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Turn Your Life Into A Video Game To Increase Your Productivity

Turn Your Life Into A Video Game To Increase Your Productivity

Most Of Us Have Experience Playing Video Games. These Games Are Often So Exciting And Fascinating That They Can Keep Us Busy For Hours Without Feeling The Time Pass.

What exactly are the features of these games that are so attractive and exciting? Can we use these unique features in our daily life to do the assigned tasks and tasks more desirably and beautifully?

As you know, dopamine is a hormone directly related to pleasure and excitement. Most video games are structured so that our brain continuously releases dopamine during the game. Because of dopamine release, we like to repeat specific actions repeatedly and get motivated to follow them.

Video games, especially role-playing games in which the gamer plays the role of a fictional character, have a certain excitement and pleasure and lead to more dopamine release. These types of games can be highly addictive because they have what we call the “Dopamine Trail.”

These games include different stages that continuously release dopamine. That’s why we don’t feel bored and want to continue playing for hours. These games have five critical elements to creating a dopamine trail that you can use in your everyday life.

Having a clear goal

Most of us don’t know what we are striving for in real life. The first feature of computer games has a specific goal. Whether this goal is finishing a marathon or reaching a job, our actions and activities are definite and purposeful. Otherwise, our efforts will be meaningless.

In a game, winning the last stage may be the ultimate goal, but the game doesn’t make you focus on the previous step. Instead, this ultimate goal is broken down into shorter side goals leading up to that big moment.

Whenever we complete a task, no matter how mundane or small it may seem, we are rewarded with a sense of accomplishment. The more we feel successful, the more we want to keep doing it. In essence, this creates a loop where a small success provides the dopamine and motivation to keep working, which leads to more victories.

We may not have reached the final stage yet, but we are taking steps toward that goal, and that is all that matters because as long as we keep at it, eventually, that great goal will achieve.

For example, if you want to write a book, your smaller goals might include:

  • Create an outline of book chapters
  •  Book cover design
  •  Write a thousand words
  •  Edit pages

A second key feature of video games is how important having a plan can be. All these goals can be more detailed, but they express a general idea. The important thing is to start the circle of success and do something that leads you to a bigger goal.

Visible progress

Games show you’re progressing well by showing your experience and progress through a gradually filling progress bar. However, games never tell you that you’re 0.7% out of 100% because that demotivates you. On the other hand, it shows you that you are 70% of the way through the second step. This visible progress gives you the motivation to keep going. That’s why it’s easy to justify playing the game so you can get to the next level before logging out.

However, measuring progress in real life is usually not that obvious, and you have to make this progress visible to yourself. One of the best ways to do this is to track your daily activities.

Try to write down everything you have done to achieve your daily goals. For example, write it down if you wrote 500 words for your book. If you run 3 kilometers for your exercise, write it down. If you have studied for 1 hour a day, write it down.

If you look at the third essential element of video games, you’ll see how vital progression is. In this way, you can easily see your progress or lack of progress. You can see that you are approaching your main goals or small goals. When you see yourself getting closer to one of your goals, you’ll be more motivated to keep going until you finally reach that milestone.

Reward for effort

When you reach a particular stage or complete a task, you often receive a reward, an incentive to increase your desire to take the next step. Prizes are also one of the best motivators in real life because when you expect to receive these rewards, your brain releases a lot of dopamine due to the certainty of this.

In general, when you get a reward, the game process becomes easier for you and makes you determined to keep playing, and this is a point. We deserve a reward when we eat healthy for a week and hit the gym five days a week. But instead of giving ourselves a bonus that benefits us, we usually do something that hurts the progress we’ve made. For example, we reward ourselves by lying on the sofa and eating a whole cake. You will realize this is not smart if you think about it.

Imagine that after a lot of effort, you finish a level of the game, but instead of moving on to the next level, you are penalized and put in a worse situation.

Of course, this does not happen in video games. But in real life, we often do. For example, what do we do when we manage to save 30 million Tomans? We reward ourselves by buying a new phone or something similar that we don’t need. At the same time, the intelligent thing is to spend this money on buying or investing to be useful for us. It will make us earn more money in the future.

In another example, if you like to run, after running for a while and reaching your ideal, you can reward yourself by buying new sneakers. A reward like this makes running easier for you and reinforces the habit. So consider your life circumstances and choose an award that will benefit you or ensure it doesn’t hurt your progress. Paying attention to this point brings us to the fourth essential element of video games: variety and novelty.

Variety and freshness

Our mind loves variety, and as long as an activity has something new to encourage and stimulate us, it will remain attractive and satisfying. Imagine repeating the same stage instead of experiencing new things in a game. This approach is not fun for most of us; we soon get tired of doing it and want to give up. The situation is the same in everyday life. If you do something long-term, it can help to include a series of new parts in that activity.

If you are employed, remember the first day you started your job. That day was not only dull for you but also enjoyable. You met a lot of new people and learned a lot.

However, with the passage of a year, all the novelty has likely faded for you, and the work has become bland. Work has become a routine for you, and there is nothing new to experience. It’s like you play a level of the game for 8 hours a day, five days a week. There is nothing new to look forward to because you already know everything and it is predictable for you.

While following a routine in your life is recommended, it is good to spice up your way with a little variety.

So, if you usually do the same thing all the time, see if it’s possible to work on a different project to change the routine. Preferably, go for a job you are unfamiliar with, which will be a new challenge.

Of course, you may not be able to influence how you do things directly. However, you can introduce and control new aspects that are still relevant to your work, like befriending a co-worker in your office that you don’t normally interact, tidying up your desk, or going to a new restaurant for lunch.

Just look for a way to make your days a little different. You can make your exercise program exciting and different by doing new exercises if you are into sports. If you are still a student and studying, try changing your study location. As you can see, this change does not have to be very big or permanent. The point is to have a new experience once in a while.

A constant challenge

The human brain loves to work and overcome obstacles. However, the difficulty of these obstacles should match your current skill level; otherwise, not only will you not enjoy it, but you won’t put in the effort to solve them.

When you enter the first phase of a game, you’re not immediately fighting the most prominent and strongest opponent out there. If this is the case, you will lose every time because the fight is not up to your skill level, and the difficulty will make you not want to continue playing. In other words, this challenge should be neither too complex nor too easy.

You can overcome challenges, but the level of difficulty increases as your game improves. Otherwise, if you are going to progress and the challenge in front of you remains the same, it will still not be exciting for you to continue playing. For this reason, you face more specific challenges in the game’s early stages.

 Challenges should be at least semi-hard so that when you overcome them, you feel proud and get your reward by releasing dopamine in your brain.

In real life, we rarely face common challenges. Often, we are either overwhelmed by these challenges or bored. If something is so hard that you can’t bring yourself to do it, it’s probably beyond your current skill level. In this situation, you should take a step back and slowly start from the beginning.

The best way is to break that big, challenging task into smaller, more manageable parts. Then do these sections individually, focusing on the easiest ones first. If something seems too easy, you should increase its challenge and difficulty. It helps reduce the work’s problem to some extent, and at the same time, the work progresses.

So try to match the problem of the task with your skill level. Whenever you do this, you will find that you are more engaged and that activity will become more attractive.

Of course, it should note that video games use all those elements and features at a very high speed, and this causes a frequent release of dopamine. So routine that our daily activities don’t catch up; Of course, this does not mean that you should not repeat the “dopamine sequence” in your life. So make sure you apply these five qualities in different and essential parts of your life. It allows you to do whatever you want.