Gameification - Turning an otherwise mundane process into one with incentives and rewards for action.
Twice a month I fly out to the east coast for my design job for five days at a time. After a couple of trips, I noticed that restaurant food overload was doing bad things to my body. I wasn't holding myself accountable on those trips. My girlfriend (Kim) and I are both interested in staying in good shape for each other and the habits I was forming were not good ones. In fact, we push each other to get in better shape and I felt I was letting us both down.
I wanted to find a way to help keep healthy and in shape, and we ended up coming up with a pretty cool system that I want to share with everyone. It's worked out really well and I am working harder towards my fitness goals than before. Kim and I are both goal-oriented people and we made this into a partner competition with a cumulative goal, partially because it's been fun, and partially because who doesn't want to be a healthier/sexier couple!?
We wanted a goal that we both had to work to achieve, with some friendly competition involved. We wanted a reward for the winner. We wanted a simple, tangible way to mark our exercise progress. We wanted to improve our health now and build it into future habits. And we started with a bunch of clothespins.
The clothespins were what we used to mark our progress, simple and tangible. Each clothespin is earned with 30 minutes of exercise. Our goal is 100 clothespins between the two of us, with a reward for whoever gets to 50 first; that's where the competitive edge comes in.
Here are the rules:
1 - Thirty minutes of exercise earns a clothespin, and no rounding up to thirty (28 minutes does not earn a clothespin. If we go for 60 minutes, thats two clothespins, and so on. It is in the honor system, but we have no reason to cheat since we would be cheating ourselves AND each other.)
2 - You lose a clothespin for eating an unhealthy meal.
3 - Every Sunday, we add a "freebie" clothespin to each of our buckets (because we can't eat perfectly all week! We wanted a little leniency. This isn't boot camp).
4 - Yoga doesn't count.
5 - 20 minutes of moderate running (faster than a 9:30-mile, in our case) earns one clothespin.
6 - First to 50 clothespins wins.
However, we don't have a prize yet. So far, we have earned about 10 clothespins each. Any suggestions on what the winner's prize should be? We are not allowing it to be sexual because that's not something that we want as the direct reward system for our progress. We are also paying back student loans and don't have a lot of expendable income, so the prize can't be more than $50 bucks.
It's been a great challenge so far. It motivates me knowing that Kim and I are working to get in better shape for ourselves, for each other, and to start building these habits now to be a part of a healthy future.
-Chris
Twice a month I fly out to the east coast for my design job for five days at a time. After a couple of trips, I noticed that restaurant food overload was doing bad things to my body. I wasn't holding myself accountable on those trips. My girlfriend (Kim) and I are both interested in staying in good shape for each other and the habits I was forming were not good ones. In fact, we push each other to get in better shape and I felt I was letting us both down.
I wanted to find a way to help keep healthy and in shape, and we ended up coming up with a pretty cool system that I want to share with everyone. It's worked out really well and I am working harder towards my fitness goals than before. Kim and I are both goal-oriented people and we made this into a partner competition with a cumulative goal, partially because it's been fun, and partially because who doesn't want to be a healthier/sexier couple!?
We wanted a goal that we both had to work to achieve, with some friendly competition involved. We wanted a reward for the winner. We wanted a simple, tangible way to mark our exercise progress. We wanted to improve our health now and build it into future habits. And we started with a bunch of clothespins.
The clothespins were what we used to mark our progress, simple and tangible. Each clothespin is earned with 30 minutes of exercise. Our goal is 100 clothespins between the two of us, with a reward for whoever gets to 50 first; that's where the competitive edge comes in.
Here are the rules:
1 - Thirty minutes of exercise earns a clothespin, and no rounding up to thirty (28 minutes does not earn a clothespin. If we go for 60 minutes, thats two clothespins, and so on. It is in the honor system, but we have no reason to cheat since we would be cheating ourselves AND each other.)
2 - You lose a clothespin for eating an unhealthy meal.
3 - Every Sunday, we add a "freebie" clothespin to each of our buckets (because we can't eat perfectly all week! We wanted a little leniency. This isn't boot camp).
4 - Yoga doesn't count.
5 - 20 minutes of moderate running (faster than a 9:30-mile, in our case) earns one clothespin.
6 - First to 50 clothespins wins.
However, we don't have a prize yet. So far, we have earned about 10 clothespins each. Any suggestions on what the winner's prize should be? We are not allowing it to be sexual because that's not something that we want as the direct reward system for our progress. We are also paying back student loans and don't have a lot of expendable income, so the prize can't be more than $50 bucks.
It's been a great challenge so far. It motivates me knowing that Kim and I are working to get in better shape for ourselves, for each other, and to start building these habits now to be a part of a healthy future.
-Chris
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