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Gamification for Productivity

If you’re an ambitious person with goals and projects, you’ll know what I mean about how sometimes it’s difficult to sustain motivation – especially true when trying to work on:

  • many complex things at the same time
  • projects that might not ever be successful but you want to try them anyway

So one of my favourite tools for being super productive is to track my progress. When I know that I’ll be noting down my “performance”, there’s that extra motivation to do better.

This isn’t a new idea – even crossing off items from a basic to-do list has that nice positive feedback that makes you want to continue being productive ๐Ÿ™‚ But I’ve been incorporating ideas from Gamification to make this much more effective.

What is Gamification?

Gamification is the art of increasing motivation for longer-term goals by making success/rewards seem either more tangible or more instant.

For example if you want to do more exercise to “be fitter”, then the reward is vague and you won’t benefit from “being fitter” until some months later after a bunch more exercise sessions. But if you know that if you run 4 km today then this month you’ve run further (42 km) than any previous month, then you can chase that feeling of success rather than the vague “be fitter” reward.

It gets the name “gamification” as many of the techniques have been used in video games to make a rather pointless task (playing the game) into a fun activity that people really want to continue doing.

Example #1: Progress Bars

When I have a large project to complete – such as recently when I was actually making a video course about these methodsย  (available at a discount through this link) I illustrate it with a classic gamification element: the Progress Bar.

Game System: Progress Bars

Game System: Progress Bars

These are great because even when you do the smallest part of the project, you can see how the progress bar grows in size and brings you closer to 100%

So when I was making the video course, I split the project up into small tasks such as:

  • (5 points) create PowerPoint slides for the video on Progress Bars
  • (5 points) edit the video on Self-Accountability
  • (3 points) write the script for the Random Rewards video

And as I completed each one, the shiny Progress Bar (illustrated above) visibly grew, and I was encouraged to do more.

Example 2: Self-Accountability

If my priorities are changing every day then it doesn’t make sense to combine everything together into a progress bar, so I use a completely different system. Every morning I write down the things I want to achieve that day, and assign points to each item. I prefer to do this so that the daily lists always adds up to 20.

Game System: Self Accountability

Game System: Self Accountability

Then at the end of the day the spreadsheet counts up the amount actually completed, and I can see how this changes from day to day, aiming for close to 100% completion.

This also means that if I’m being overly ambitious and failing to do most of what I plan, the evidence is very clear that I need to sort myself out!

Example 3: Daily Points

Sometimes I need to focus on many things consistently for a few weeks. For example when I was making the video course, I also wanted to also focus on fitness and meditation. So I used a system where different things got me a certain number of points, e.g.

  • (5 points) working for 1 hour
  • (10 points) doing an intense workout
  • (2 points) eating a portion of fruit or vegetables

The spreadsheet then just adds up the points for each day and calculates some basic stats. Everything “positive” I do that day then translates to increasing my boosting my score.

Resources and Video Course

If you want to try out these basic systems, you can find them at the link below. In fact there’s a 4th surprise one in there too. They’ll pretty much work out of the box if you change the labels.

Productivity Templates (Google Sheets)

To learn more about creating and customizing these systems, and for 5 more advanced templates, check out the full video package below. If you’re reading this page you get it for a discount (under $15 rather than $35) through this link ๐Ÿ™‚ and you’ll support my work.

Video Course: Gamification for Productivity and Motivation

For any specific questions, you’re welcome to contact me through my contact page here.