If you can distinguish different types of rewards and rank them from the least pleasurable to most pleasurable then you can use reward hierarchy. Let's say there is some desired action you do in real life (e.g. working on some project 10 minutes uninterrupted). You grant yourself a random reward for it. I will give you an example as it will be better to understand it from it. Tier C: most common reward. 70% of chance to get it. - Checking Facebook - up to one minute - Checking Instagram - up to one minute - ... Tier B: slightly better reward. 25% chance to get it - Checking Facebook - up to 10 minutes - Checking Instagram - up to 10 minutes - Checking Tik Tok - up to 10 minutes - ... Tier A: good reward. 4% of getting it - One episode of TV series that you already watch - 2 hours on internet - ... Tier S: great reward. 1% of getting it - You can start new TV series and watch 3 first episodes - ... If you have three same rewards (e.g. 3x "checking Facebook up to one minute reward") you can merge them into ONE random reward from a higher tier. This rewarding strategy works great because it has a lot of randomness that can hook players to constantly draw new rewards (which requires doing some important work). It's important that probabilities are selected well and rewards are selected well. Otherwise players won't be motivated to do work or they can even prefer rewards from worse tiers (which should never happen).

You designed a game. The game kind of works. It makes you do things you wanted to do. But you see flaws in the game - they annoy you. The game is also kind of broken. But you stay and play this game for weeks and months. Why? Because redesigning the game requires effort. Because dropping the game will make things even worse - the current game is better than no game. So you stay in this unsatisfying state for long. This is what I call the Inertia in Gamifying Life. It happened to me quite often because designing non-ideal games is a typical outcome. And it's also typical that a bad game is better than no game.

There are interesting gamifications of life around BuJo. BuJo mean 𝗕𝘂𝗹𝗹𝗲𝘁 𝗝𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗻𝗮𝗹 - a method of personal organization written in a physical journal. One is a BuJoRPG developed by Emerald Specter. You can see a description of this game in this PDF. 𝗚𝗮𝗺𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗦𝘁𝘆𝗹𝗲 Scattered Gamification - the game mechanics don't directly balance each life area. You select what you want to improve but the game doesn't specify what exactly it needs to be. In reality you could also use the game for only one part of your life (e.g. fitness) which would fall into the category of limited gamification. 𝗚𝗮𝗺𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗗𝗲𝗽𝘁𝗵 More shallow gamification. Mechanics of the game are simple and there are not much dependencies of each element. 𝗠𝗮𝗶𝗻 𝗚𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝗘𝗻𝘁𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗲𝘀 - Musts (habits with a penalty) - Dailes (habits with rewards) - Achievements (metrics rewarded with boosters) - Quests (levelled tasks) 𝗠𝗮𝗶𝗻 𝗚𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝗟𝗼𝗼𝗽 Filling a journal page with numbers and creating a new page. 𝗠𝗼𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗦𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺 - Only In-Game Rewards - the game incentivises to work purely based on in-game rewards: reaching milestones and new levels. - The only urgency motivation in the game comes from so called **Musts** category - if an item from this category is not done HP decreases. Decreasing HP below zero results in losing in the game. 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗦𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺 - Musts reminds constantly about doing annoying activities - Dailes installs new habits - Quests and Achievements encourage you to make progress in given domains 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝘀 - Good way to install new habits - Very pleasurable game for people who finds levelling and hitting new milestones motivating - Easy to understand; doesn't require difficult computations 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘀 - Not for people who don't find leveling game technique motivating - Low complexity can lead to different abuse of the system (e.g. doing only one particular type of activity at the cost of others)

I will start in following days review different game systems that were described by other people. Some of them are in the form of the app, others are described in various places. Typically they are scattered around web and they are called in different ways so finding them is frequently very accidental.

The initial draft of the first course I want to add to this community. These are the basics of gamifying life. It's for people who want to design games for themselves. I can create later courses that are "deep dive" - for example deep dive in gamifying tasks or metrics. This course will recapitulate my actual knowledge about the topic. Initial Course Title: 𝗚𝗮𝗺𝗶𝗳𝘆𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗟𝗶𝗳𝗲 𝗕𝗮𝘀𝗶𝗰𝘀 𝗣𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝗜: 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗰𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗟𝗶𝗳𝗲 𝘃𝘀 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗰𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗚𝗮𝗺𝗲 - Goals - Characteristics of Life - Why is it difficult to achieve things we want? - How can the game fix these deficiencies? 𝗣𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝗜𝗜: 𝗥𝗲𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄 𝗼𝗳 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗦𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺𝘀 - Tasks - Metrics/Habits - Calendars - Timers 𝗣𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝗜𝗜𝗜: 𝗗𝗶𝘀𝘀𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗔𝗽𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗮𝗰𝗵𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗚𝗮𝗺𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗼𝗳 𝗟𝗶𝗳𝗲 - Types of gamification: mindset vs gamist - Total vs Shallow gamification 𝗣𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝗜𝗩: 𝗕𝗮𝘀𝗶𝗰𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗚𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝗗𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻 - Difficulties of designing a game - Motivational layer - what game needs to have to motivate people to do stuff? - Functional layer - how to make a game help to to achieve the goal