Gamifying Your Personal Growth

You may be one of those that sees personal growth as a struggle. Something to be done, but it’s loathed as you’re growing.

You may say “It’s boring” or maybe “I’ve heard it a thousand times before.”

What can we do if we find ourselves stuck in a personal growth rut and unable to see our way out? One way is to begin gamifying our personal growth.

Image by Boris Lechaftois

Gamifying? You’re probably asking yourself what the heck is gamification? You might even think gamifying and gamifcation aren’t even words. (They are, by the way)

What Is Gamification?

Let’s start with what is gamification? Wikipedia defines gamification as the use of game thinking and game mechanics in non-game contexts to engage users in solving problems. Gamification is applied to improve user engagement, return on investment, data quality, timeliness, and learning.

So, what does that mean?

I grew up on video games. So I know a thing or two about them and how they work.

Image by Andy Liang

Whether it was the reward of a gold coin in Mario for hitting the question mark block or the Xbox Live point system which showed off your mad Halo skills, video games have been rewarding players with instant feedback.

Gamification is taking this reward strategy into the real world, making our every day activities into score-able actions.

How Gamification Can Help Personal Growth

I’ll be honest, I’m not always enjoying my times of personal growth. The leadership book may be a very dry read. The implementation of new leadership skills may be taking longer than I want. Or it could be the fact I’ve heard the same speech a thousand times before.

Personal growth can be boring! Let’s be real.

This is where gamification can come into play. Using gamification can make personal growth a challenge that rewards us instantly.

One of the coolest iOS apps I’ve seen for the gamification of task lists or personal development has to be EpicWin (or there’s Task Hammer for Android users like myself). Using this app, you make a list of tasks that you need to complete, including personal development goals. As you check off each task, your character gains experience points, gold, and more.

You can set this up for personal growth by setting goals for:

Time spent reading

Time spent reflecting

Time spent writing

Time spent growing

I think you get the picture. Whatever personal growth goals you have that can be broken down into daily tasks can be used for gamification.

You get the personal satisfaction of doing growth orientated tasks and seeing game-like results. Kind of cool, huh?

Question: Do you think gamifying some of your personal growth goals would help you reach them faster? What’s your thought on gamification? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below.