I don’t think it’d be presumptuous to assume that someone reading this has struggled with procrastination or a lack of motivation or focus. In my case, it’s often wanting to do too many things and not being able to stick to a routine.
I often feel overwhelmed by the expectations I set for myself. Learning many languages, writing a few novels, making music on guitar, learning how to make music on the computer, recording my own work, improving at instruments, not to mention building a so-called business and running communities at Hive.... its a lot! But it shouldn’t be too much, it just requires good management of my time, motivation and (what I’ve been lacking), a routine.
During Tokyo’s soft-lockdown, I got in the habit of putting AT LEAST a half hour a day into building my business. Following just this minimum requirement has allowed me fill up my teaching schedule with private students...
I still didn’t know how to stick to a routine to get everything else done, it just seemed like too much.
That’s where gamification came in.
I realized that turning something into a game (and sometimes relating it to hive) made me want to focus more.
While on the one hand it’s important to try and overcome addictions, on the other it’s very helpful to steer the addictive tendencies we still have towards things that allow us to grow and improve.
Here is a list of games that have helped me stick to my routine and have fun kicking ass at life! Most are free to use!
Duolingo
This is the first gamification app I’ve ever used, and my introduction to gamification. I’ve heard some criticism of duolingo and to be terribly direct, it’s all rather foolish criticism. Duolingo is a blessing, it is designed incredibly well to supplement language studies. It might not be enough on its own if you just play through it, but if one were to take notes and study those notes, it’s as good as a college class. I say that as a multilingual and a language teacher. If you feel confused about grammar, log in by PC and grammar explanations are available.
The only place Duolingo is lacking is that it isn’t nearly as addictive as a lot of other apps out there. In order to compensate for that, I’ve made a little Hive project called #30daysof where I write blogs in the language I’m studying for 30 days using vocabulary and grammar I’ve learned at Duolingo. This helped me come up with the idea for the Hive cross culture! community which is a place to share bilingual posts, culture related blogs and anything to do with languages.
I’m currently studying Indonesian and plan to study Spanish soon! 15 minutes at Duolingo, 15 minutes review and 30 minutes writing a bilingual blog at hive, then engaging with some people from Indonesia. It’s enough to learn quickly!
time on duolingo: 15 minutes
total language study time: 1 hour
bonus: hive engagement
Yousician
I love writing songs. I don’t love practicing nearly as much as so I’m rather limited as a guitarist. I realized recently that it’s time to level up and a lot of that meant going back to the basics. My pinky finger isn’t nearly strong enough, my reflexes are intermediate at best, I only know a few strumming patterns and can’t solo all that well. I just write good but simple songs. Yousician is helping me change that.
Every day I go through a lesson and rather than trying to just win by playing it decently, I try to play it flawlessly. Then I’ll make my own little riff out of the notes, something a little challenging that allows me to practice my scales a little bit. It’s essentially just guiding me through effective practice techniques that I can modify myself, and it also gets me picking up the guitar every day which sometimes leads to me writing new material.
I’m using the demo version now because I just spent a lot of money guitar gear and something else I’ll mention later in this post. I will buy the full version eventually.
**time on Yousician: 15 minutes **
total time on guitar: 30 minutes
bonus: occasionally leads to song writing
Melly
This is one I just discovered. I've noticed that on days where I just spend 10 minutes meditating, I generally stay away from distractions, can remain focused and enjoy my life a whole lot more even when nothing special is happening.
Enter Melly, an app that rewards you with points for completing timed meditation sessions or breathing routines. You can use those points to decorate a garden, which to be honest, isn't that exciting to me, but it at least provides me with a goal to achieve so that I can feel more motivated to complete this "task" every day.
The best thing for me is that you can choose intervals as low as 1 minute. I actually looooove short meditation and find that even more effective than a long meditation is a bunch of short meditations. I go as short as 10 seconds. I would love to get back in the habit of doing 10 second meditations 20+ times a day, which is a hard habit to develop. It's easy to do but difficult to remember to do. So that's my goal with this app.
Time spent with Melly: 10 minutes
Total time meditating: 15-20 minutes a day
Bonus: Helps me get back to my ultra short meditation habit
Ring Fit Adventure
This is a big one for me...and so it's the only one on the list that I spent any money on....and I spent a fair amount on it. You'll need a Nintendo Switch (which I did not have) for this one and the game costs nearly $100 USD but it's worth it if you can find a copy (currently sold out most places).
Exercise is not fun for me. I do not enjoy it. Not even a little. Not only that, my body type is one that does not change very easily so even after working out for months, I don't see any muscle gain or sign that I have been doing any exercise. So my motivation towards exercise is extremely low. I'm happy to ride a bicycle cause i can go somewhere and physical labor is fine but not required in my lifestyle....so the gamification of exercise is AWESOME!
The first few days, after 20 minutes I started to sweat and feel a bit tired. After 30 I was too tired to keep going. After a week, 30 minutes is easy enough. I like being able to see progress! So far it's been really good for my upper body and my thighs as well as my flexibility.
I've unlocked about 10 exercises and about half of them have been extremely helpful and 3 of them were exercises I didn't know before. I imagine I'll learn a bunch of exercises I didn't know by the time I finish my first round.
It was expensive to buy the Switch when the world is having a shortage but definitely worth it!
Time spent with Ring Fit Adventure: 20-30 minutes
Bonus: Learning new exercises and able to like what I used to hate
Honorable mentions
I am not that into gamification of LIFE in general but if you have a hard time sticking to any plan whatsoever you can also try some of those apps. I tried Habitica and Focus Plant.
Habitica will let you make To-Do lists and lists of habits and you can reward yourself with XP and level up when you do good stuff and lose HP when you do bad stuff. I can't really see much beyond that besides buying clothing and items for your character but magic opens up at level 10 so we will see. It's a nice concept but could be a bit more addictive to use and I wonder if there is a way to create some accountability.
Focus Plant will let you set a timer and then you can't use other apps during that time. This will force you to stay off your phone and focus on whatever it is you are doing offline. Then you grow plants with water you earn from your "focus". I suppose I could use this for meditation too.
Neither are as attractive to me as the gamification of skills and exercise but they could definetly help out someone with an extremely addictive personality steer their addictions in a healthy direction.
Bonus: Crypto
In a way crypto is a kind of gamification...it's like money but we can earn it here at Hive through our interactions which feels like a game at times. This helps motivate me to do my best here.
All the games you listed are what I call 'useful games'. Most actual game lovers may not even see them as games at all. Kind of games I like.
While not a game person, I've taken to coding to help with a bit of discipline, and help sharpen my brain a bit. Currently learning python, not easy but has helped me fit comfortably into a routine
There is a coding game called SoloLearn. I am not studying coding at the moment but I thought I’d download it in case I wanted to join the trend and “learn to code” 🙃
Great post thanks! I had only heard of Duolingo before reading this, so that was a great insight :-)
I had previously used Habit Bull to get on win streaks of daily habits, and I found that it helped BUT it wasn't quite as easily accessible as I would have liked in order to help more. I felt that if I could integrate it further into my phone then that would work better. Having said that, there is something simple and wonderful about checking off another success in a line of successes, and not wanting to break the streak :-)
I'm going to go check out a) what gamified apps I do have on my devices, and b) what other useful gamified apps there are that I might use.
I can't wait until there are tons of apps for every skill and every topic and they get more and more enjoyable and effective. I feel like the kids being born today at going to have college level educations before they reach high school and they'll actually enjoy the process.
This can be indeed very useful to build a routine and stick to it!
I’ve also struggled with keeping a routine for a long time, thats why i spent so much time in school, I was so much easier for me to stay productive with the structure there. However, now I’ve just embraced that I go through periods of hyper productivity and periods of rest. When I’m in the rest periods I get frustrated with myself but creating art is something that requires periods of reflection. Even when it doesn’t seem like much is happening there is subconscious magic taking place that can’t be skipped.
Also coffee...
I'm surprised you have a problem with productivity. I only see you posting tons of music and videos.
The problem with my routine before was that it wasn't fun or I couldn't see results. Now I've made it fun and I can see results pretty quickly. Learning stuff is a bit easier than finishing creations for me though because it's measurable.
But just the act of picking up a guitar ever day is helping me finish some old unfinished songs!
Yeah I don’t really see it as a problem anymore. I can get a bit too absorbed when I’m in the creative zone, if I’m really excited about a project I tend to ignore everything else. Allowing myself downtime in between provides a bit of balance.
Also usually it’s not really downtime, it’s more like input vs. output. The tides of creativity if you will ;)
This was a really fun read, mate :<)
I just installed Mello ( although I got a pretty extensive meditation app installed called Insight Timer, I hardly seem to use it ). I like this idea of very short meditation sessions. Also installed Habitica, let's see about the latter. Planning / building habits isn't my strength. I tend to mainly focus on what ( has proven to ) make me feel(s) good easily, whenever I can.
I like to hear about Ring Fit and the Switch. I will keep something similar in my mind as sports isn't my thing either but I'd like to build some more muscle and get fitter without needing to ever go to a fitness center.
Have you ever seen Cronenberg's The Fly? A metal bar to swing from in my house ( as Jeff Goldblum starts doing in that 80s scifi hororr classic ) is something I'm kind of interested in but a switch sounds way more fun.
Not much gamification in my life / on my phone, although I kind of got back into gaming recently thanks to my brother ( more about that here )
I should probably get back to using Duolingo too. Forget about it all the time. Just not very addictive ( as you put it ) and I'm considering to get back to playing guitar in the near future. Nearly touched one in the second half of my life, although I had the chance yesterday at a hippy meeting I attended.
Talk to you soon,
Vincent
i want to hear about that hippie meeting ;-)
The daily blogs in Indonesian are what motivate me to keep going with duolingo. Some days I just do one or two sets but other days I feel my vocab is too shit and go hard on the verbs and adjectives. I've skipped 3 days though argh! Not on duolingo, just on blogs
Man if you want some tips for guitar ask me, I will blow your mind with my little hacks. I'm not a crazy guitar player but I know a few tricks.
And anything Jeff Goldblum does I'm interested in....for a few minutes at least...after that he gets creepy.
:<)
Will need to get my hands on a guitar first. Give my old one away to my Portuguese brother in law.
Hahaha! I get it. He hardly needs to be act to be creepy.
posh:
LoL I bailed on the Indo course long before I got to that sentence XD
Kids and I and some friends used Habitica a few years ago. The quests are great for accountability as if you don't do your jobs the entire party takes damage from your undone tasks XD and the bosses are cute and I like collecting pets.
My kids and friend's younger kids don't use it anymore as they don't know what to do with it, friend fell off the bandwagon after a rough life patch, and friend's oldest who is apparently using it to great effect ditched us for their study group's party XD
I still use it casually as I kind of work between it and Todoist because Todoist is much better at todo lists and scheduling even in the gumby free mode and Habitica is just more fun to use.
Otherwise I play Pokemon Go and Ingress and that usually gets me about the place but unless I'm sneaking portalstops while on excursions (I don't usually play when I'm with other people unless they're playing too because I'm occasionally good at being social) I usually play while walking the dog (sometimes we end up going on very long walks XD) and lately J has been taking both dogs for walks so I haven't been playing.
I just looked up "gamification" (literally searched for that on the appstore and saw FitnessRPG and Zombies, Run! I'm almost tempted XD
Duolingo es una excelente aplicacion para aprender un idioma nuevo, con tan solo 20 minutos al dia basta para mejorar la pronunciacion y gramatica. Si es cierto como usted dice que se debe complementar con investigacion aparte o con un curso para aprender mejor cada unidad. Pero por lo general es excelente!