State of the Project Address

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I love my local library. It frequently allows me to indulge my imagination and curiosity without much commitment. Over the last few months I have been dabbling in sports psychology, with mixed results. Athletes seem to be masters of the great mysteries of motivation. I am very interested in what keeps them on their course, especially in the light of recent “hard work trumps talent” themed revelations. Great achievements require great effort, and athletes are a ready illustration of this principle.  I have been doing a lot of thinking about motivation lately, as it seems to be the core of my project. Motivation is a tricky thing - it hides in strange places, it comes and goes, and has the potential to propel man to heroic feats.

In the face of the rather daunting field of motivation psychology I began to analyze my doings a little more deeply. My project isn’t just about motivation. It’s true that I set up my point system as a way to motivate myself, but it seems to go beyond beyond the carrot on a stick I initially envisioned. Are the undercurrents of play and gaming the reason it works for me? 

 

I don't know the answer to this, but I suspect it to be the case. Because I’m a nerd scientist and am ultimately unable to resist the call of recreational research, I have compiled a reading list.

Before I begin, however, I feel I should assess the state of the project as it stands.

There are some distinct advantages to LARP-ing my daily life. I rarely ignore the points where small decisions are made anymore. In fact, I pay more attention to what I am doing in general instead of gliding through the day. I am more focused on my goals, and have to admit to myself when I am electing to put off the things that I know I want to do. It is much easier to view each option as a “could” instead of a “should”, which is an amazingly powerful shift in thinking. For example, "I should be cleaning the kitchen instead of playing video games" becomes "I could be cleaning the kitchen instead of playing video games", transforming my failed housewife guilt into a simple matter of fact. When I look at my points spreadsheet, I am forced to acknowledge and accept the progress I have made and the areas that still need work.

I am closing in on level 3, and have identified a handful of things I’d like to change. Some of my point assignments do not accurately reflect the importance and difficulty of the goals they represent. Since I feel it would compromise the integrity of the training to change the (self imposed, arbitrary) rules mid-level, I have decided to spend the rest of level 2 working on refining the point structure further. In fact, I can only imagine that this is something I will continue to do at every level. The challenge is to maintain my focus on goals (and to reward myself for improving mundane skills) without micromanaging my life. I don’t get points for feeding my kids, but I do get points for remembering to also feed myself. 

Merging my goals with an RPG system has forced me to be honest with myself, and as ridiculous as it sounds, it seems to have improved my overall quality of life.

Now let's see what I can unlearn.

“Work and play are words used to describe the same thing under differing conditions” - Mark Twain