You can gamify life as long as it's only something you have full control over. When you have to work for someone else or depend on others to pay you or validate your success then gamifying will not work as humans, in general, cannot be gamified in my experience.
Answering your question: I kinda accidentally gamified my way to a new running habit. I'm on a 20-week streak with over 50 runs under my belt.
Here's how it happened: I asked an AI chatbot to act as a running coach and give me a training plan to run in a race for my kids' school, taking into account my general (lack of) fitness, a 6-week timeline, and a modest goal of being in shape enough to not need to walk part of the course. I already wore a fitness tracker, which I synced to Strava after each run. I then fed the data to the chatbot.
Race day came and went (didn't walk!), but the gamifying worked so well that I set goals for next year's race and have kept up the running habit for another 14 weeks.
Layers of clear and immediate feedback loops are the most effective gamifying strategies: the fitness tracker gives me real-time run data, Strava gives me post-run summaries and charts, and the chatbot gives me both detailed analysis and bigger picture feedback. In addition, the interactive nature of the chatbot lets me get instant answers on questions that normally take hours of Googling or watching Youtube.
The chatbot also helped with defining meaningful milestones at the right challenge level: each workout is a milestone, tailored to my current progress and my long-term goal.
Finally, there are clear rules and safety nets: each run has specific goals I'm trying to hit (distance, speed, time, heart rate zone, etc.), and there are monthly targets as well. Each run ends up being a little experiment, with difficulty adjusted up or down depending on my performance.
Four months ago I barely hacked and wheezed my way to 1 mile and would say I hate running; today I'm comfortably running over 3 miles a day, 3 days a week and can't imagine not getting up early to run tomorrow. It's not much, but considerable to me having not run regularly in nearly two decades.
You can gamify life as long as it's only something you have full control over. When you have to work for someone else or depend on others to pay you or validate your success then gamifying will not work as humans, in general, cannot be gamified in my experience.
Answering your question: I kinda accidentally gamified my way to a new running habit. I'm on a 20-week streak with over 50 runs under my belt.
Here's how it happened: I asked an AI chatbot to act as a running coach and give me a training plan to run in a race for my kids' school, taking into account my general (lack of) fitness, a 6-week timeline, and a modest goal of being in shape enough to not need to walk part of the course. I already wore a fitness tracker, which I synced to Strava after each run. I then fed the data to the chatbot.
Race day came and went (didn't walk!), but the gamifying worked so well that I set goals for next year's race and have kept up the running habit for another 14 weeks.
Layers of clear and immediate feedback loops are the most effective gamifying strategies: the fitness tracker gives me real-time run data, Strava gives me post-run summaries and charts, and the chatbot gives me both detailed analysis and bigger picture feedback. In addition, the interactive nature of the chatbot lets me get instant answers on questions that normally take hours of Googling or watching Youtube.
The chatbot also helped with defining meaningful milestones at the right challenge level: each workout is a milestone, tailored to my current progress and my long-term goal.
Finally, there are clear rules and safety nets: each run has specific goals I'm trying to hit (distance, speed, time, heart rate zone, etc.), and there are monthly targets as well. Each run ends up being a little experiment, with difficulty adjusted up or down depending on my performance.
Four months ago I barely hacked and wheezed my way to 1 mile and would say I hate running; today I'm comfortably running over 3 miles a day, 3 days a week and can't imagine not getting up early to run tomorrow. It's not much, but considerable to me having not run regularly in nearly two decades.
Good one Steve. The WoW example is very good.
<3 it
STEVE PLAYS CIV CONFIRMED