Very brief answers to the
who, what, when, where, why, and how
questions

This little book’s description names the questions I answered in the book. I challenge myself now to a game to answer these questions in ten or fewer words each. Let’s see how I will do:

  • Q: Who is responsible for turning projects, activities, and whole lives into games?
  • A: You.
  • Q: What can be turned into games?
  • A: Anything and everything.
  • Q: When does it make sense to turn something into games?
  • A: Now or any time you need help.
  • Q: Where could or should projects and activities be turned into games?
  • A: Where you are.
  • Q: Why does it make sense to turn projects, activities, and even our whole lives into fun games?
  • A: Two of many reasons: lack of drama and effortless resourcefulness.
  • Q: How can we turn projects, activities, and our lives into games?
  • A: By using the three-in-one toolset embracing anthropology, kaizen, and gamification.

Wow, I didn’t plan it, but I did manage to fit my answers into ten or fewer words right from the first formulation of each of them. Yay! I won. 😀

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Where to find longer answers

My answers above are understandably too short, so I invite you to open The Who, What, When, Where, Why & How of Turning Life into Fun Games and discover longer, but still concise, answers to the six questions above.

To take a look at the book and buy it on Amazon, click on its title in this section above or the image below:

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 four of my books there — one upon subscription or one-time support, and three in the posts solely for subscribers. Since the day before yesterday, the Self-Gamification Happiness Formula is one of the three. The Who, What, When, Where, Why & How of Turning Life into Fun Games will be one of the next books I will share there.

Enjoy answering any question you receive or ask yourself in a gameful and joyful way!

What Is the Difference Between the Preferred Path to Your Goal and the Actual One

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(Image courtesy of the author)

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Have you ever tried to illustrate the preferred path to your goals geometrically?

Our stubborn concentration on the goals brings the illusion of this path as being a straight line. At least this straight line is our preferred path. “That would be so great if I would already have been there and achieved that,” we think.

But similar to the way on land to the airport from where we live, our lives are rarely straight lines.

Neither the paths to the wins in the games. They are never straight lines. Because — let’s admit it — straight lines are not very exciting. Yes, they are simple and straightforward, but they are not fun.

Over thousands of years, people shaped their games along with their experience of fun and put many fun obstacles and challenges on the path to the wins in those games.

Fun can rarely be found in a straight line to your goals in life either. At least not in the long run.

And thankfully, our brains don’t function linearly either. Especially the subconscious parts of our minds are very gameful and playful.

I invite you to observe your thought processes, their quirkiness, and how life unfolds with the eyes of a curious and passionate game designer and player. You will discover so many possibilities, as well as your resourceful and gameful powers.

To take the exploration of the enigmatic puzzle of your subconscious a step further, I invite you to read my new book Gameful Mind: Solve the Puzzle of Your Enigmatic Subconscious.

To take a look at the book and buy it on Amazon, click on its title above 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.

How to Use Doubts as Assets in Turning Life into Fun Games

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(Image by the author)

If you open any of my books or other resources on turning life into fun games, you will discover — among others — the recommendations to add some quirky and even silly rules, and not to forget to record your progress in any project or activity you want to pursue by giving yourself points, badges, and observing the levels you reach in your games.

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The doubts and skepticism

You might wonder if this could hinder you in progressing in what you want to accomplish.

You can have your doubts.

I must say, I “slid” into turning my life into games. I just followed my curiosity and became utterly engaged and even addicted. Now, I don’t escape into games or reading from my life, as I used to in the past. Instead, I turn everything in my life, including playing games and reading, but also everything else, including work, private life, relaxing, exercising, sleep, dealing with health issues, and so much more, into fun games for myself.

But I still resonate with the doubts. In fact, I discovered that any doubts in this approach are a brilliant way to test it. I must confess that I am in a constant testing phase of my self-motivational games. I don’t stop developing them, testing, then again tweaking their design, and playing again.

Besides, these doubts and experiences of those I know and myself in life have helped me write my first ever parable called Gameful Writing.

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What is Gameful Writing about?

Gameful Writing is about turning writing into fun games. It considers writing not from the point of view of possible genres but by how we treat it or think of it. Most of us deal with writing something every day, be it a novel we want to write but don’t manage, a blog post for the company we work for, a report, a thesis, an e-mail, or simply expressing ourselves to our loved ones — be it in writing or over a video or phone call. And we fear, resist, and overthink all those types of writing.

This little book acknowledges all these fears and overthinking because it features seven people who face them and manage to shift their focus from upsets into something uplifting and empowering them. They achieve it by turning their writing and lives into fun games — the Self-Gamification way.

This book is a work of fiction, but it features many real-life experiences from those I know and myself. Losing loved ones to illnesses and despair, grieving, letting other people grieve, forgiving ourselves, others, and even life itself for whatever grief they and we might have caused us, and instead find empowerment in the moment of now and with what we have available. These stories are braided strongly into the stories of turning writing and life into games.

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Your gain and savings from investing into turning your life into fun games

I invite you on this gentle and awakening journey of discovery to turning anything into something joyful for yourself.

Why is it worth it?

First of all, you will be able to save yourself the costs of drama and seriousness and instead gain resourcefulness and joy in whatever you set out to turn into fun games for yourself.

By reading the seven stories in this little book, you will see what you can gain from turning your life into fun games, and you will be able to join the characters in the book in this fun adventure of playing a fantastic game collection called life.

To take a look at the book and buy it on Amazon, click on its title above or this image here:

If you want to see where else you can buy it, then go to the book’s page on this website here.

How the Most Neglected Part of You — the Gameful and Playful One — Can Be the Most Helpful During the Pandemic and in Any Kind of Crisis

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(Image by the author)

Can you remember yourself one year ago, in January 2020? What your thoughts and worries were about? You might have heard peripherally about an outbreak of an illness in China, but most people outside of the epicenters were busy worrying about their own daily ups and downs. I remember, I did.

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The long crisis

Then in March, the whole world was the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic. We all started with a state of shock, then slowly trying to find our way through it.

In the first month of the lockdowns everywhere, many thought that this trouble would not go for so long.

The editor and the cover designer for my books, Alice Jago, had an idea for me to write a piece called “Gameful Isolation” to show how my gameful approach to life could help in a time of crisis. She suggested writing a blog post so that it could go out quickly. But as I started jotting down what to write in it, I realized it should be a book, a small one, but still a book.

Alice and I worked on another book at that time, but we thought that the lockdown might end soon, so we made the Gameful Isolation our highest priority. Within less than four weeks from the idea, the book was written, revised multiple times, and published. And along with it, I had a series of videos for each of the chapters of the book, which I made available on YouTube and which you can also see here.

In summer 2020, with the situation getting a little better many might have had an impression that the crisis would soon be over. But here we are, a year after the pandemic started, and many of the countries are still in lockdown. So my little book Gameful Isolation is still relevant, and probably will always be, because we can’t avoid crises. They come in various shapes quite often. We might perceive even small challenges as big crises if we are upset and unhappy.

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Your gameful and playful self is resourceful

The main message of Gameful Isolation is tapping into our gameful and playful powers. I discovered that one of the main advantages of turning life into games is resourcefulness.

When we are in a tight space in a game, we don’t despair long but act quickly. We look around, assess the situation, and look for a small bit of solution with what we have at hand. Immediately after this quick assessment, we act. We don’t analyze our actions too long. We engage fully, and what is fun for us often acts as our compass in games.

I discovered that the same possibility is also open to us in real-life and tough times of a crisis. Asking myself the following question helps enormously:

“If this [challenge, project, task, activity, chore] was a game, how would I approach it as its designer or player?”

You might notice me sharing this question often because it has a fantastic potential to help us set the drama of the moment aside and tap into the resourcefulness, in which we tap so easily when playing games.

The next big help in a crisis is to take time and appreciate every step in our days with gameful rewards — points, badges, cool titles for the levels we set for ourselves in our self-motivational games, and so much more.

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How Gameful Isolation can help you

Here are these and other topics you can find in this little book with its e-book format being of a price of a coffee, and which can help in so many ways during our busy days full of homeschooling, work, household, and so much more:

  • How to motivate ourselves effortlessly in gameful and playful ways.
  • What tools we have when we are gameful and playful.
  • Many real-life role-playing games we play every day and which, if played deliberately, can help us on the way.
  • How to see our resistance to how our life unfolds non-judgmentally.
  • How to acknowledge and even appreciate our fears.
  • The uniqueness of each person’s situation.
  • How we can discover that what we experienced until now prepared us for the crisis we are in and tap into our resourcefulness.
  • Why and how to play real-life situations as if they were games, and what is the “gameplay loop” of turning life into fun games “game.”
  • How to gamefully and playfully, and most of all kindly, appreciate what we do, regardless of how we think of the value of what we do or manage through the day.
  • How to never give up turning life into fun games regardless of the circumstances.

To take a look at Gameful Isolation and buy it on Amazon, either click on its title throughout this post or click on this image below:

To find the links to the book on other online stores and view the videos mentioned above, check out the book’s page on this website here.

I wish you a beautiful and gameful day in any circumstance!

— Victoria