Gamification is a way to motivate people by adding game elements to activities. A great example is Habitica, which gamifies habits by turning life tasks into an RPG. Players complete daily tasks to gain experience points and buy new equipment to attack monsters.

I have used Habitica for a years and I really love this concept. However, as my level grows, the numbers become less and less meaningful. Now my avatar is at level 88. I partly earned that from learning, partly from exercising, and mostly from activities I don’t remember because the system don’t keep track of individual record.

Therefore, I want to create my own system to represent my real life. Of course, this game will be much complicated to design and may defeat the purpose of gamification. Still, I want the numbers to be meaningful. Imagine how intriguing it would be to have the accurate stats that can prove my ability in real life.

I focused on experiences and knowledge because they are easy to quantify and cannot regress even if you slack off for a while, just like you don’t lose the in-game experience points even if you forget the game. I first started my test on my drawing practices. I took pictures for every pages on my sketchbooks and tag them according to what skill I’ve trained when drawing those pages (using a tool called filetags (github)), I wrote code to automatically count the tags and convert them as progress bars on this page (class Painter). I listed all the possible goals I may have as a simple wish list.

However, my current system can’t go beyond skills and knowledge because most other things in life are hard to gamify. Either they don’t grow as a simple straight line, like health, or they are impossible to quantify, like relationships. I’m still finding possible ways to gamify those aspects of my life.