Game On: Framework for gamification

1. Live the game you dream.
2. Make your own Playbook. Identify the “epic players”, the current “quests”, the “bosses” and the “countermoves” in beating them.
3. Experiment a reward system. Give points to every milestone and collect “loots” in the form of predetermined rewards.
4. Create your “dashboard” for detailed project planning. 
5. Keep your game simple. Do not load it with too many and complicated rules and quests.
6. Pause for a while to regain your energy. Sticking to the game is more valuable than heroic bursts followed by inaction.
7. Design it beautifully to be inspired to play it.
8. Revisit and refine your game, improve your Playbook.
9. Define boundaries. Don’t be a game addict.

It is less about what you do and more about how you see what you do.

Qualities a purpose needs:

• It's a stable and far-reaching goal. You need something that motivates you and that you can organize your actions around.
• It involves a contribution to the world. It makes a difference in the lives of people who don’t happen to be you.

You have a story you tell yourself about your life — whether you realize it or not.

A trend in the stories that people with meaningful lives tell themselves -  redemption stories: the tellers move from suffering to salvation — they experience a negative event followed by a positive event that resulted from the negative event and therefore gives their suffering some meaning.

Talking back to your inner critic is an important part of taking away its power. 

Telling the critic you don’t want to hear what it has to say begins to give you a sense of choice in the matter. 

Self-criticism isn’t innate to us, it’s internalized based on outside influences, such as other people’s criticism, expectations, or standards. It’s a habit that can be unlearned or controlled.

One way to separate yourself from the self-criticism is to give it a name. Doing so, you better positioned to free yourself from its influence.

• Epic meaning and calling to finish a mission.
• Development and accomplishment inspires us to finish the game.
• Empowerment of creativity to bring imagination to life.
• Ownership and possession of rewards.
• Social influence and relatedness or envy.
• Scarcity and impatience to have things we don't have.
• Undpredictability and curiosity of what the next challenges are.
• Loss coins and chances and avoidance of failure.

• Reward yourself for fulfilling one or several tasks

Use surprise rewards.

• Determine a reward by chance.

Engage in time-based challenges

Make a deal with your friend.

• Challenge and motivate each other to finish a task

Working well is not about maximizing every waking moment of the day, in order to get more done. And the focus on maximizing time may actually diminish our creativity.

Instead, try identifying and focusing on the few hours of the day you are most productive.

To achieve sustainable productivity habits, it’s best to build up with easily achievable tasks.

Small chunks of accomplishment will amount to something big eventually.

• Regular Aerobic Exercise: Great for both your physical and mental health. Increases the production of dopamine and boosts creativity.
• Preparing Your Own Meals. It’ll take some getting used to, but it’s a habit that’ll boost your health, wealth and productivity. 

• Create a Household Budget: the best habit to help you save money. A household budget helps to encourage frugality and discourage impulse spending. You’ll feel more motivated to engage in other good financial habits once you’ve got this in place.
• Financial Audits. This involves frequent checks as to whether you’re spending your money as wisely as possible.

It means owning your actions, mistakes, and current life situation.

Understand what’s in your control, and fully own it. If you don't like something, you have the power to change it. What others do is not your concern, nor your responsibility.

If you find yourself experiencing issues when trying to fall asleep, you might as well consider making your brain believe that night has come.

In order to do this, you could start using dim table or side lamps instead of bright ones, turning on your phone the so-called 'night mode' or using a mask to cover your face.

Whenever we fall behind on sleep, most of us have the tendency to try to catch up during weekends. The result is not that good though: it confuses our internal clock and therefore, we tend to feel even more tired afterwards.

So we should actually try waking up and going to bed at the same hours on both weekdays and weekends and building up a regular schedule that suits our needs.

They are mental shortcuts we use, which generally help us make quick decisions, but don’t always work out for the best. 

Our brains were never wired to be truly rational because there is way too much information in the world for us to process. We evolved instead to make decisions quickly.

Thinking for yourself and going outside your comfort zone might lead you to untold treasures.

Just as you will often find a rare and incredibly powerful item in a random closet, you can find a job or a new relationship in unexpected places. You’ll never know what you may find if you don’t go out there and explore.

There are rules to everything, and understanding the underlying system, makes it easy to find loopholes and exploit them.

In real life, there are many predictable situations and in most cases there is an easier way to overcome them if you know they are coming. You have to pay attention and exploit them within reason.