I started my personal Life Gamification project. :D
It looks like this: I have defined a set of activities, and I give myself “points” for doing them. Example activities are: exercise, meeting with people, learning a lesson of foreign language, walking outside, writing a blog article, but also passive ones like spending a day without web exploration. Etc.
For each activity I give myself a point, with the goal of maximizing the total number of points. The rules are designed to prevent cheating; for example for “socializing” I can only get one point per day, and I can only get the point once for each person per week. This means that even if I blindly tried to maximize the number of points, it would not be a big problem.
I have already tried something similar before, so here are the few changes, that I hope will make it work:
First, the activities are precisely defined. In previous attempts I tried to have general categories, such as “do something positive for my health”. Sorry, that’s not actionable. Also it leads to cheating: how little is “something”? Now the activities are rather specific. If this is not flexible enough, of course there is the meta-rule that I can redefine the activities. However (this idea is stolen from Beeminder) if I change the rules, I still have to play another week by the old rules, and only later the new rules apply. (So I am not tempted to change the rules just to get another point today.)
Second, the outcomes are framed as positive: I can only get “points”, there is nothing to lose. I feel that it will be better for long-term motivation, if I give myself only rewards, not punishments. For example today I have 4 points. It’s better to focus on that than to focus on how many points I didn’t get.
Third, to visualize the outcomes, I keep a record on paper. One paper for week, days are columns, and I glue there the “points” made of colored paper. Different types of goals are printed on different colors of paper, so it is easy to see which kind of activities I do more or less. It looks somehow like a list of achievements a computer game could show you. The length of the columns shows which days were more successful. It is on paper, not in computer, because this way it feels more real; and also I have the visual feedback even when my computer is turned off.
OK, this is an experiment that has just started (now is the fourth day I am using it), so I will write more about it when I have more experience.
Of course if it’s successful, I will be glad to share. I would love to share the details now, but there are a few good reasons not to do so:
1) Writing only about successful projects improves the signal:noise ratio. However enthusiastic I feel about my game, if it fails, it is an evidence that it was not worth publishing.
2) Writing about it would be a reward to me, and it’s probably bad idea to take one’s reward before one does the work.
1) Writing only about successful projects improves the signal:noise ratio. However enthusiastic I feel about my game, if it fails, it is an evidence that it was not worth publishing.
1) Writing only about successful projects improves the signal:noise ratio. However enthusiastic I feel about my game, if it fails, it is an evidence that it was not worth publishing.
Noticing how something failed is useful. You had some reason to think it would work and it didn’t. If it was just a lark, sure, move on, but if you expected it to work, pause, notice you are confused and try to work out what happened. Maybe it’s a calibration exercise, or maybe there’s a patch.
Also, not everyone returns to give us updates. If you say it didn’t work, we can all update more cleanly than if you go dark and we have to weight the update by how likely not letting us know what happened is caused by a negative result or just other commitments.
Therefore I promise to write about positive or negative results of this experiment in Group Rationality Diary in December 2012 (or sooner, in case of failure).
I tried something like this a couple months ago. It didn’t work very well because points (to me) aren’t quantifiable- in a material way. So I reward myself with a mini candy bar (one of those bite sized ones) instead. Points alone might be enough to motivate you- I’ve always been incredibly difficult to properly motivate.
I started my personal Life Gamification project. :D
It looks like this: I have defined a set of activities, and I give myself “points” for doing them. Example activities are: exercise, meeting with people, learning a lesson of foreign language, walking outside, writing a blog article, but also passive ones like spending a day without web exploration. Etc.
For each activity I give myself a point, with the goal of maximizing the total number of points. The rules are designed to prevent cheating; for example for “socializing” I can only get one point per day, and I can only get the point once for each person per week. This means that even if I blindly tried to maximize the number of points, it would not be a big problem.
I have already tried something similar before, so here are the few changes, that I hope will make it work:
First, the activities are precisely defined. In previous attempts I tried to have general categories, such as “do something positive for my health”. Sorry, that’s not actionable. Also it leads to cheating: how little is “something”? Now the activities are rather specific. If this is not flexible enough, of course there is the meta-rule that I can redefine the activities. However (this idea is stolen from Beeminder) if I change the rules, I still have to play another week by the old rules, and only later the new rules apply. (So I am not tempted to change the rules just to get another point today.)
Second, the outcomes are framed as positive: I can only get “points”, there is nothing to lose. I feel that it will be better for long-term motivation, if I give myself only rewards, not punishments. For example today I have 4 points. It’s better to focus on that than to focus on how many points I didn’t get.
Third, to visualize the outcomes, I keep a record on paper. One paper for week, days are columns, and I glue there the “points” made of colored paper. Different types of goals are printed on different colors of paper, so it is easy to see which kind of activities I do more or less. It looks somehow like a list of achievements a computer game could show you. The length of the columns shows which days were more successful. It is on paper, not in computer, because this way it feels more real; and also I have the visual feedback even when my computer is turned off.
OK, this is an experiment that has just started (now is the fourth day I am using it), so I will write more about it when I have more experience.
Please let us know how this goes in a couple months!
Of course if it’s successful, I will be glad to share. I would love to share the details now, but there are a few good reasons not to do so:
1) Writing only about successful projects improves the signal:noise ratio. However enthusiastic I feel about my game, if it fails, it is an evidence that it was not worth publishing.
2) Writing about it would be a reward to me, and it’s probably bad idea to take one’s reward before one does the work.
What a lovely justification of publication bias.
Noticing how something failed is useful. You had some reason to think it would work and it didn’t. If it was just a lark, sure, move on, but if you expected it to work, pause, notice you are confused and try to work out what happened. Maybe it’s a calibration exercise, or maybe there’s a patch.
Also, not everyone returns to give us updates. If you say it didn’t work, we can all update more cleanly than if you go dark and we have to weight the update by how likely not letting us know what happened is caused by a negative result or just other commitments.
You are right; and so is gwern.
Therefore I promise to write about positive or negative results of this experiment in Group Rationality Diary in December 2012 (or sooner, in case of failure).
I tried something like this a couple months ago. It didn’t work very well because points (to me) aren’t quantifiable- in a material way. So I reward myself with a mini candy bar (one of those bite sized ones) instead. Points alone might be enough to motivate you- I’ve always been incredibly difficult to properly motivate.
Related Demitri Martin bit