I had an interesting conversation with Jesse about becoming more productive by using a gamified, cooperative, competitive application that provides a framework for goal-oriented behavior. I’m not sure about how the specifics would work, but there were a few things that I think we figured out that it would need in order to be stable:
- It would need each participant to have another participant to sign off on their successful completion of individual tasks (so group activities and partnering up would be good).
- It would need to apply a scoring system that would allow the participants to be rank ordered by how much they’re getting done, in order to inspire competition amongst participants.
- The app itself would need to a) encourage winning participants to encourage and help those lower down and b) encourage those lower down by providing tips as to how to stay productive and being generally encouraging to help keep spirits up.
Anyway, it’s an interesting thought. I got a little snippet of code done today, did the dishes, put away groceries, and managed to have a somewhat productive evening after a 9.25 hour work day. Now I need to get all the household trash out to the curb so that I won’t need to do it in the morning when Jess is asleep.
I also began timing myself this evening after making that list of task items in a separate Toggl workspace (Toggl is free, BTW, dear reader, and has free Android and iPhone apps to boot – take advantage of this and track what you spend your time on most!).
Here’s to another good day tomorrow. 🙂