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This post is Part 2 of an ongoing experiment in which I seek to gamify my life and study the implications such gamification has on motivation and happiness. To catch up to speed, here’s Part 1.

Week 1 – Days One & Two

So far, I feel pretty much the same. I still wake up, eat breakfast, go to work, come home, and repeat. But there are a few subtle changes that I’m already noticing.

Upon waking up in the morning, the Statement of Epic Meaning that I created (see Part 1 for a description) consistently helps with motivating me to start my day with a bang. It reminds me that the somewhat monotonous parts of my week have just as much purpose as the exciting parts. It reminds me that, just like “grinding” to level up/get better in a video game, so to I must “grind” through the workweek to earn needed money and respect from my co-workers to begin making bigger changes.

Throughout the day, whenever I hit a slump and just want to go home / take a nap / be a useless human being, I’m reminded that the Level Me Up! app timer is running. I look over to my iPod Touch and see the quantifiable progress I’m making towards leveling up my “Marketing” skill. I’ve decided to keep a tally of my level for both “Marketer” and “iMacros/VBS programmer” on my desk so I can see my progress over time.

Ultimately, this keeps me focused during times of tiredness and procrastination, since every second longer I stay active is another second closer to leveling and, therefore, earning worthwhile rewards.

I leveled up in two different skills today, which means I’ve accumulated some levels that I can cash in on to activate the abilities I discussed in the first post on this subject. I’ve decided to save up three levels and trigger “Buck the learning curve” so that I can reach one of my rewards in less time. I’m still deciding between my clothes shopping budget and the productivity software.

Although I haven’t experienced any profound shifts in my productivity or engagement with my work, I am beginning to feel little pulls in the right direction based on the incentives and mechanics I have in place now. Let’s hope it keeps going in this direction; I fear that tying my work to external rewards will destroy any semblance of internal motivation I may have been developing.

In his book “Drive”, Daniel Pink describes a study in which people who were paid to solve puzzles lost almost all interest in these puzzles when told that they could take a break and do whatever they wanted in the meanwhile. People who were solving the puzzles without pay continued to play with the puzzles out of curiosity. This study demonstrated that external motivators – such as money – can decrease (or even entirely remove) the internal motivation we feel when we’re curious and determined to solve a problem.

Will my use of external rewards negatively affect my motivation during activities in which I don’t offer external rewards? I’ll reserve judgment for now, since I’ve also read cases (specifically from Cal Newport) arguing that passion often comes from competence. In other words, any method that helps you build competence/mastery brings you that much closer to feeling passionate about your work. Therefore, if I use external rewards to push myself to build expertise more vigorously, it might lead to quicker development of passion, at which point the external rewards won’t be required. It is my belief that the researchers in the puzzle study never took this idea into account because the act of solving puzzles is a very short-term endeavor, compared to the types of longer-term goals people set. But only time will tell which body of research comes to be true.

Days Three & Four

I hate to say it, but I still need another few days to fully understand how I react to the leveling-up incentive system. On one hand, I’m feeling a bit more productive since I want to level up quicker, but I haven’t experienced anything fundamentally different. It’s as if someone told me, “Hey, I’ll give you $20 if you work faster.” So I’m not quite sure if my gamification strategy is any different than the standard “carrot and stick” method that employers frequently use through bonuses and promotions.

However, on the “social fabric” front, Fitocracy.com has definitely been motivating me to hit the gym more frequently, so it appears that I’m responding well to the social elements of gamification. It’s worth clarifying that this increase in motivation isn’t causing me to wake up at 5am every morning to hit the gym with unwavering dedication. I still exercise with the same frequency; I just happen to get more enjoyment out of my workouts because afterwards, I get to track and display my progress in a community of fitness enthusiasts. This increased level of enjoyment helps me have better, more productive workouts. It’s another example of gamification yielding small changes in the right direction.

On day 4, I actually felt the short-term incentives of leveling up starting to diminish because – unlike in a video game – you don’t get perfectly-immediate gratification, since it can be days (or even weeks) until you reach the required level for a reward, and I’m not rich enough to give worthwhile rewards more frequently than that. To remedy this, I’m trying to infuse more social elements into the leveling aspect of this experiment by displaying my level for my two work-related skills (VBA/iMacros and email marketing) at my desk at work. I’ve had one person inquire thus far, but the main purpose is for me to feel a sort of pride as I make continual progress. Only time will tell if this idea has any impact.

Day Five

I’m happy to report that I’ve been spurred to take positive action as a result of this experiment! Part of my daily reading of my Statement of Epic Meaning includes a portion about how one of my core purposes is to discover the most effective, powerful ideas for personal change and incorporate them into my life to live extraordinarily (and help others do the same). Since a majority of my time is spent working (start-up companies tend to demand a high level of time commitment), I’ve found little to no time to read. This morning, I had a flash of urgent optimism. The question was no longer, do I have time to read? The question that popped into my head was, how can I make time to read?

What immediately came to mind was my old Audible.com audiobook library that I had been ignoring for the past year. I figured that since I have no time at all to sit down and read, I could still listen to audiobooks as I walk to and from work. I’ve written extensively on utilizing “in-between time” in the past, but high levels of stress from working in overdrive have caused me to completely shun recreational reading. Perhaps there is something to this “urgent optimism” that Jane McGonigal talks about extensively. Even if the answer was obvious, I was too stressed to recognize the problem. It wasn’t until I hammered into my head my purpose and my ability to achieve that purpose (because every game has a solution, right?), that my mind started searching for solutions, a la non-stressed Jon.

In other news, I’ve reached level 25 for my email marketing skills, so I am now in the market for some productivity/goal tracking software. The best part is, I’ve earned it! I’m comparing all possible solutions to my current system of Evernote, Goalscape, and post-it notes. If none appear superior, I’ll add $50 to a splurge account that I use for shopping and recreation.

In other other news, I’ve decided to stop tracking character stats (strength, intelligence, and charisma). It was just too annoying to have to remember to add a +1 every time I went to the gym, spoke to a stranger, or read a book. I may reintroduce an easier-to-track version of this in the future, but for now I just want to hammer down the other aspects of this experiment.

Days Six & Seven

We all have chores and errands to do – it’s an inevitable part of life. Since it would be immensely difficult to track each of the skills that go into the various chores and errands I have, I’ve decided to borrow a page from Fitocracy’s book and start creating some real-world quests for myself.

Just like in a video game, these quests are one- or multi-step projects that earn you some sort of reward when completed. What distinguishes a “quest” from a boring ol’ project is, in my opinion, a compelling storyline that immerses you. As someone who works in marketing, this resonates strongly with me; it’s not the task itself, but the way it’s communicated to you. When it comes down to it, quests in World of Warcraft involve a certain number of mouse clicks and keyboard strokes. But those mouse clicks and keyboard strokes are laden with storyline, milestones, collaboration and potential reward, so it’s engaging. Imagine if someone was just clicking a mouse or pressing a keyboard at random, without the above elements that World of Warcraft gives. They’d be bored to tears.

My first quest will be to go to the gym more often. Now that I’m working longer hours, I only find time to go to the gym on weekends. I’m usually so sore from my workout on Saturday that Sunday is never a good day to work out, so I only end up going once a week. This quest will challenge me to get up much earlier on Tuesdays and Thursdays to go to the gym before work. Like any good quest, I will reward myself for successfully completing it. Here are the details:

Quest I – Escape from Mediocrity

Due to your hectic lifestyle, your time in the gym has dwindled. If not remedied soon, your health will suffer and you will begin to lose the strength that three years of gym-time has rewarded you. Your goal is to discover the pockets of time that allow you to be in the gym three times a week, for 30 minutes each. Here are the tasks needed to accomplish this quest:

a) Discover the closest New York Sports Club to your workplace in midtown Manhattan

b) Create the routines you will use on Tues/Thurs :

• Tuesday: Dumbell bench press (One set flat, one set incline), bent over row (2 sets)
• Thursday: Squats, lateral shoulder raises, pullups
• Weekend: Deadlift, dumbbell shoulder press, weighted decline crunch, decline cable crossover, single hand triceps pushdown

c) Take an earlier train on Tuesday and Thursday to work out at the identified gym using the above workouts

Reward: $50 in your splurge account, more chances to interact on Fitocracy, 2 hours of experience added to any skill of your choosing

These types of quests are already proving to be a worthy addition to this experiment. I’ll go into more detail in upcoming weeks.

In wrapping up week 1, I feel that I now have the fundamentals down (ability to track levels, incentives to level, bonuses and multipliers, and now quests). Moving forward, I have a few more ideas I’d like to implement once I’m comfortable with my usage of quests. I’m feeling good at the conclusion of week 1 and I’m excited to see where this experiment takes me next.

Conclusion of Week 1: What’s your gamer type?

In 1996, Richard Bartle wrote a paper that would become the basis for the infamous Bartle Test. Taken over 700,000 by gamers around the world, this test is one of the most widely used classification systems for the different types of gamers and what they respond to best. These types include Achievers, Killers, Socializers, and Explorers. It isn’t too hard to discover what the driving factors for these gamer types are (respectively: status/power, competition, socialization/community and discovery/creation).

From this experiment, I’m learning that I am a combination of Achiever and Socializer. I learned this by noticing that I respond best when my efforts are rewarded in a way that others can observe, or my efforts give me an opportunity to talk with others about mutually-shared goals or ideas.

Although the Bartle Test is not perfect, I believe it to be a worthwhile tool for understanding one’s motivations within the context of gamification. Life can easily be seen as a game with the right perspective, and understanding how you best function in that game may be worthwhile for discovering what drives you to achieve. You can read more about the Bartle Test here.

Next week begins Week 2 (Part 3 of this series). ‘Till then.

Update: Part 3 is up and running.