“If you trust in yourself… and believe in your dreams… and follow your star… you’ll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren’t so lazy.”
Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men
Why is it so much easier to level up a character than to stick to achieving your personal goals? After all, isn’t it the same when you fail at something as when you’re playing a new game or trying to defeat a boss?
Well, there are a few key differences between video games and real-life (I know, what a shocker!). For one, all status bars are hidden. We know we’re tired because we can’t focus, yawn, and can only think of laying down and closing our eyes; not because our Stamina bar is low. And we know we’re improving at a skill based on other people’s feedback, which… is often unpredictable (to say the least). It would be much better to have status bars showing our improvement! Or, as James Clear puts it: “Making progress is satisfying, and visual measures provide clear evidence of your progress. As a result, they reinforce your behavior and add a little bit of immediate satisfaction to any activity.” If that’s not status bars, I don’t know what that is.
Experience Bars
It’s also one of the reasons you can accept that your character died (again), send it back to the same dungeon (again) to kill goblins (again) so that it gains XP so that at some point in the future you’ll be able to defeat that boss and get the sword you’ve been wanting for weeks or months. A boss that, let’s add, has killed your party so many times that you’ve lost track. But the XP bar keeps going up (at least as long as you stay alive), and you know that the higher the numbers go, the closer you are to leveling up and reaching that goal.
No matter what your goals are, if you can find something you can track and turn into numbers, you will be creating your own personal status bars. Whether that’s filling a jar with clips, using a habit-tracking app or just adding numbers to a spreadsheet, that small act can go a long way once you start seeing progress.
This is what James Clear calls “Habit Tracking,” and it’s one of the easiest ways to keep you moving forward: If you want to be more social, add one token every day you go to a meetup. If you want to start dating, add one every day you talk to someone you like. If you want to be nicer to your partner, add one each day you give them a compliment or a small gift in their love language. If you want to be fit, add one each day you exercise.
In his book Level Up Your Life, Steve Kamb describes a way to level up your own “personal” character: design your own Quests, and each time you finish one, give yourself XP according to the difficulty, and you gain a level every 100 XP. So if you combine this idea with James Clear’s Habit Tracking, all you need to do is turn your “habit tokens” into XP points for that skill, and decide on a scale you want to use to level up.
In my case, I give myself one Skill XP for each day I take an action towards my goal. After 30 Skill XP (30 days), I go up a Skill level, and after 100 XP accumulated between all my Skills, I gain a Character Level.
One Skill Doesn’t Rule Them All
Another big difference with games is the way we level up. Unlike RPGs, not only is there no number that shows our Level (age is not Level), but to make matters worse, once you level up you can’t assign proficiency points to any skill you want! Wouldn’t it be awesome if you could just gain generic XP by playing video games and then raise your social skills when you level up?! Well, yes. It would be. But you can’t.
That’s why Sims need to spend time learning a skill to get better at it (though at least they have bars to show for it!). But you may know that if an unskilled Sim tries to cook a meal, all they’re going to get is a visit from the fire department! So not only do we not have an automatic skill meter, we also have to start by sucking at the skills we want to master! That sounds like a recipe for frustration. The good news is that you can get past the sucking phase sooner by finding a teacher or (for the self-taught) if you follow the four steps to rapid skill acquisition described by Josh Kaufman:
- Deconstructing a skill into the smallest possible subskills;
- Learning enough about each subskill to be able to practice intelligently and self-correct during practice;
- Removing physical, mental, and emotional barriers that get in the way of practice;
- Practicing the most important subskills.
Now, if you’ve played RPGs (or almost any other game out there), you’re already an expert at this. Let’s say you’re having a hard time beating an ice golem:
- Deconstructing: you need more XP to level up; you need fire-based attacks; you need cold resistance.
- Learning: what’s the fastest way to level up? Can you get fire attacks as skills or spells once you level up or do you need new weapons? Where do you get them? Can you get protection from cold from skills or spells once you level up or do you need new items? Are there any sub-quests that can help?
- Removing barriers: stay in the area of the map where you’re most likely to get those items/XP.
- Practicing: stick to it (a.k.a. grinding).
Size Does Matter
By knowing what you want to achieve, you can deconstruct your goal. By deconstructing your goal, you know what you need to learn. By knowing what you need to learn, you know the exact steps you need to take, and with small steps, you get quick wins. Quick wins are key to getting past the frustration of sucking at it. Because, let’s face it, you’ll suck. For now.
If what you’re doing still seems too hard, frustrating, or you can’t stick to it, just make the actions smaller and smaller and smaller until it’s easy enough to do regularly, but hard enough that it gives you satisfaction. And keep track of each small win. What matters is not how fast you’re going, but that you’re moving in the right direction. After all, you don’t want to spend all your time and energy on quests to get ice arrows when you want to defeat an ice golem!
And here’s one last tip from Steve Kamb: “Games have a reward system, [which] is instant, gratifying, and incredibly satisfying. The greater the challenge, the bigger the quest, the more satisfying the reward.”
So if you need some motivation on top of your Habit Tracking, try giving yourself a reward for each level you gain and a bigger one once you finish your Quest (reach your goal).
Just choose a Skill and get started!
Wondering how to level up yourself? The step-by-step guide is reserved for those who commit to making a real change in their life by joining our free mailing list! So who’ll be grinding next? You, or a character?
Useful Grimoires:
