Gamifying My Productivity

I’m trying an experiment to improve my productivity, plus also creating a cryptocurrency token to play around with. Here’s how the two go together.

This video popped up in my youtube recommendations last week. It’s over 5 minutes long, so it was pretty hard to make it all the way through, but it starts with a good reminder that our world has so many small things vying for our attention, it is sometimes hard to focus. It’s so easy to get stuck into the comfortable reward cycle of scrolling through reddit, opening another wikipedia tab, checking the socials, just one more level on that mobile game…. I’ve even found myself closing the reddit app only to immediately reflexively open it back up again as my brain immediately starts searching for the next thing to occupy itself.

All these little ways of injecting dopamine into your brain without any effort feel great, but they’re terrible if you want to keep being productive. Getting your dopamine through effort… requires effort. Why not just skip that bit. Getting rewards without effort is a difficult habit to break, and ultimately, self-destructive. And it’s getting easier and easier to do that more and more.

A great productivity technique is to ensure that your rewards are tied to achievements. More importantly, it’s a kinda good way to lead your life. Rewarding yourself after achieving something through effort is a virtuous reward cycle in itself. Making that a habit is hard, and there are so many tempting, easy ways to break it.

So, how about creating a framework, within which you establish for yourself a set of rules that ensure that you recognise both the cost and the value of both your efforts and your rewards.

To have a play with these ideas, I’ve come up with a scheme which I’m trying out… I give myself points for doing productive or virtuous stuff like working on my book, going to the gym, working on my side-project, or even getting to bed early! ¹

I can then spend these things on rewards: things that I like to do, but aren’t a productive use of my time. Instead of feeling guilty about scrolling through reddit, or watching another episode of It’s Always Sunny for the n^th time, I can feel happy that I’m doing a fun thing that I earned.

Sometimes that’s quite a shift of perspective.

The point is to think about how I spend my time in a fun and engaging way.

This system is easy to tweak. If I think I’ve been going to McDonald’s too often, because it’s just around the corner and it’s so convenient, I can make it cost more points. If I’d like to spend more time at the gym, and can reward myself more for going. I’ve also found myself changing my activities in interesting ways. For example, I might think to myself “Hmm, I’ll still watch this YouTube video, but if I do sit-ups at the same time, I can earn points too!” or, “I’ve finished for the evening, but if I do just one more Pomodoro on my side project, I’ll have extra for a KFC tomorrow, and its the Big Bucket Deal on Tuesdays, ooooh….”

The point is not to turn everything into an activity with a price and start micromanaging my life, but to create a framework with which I can reflect upon my lifestyle and think about how I spend my time in a fun and engaging way. So far, I’m getting a lot out of it.

Using the Blockchain to become more productive

Now, to implement my scheme in the real world, I’ve created a Solana fungible token called Pocket Money (POCK). I have created two accounts - a bank account which I use to pay myself reward points, and an earnings account where I keep my points, and spend them on goodies. The tokens zip back and forth between the two accounts as I keep track of my time. Solana has very cheap and practically instant transactions, so you can do it as much as you like.

Solana is a super-fast and easy to use cryptocurrency. It’s had some problems in it’s journey, but it it’s more than adequate for my use case. It’s also very easy to create your own token. Or, send me a message, and I’ll send you some pocket money. Or, you could buy some Pocket Money super easily here. Do you need a trust-less, distributed, open, blockchain network by which to track this stuff? No. But, t’s fun and nerdy, and I’m loving it. Of course, you could get a bunch of physical coins) and keep track that way.

Think of the Children

As the name of the Token suggests, you could also use this token with your kids. Mow the lawn: get some Pocket Money; play Minecraft, spend your Pocket Money. “Oh, you want to skip school and go to the toy store? Sorry you don’t have enough Pocket Money™ for that.” You know, that sort of thing.

Conclusion

It’s not a perfect system, and it would be awful to obsessively live your life this way, but it’s been an interesting way to reflect upon the worth of my time, how I spend it, and how I appreciate the good things in my life, and the efforts I’ve made to receive them. Also, creating a cryptocurrency is fun!

It’s not for everyone, but if you think it might work for you, I encourage you give it a go. Should you use it as an employer to micro-incentivise your staff in some sort of Black Mirror distopian future hellscape? NOOOO STAAAAAHP.

Cover photo by Mark Cruz on Unsplash