This is Week 31 of a Year of Living Productively
This week I tested gamification using ToDoist’s Karma feature. I also quantified my past task performance using IQTell. Scroll to the bottom of last week’s post for
How Gamification Saved My Sanity This Week
- Helped me see how many tasks I can really accomplish. Of course, number of tasks entered and completed is not an accurate measure of productivity. I could work on one big task like a dog for three days straight and would get a bad productivity score. While I got no hard science data, I was very surprised by how consistent the numbers were from week to week. Because I have to calculate the stats manually, I only looked at the last month which I believe is pretty typical for me. Two statistics were extremely helpful. First, I learned that on average, I enter one task a day that I don’t complete. That doesn’t sound bad at all, does it? But it means that I will be 365 tasks in the hole in a year’s time. I would like to avoid that, of course, so I looked at how many tasks I can reasonably accomplish a week and came up with 35. I have a very thorough routine that involves cleaning, homeschooling, organizing, social media, and more, so that doesn’t mean I’m only getting 35 things done. Of course, those 35 tasks also don’t include things that take so little time that I didn’t bother to enter them into IQTell. But using that number and considering that I do very little on Sundays, I realize that I need to try to limit my number of tasks per day to six. I’m absolutely giddy about this. Yes, I will have days when I go over, but it’s as Game of Work
{affiliate link} says: We need to know the rules for winning to be motivated. Now I do.
- Graphs that motivated. I was a little worried that the Karma feature wouldn’t matter much to me. I was pleasantly surprised by the daily emails showing my productivity and Karma charts. The productivity chart fired me up more because it’s based on how much you get done. When I slacked (as you can see I did), the email was like a kindly push that I appreciated. The Karma line kept going up because I was using the app a lot. I expect that line to be more realistic in the future.
- Introduced me to an app I love. I haven’t changed productivity apps in a long time. It might even be a record! I have been using IQTell and was very happy. ToDoist is the first program I’ve used that has me seriously considering a switch. The UI is absolutely beautiful. It reminds me of Things that I used years ago, only it is all about color. I organize the areas of my life by color, so it’s a natural fit. The color graphs not only show me what life areas I have that need the most attention (not pictured), but tell me if I’m achieving the balance I want. This is something I loved about Life Balance, but ToDoist doesn’t have the time-intensive data entry and “suggestions” of what I should be doing with my time.
How Gamification Made Me Crazy This Week
- No competition aspect. Gamification is about more than just tracking performance. Often, it’s about measuring your performance against others’. Competition is very motivating for me when I feel there’s a chance I can win. So is accountability. I didn’t feel I had that, but my Karma score is 2563 after a week for anyone who cares.
- Not that fun. Another reason gamification increases productivity is because it makes work entertaining. Tracking my stats and using a new app were wonderful, but it wasn’t that fun. There are other apps and approaches that utilize a more game-like interface that might have been a better test. However, I have tried a few in the past and noticed that I get bored with them quickly.
Did Gamification Help Me Get Things Done?
Yes, although I would say the feedback aspect was what helped. I feel pretty dumb that I never thought to quantify how many tasks I accomplish on average. I always looked at my time usage instead. I did not get to test how well limiting myself to six tasks per day on average works, but that will be my goal from here on. I also plan to continue using ToDoist for the time being.
**UPDATE**
I’m less interested in how many tasks I can do these days than in accurately estimating how long tasks take. I have no interest in ToDoist karma, because I have remained at a top level no matter what I do. These kinds of features aren’t effective for me if there is no competitive aspect or if top achievements are unreachable. In other words, if I have to give up the rest of my life to be on a leader board, I’m not interested. What I find amusing is that blogging is perfectly gamified and motivating for me. I am constantly able to see my stats on the blog and on social media. I can compare my stats to others’, especially on Facebook. Improving is enough of a challenge to keep me trying, but not so much that I’m discouraged. In fact, the game nature of it is what makes it fairly addictive. I’m hoping that my curriculum business will have the same game-like quality that keeps me coming back for more.
The Productivity Approach I’ll Be Using for Week 32
This week I’ll finish testing The 12 Week Year. {affiliate link} I tested time blocking using The 12 Week Year before, but I’ve been using the whole approach for the past 11 weeks. The idea is you can super-power your productivity by setting one to three 12-week goals with week-by-week activities. I set one homeschooling and two writing project goals.
The concept. The 12 Week Year argues that we fail to achieve our New Year’s resolutions because the time frame for them is just too long. Instead, we need help to break the goals down into weekly objectives that can be easily quantified. I loved the idea because I succeeded in writing a book and getting fit in 12 weeks.
If you’d like to join me this week, here’s what you do. Read the book or simply choose one to three goals that you’d like to achieve in the next 12 weeks. Create a reason for each goal that you will regularly reflect upon. Then break each goal down into weekly sub-goals. Track your progress this week and continue on to your goal.
To see if the 12 Week Year worked for me, click here.
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Here are the links to the productivity hacks I’ve tried so far:
Week 16: David Seah’s 7:15AM Ritual
Week 17: Another Simple and Effective Method
Week 18: Daily/Weekly/Monthly To-Do List
Week 19: Ultimate Time Management System
Week 25: Make it Happen in 10 Minutes
Yes, Melanie, I care about your new karma score. 🙂 Loved the insight on how many tasks you could complete in a day on average. It makes me think I should look into that as I consistently have unfinished tasks on my to-do list. Also interested in checking out the IQtell and ToDoist apps. I’ve been making lists in evernote and liking that, so not sure if I’ll switch. The 12 week goal idea sounds interesting. Looking forward to seeing how it goes!
Barb, if you’re happy with your current system or approach, I recommend not switching. There were a couple of things I didn’t like about IQTell that are resolved with ToDoist. That and the fact that I’m testing productivity stuff every week makes it ok for me. But even then, I think switching (while good for the variety) tends to decrease our productivity in the long run. I’m interested to see what you find out about how many tasks you can handle.