Adding Colored Clips

An update on where the task game has been going.

For starters I did some more reading and then just decided to get moving on some of the mechanics. I figure if I just keep iterating on the ideas I’ll come up with something I enjoy. So, this week did a few things and tracked my progress.

There are four categories of tasks in my system: Brain rituals, Body rituals, Being rituals and then regular tasks. The idea is that I want to reward myself for creating habits and doing things that help me progress and improve as a person. There are three areas where I can do this: Mental abilities (Brain), Physical (Body) and then Being (Spiritual). Any activities which are helping to cultivate me in these three areas are important….and I want to do at least three of them each day.

So, to encourage me to do this I have three paper clips for each category, of three different colors for a total of nine paper clips: green for brain, red for body and blue for being. I want this to have both a carrot and a stick (risk/reward) mechanic behind it, but I haven’t decided on what form that will take. For example, what if I don’t get all three of each area, then do I toss out all the tasks for the day? Seems a bit much. What if I get some “power up” if I get an area but if I miss one area then it’s not as much of a power up?

Still not sure where to go with that.

I’ve got some basic mechanics, but there is still the whole, “what is the end goal” thing that is missing. I’m collecting paper clips, but why? I haven’t answered that question yet.

I do find myself wanting to get at least one of each color every day, and I’m usually good at getting blue and red, but getting all the green clips for the day is sometimes a struggle. Of course, getting all the red was a bit of a challenge a couple days too. Blue just seems to come easily to me. Go figure.

Take today for example:

• Blue tasks: Scriptures, prayer and 10 minutes of meditation. All three done before 8 am.
• Red tasks: Weight training, 7 hours of sleep the previous night and going for a 5 minute walk. 7 hours of sleep (done!), weight training…didn’t happen until almost noon and the five minute walk didn’t happen until almost 3. Ouch!
• Green tasks: read for 30 minutes, write for 30 minutes, make progress in an online course I’m taking. Only the online course progress is actually done right now. I’ve read for 20 minutes, and the writing is close, but…well you get the idea. Close, but not quite there.

That’s the three major colors. The last color, grey, is reserved for regular tasks. Stuff like “Send reminders about YM newsletter” or “Invite Jerry to Scoutbook”. Those are regular things I need to do, but not something that will improve me in one of the three areas of personal development.

I have a last color, purple, that I can use for something (like maybe the ‘power up’), but I’m keeping it in reserve in case something comes up. I don’t want to have to go back and find more colors of paper clips if I come up with more stuff.

So, that’s an update so far. Just playing though it every day to see if it motivates me or not. So far…meh, but I think that’s because it’s not fully baked yet.