We have many actions that we partake in daily. There is getting up, eating, showering, bathing, teeth brushing, driving, walking, working, playing, exercise and other activities. Some things are more required than others that we choose to freely engage in (i.e. eating is more required than going to the gym).
We do so much, and fill our daily time tables up to the brim much of the time. A lot is already planned out as part of a routine. We often do things that we don't much like or enjoy, finding them boring, if not annoying or outright hating them altogether. Yet, we still do it. This can range from a job or task we hate, to simply engaging in an exercise or sport routine.
Does doing the same thing over and over get redundant, boring, and you lose interest in doing it after a while? Do the boring things need to be boring? Does our work need to get us down?
Sometimes it's not even a job, but something you choose to do as a leisure pass-time to fill the day with something to do. Maybe you're biking. Up and down, up and down, go your legs... all that work and energy. Maybe you're swimming. In and out, back and forth you swim... all that effort and energy again. Maybe you're reading. Up and down, page to page... all that concentration and effort to keep track of the information.
Is this exertion and effort to work preventing you from enjoying it at all? What if something changed? What if limits and constraints were added somewhere? What if those limits and constraints changed things up, and made it different, made it "new" and novel in some way?
This is how we can turn that boring familiarity of doing something we are used to doing, into doing it in an unfamiliar way. This is the secret of play, where you can find some type of play in almost anything by changing how its done, by setting challenges to accomplish through changing the limits and constraints.
Gamifying Attention
We're not trying to gamify things with achievements and rewards to motivate performance in a simple task. Games can entrance people's attention, sucking our lives away. Let's face it, games can be unhealthy. We have most likely experienced it ourselves, or know someone who has gone through a addictive gaming episode. Even Steemit is pretty addictive itself with no gamification. Posting and getting rewarded with tokens, attention and reputation is enticing enough.
Gamifying a job, to reward people with points for doing benign things, like some stats or ranking of desk orderliness, or something else, is not going to really make the job more enjoyable. Sugar-coating misery with rewards for being miserable doesn't cut it.
Value
Many jobs, such as advertisers, marketers and consultants, are trying to gamify everything around us to appeal and attract our attention towards something that appears to promise a reward or value our time and energy being given. Employers try to get employees to value things -- that don't give them value -- through rewards, achievements or awards provided by statistics and other metrics for people to derive value in what they do. There is a whole industry of social engineering to attract and channel you, your attention, your time, and your money.
Productivity
Gamifying something that doesn't reward our core values and interests, might get us material or other improvements but won't improve our lives with deeper meaning and value. Although the enjoyment you gain from gaining things, gaining achievements or gaining rewards, might make you invest more time, energy and attention, thereby making you more productive.
Engineering Value and Meaning
All it does is act as another social engineering commercialization of attention, energy and work to engage and be more productive in some task or activity. It's manipulation of our desire to be rewarded for something and be paid attention to by others. All they have to do is tap into this psychological aspect of being rewarded, being paid attention to, and we are automatically enticed towards it at a subconscious level.
If they can get you to enjoy something because you derive some value or meaning from it, even though you may have been induced and engineered towards getting that value or meaning from them, then they get you to be productive towards their product or service. You buy into it with your attention. Next is for you to buy into it with your time and energy, either through a direct purchase/investment, or by working for them.
Being Led by Money
The main reward we all get enticed with is money. But when we go find a job or career, money should not be the main value or meaning to gain from employment. Higher values and ideals give a more meaningful life. Similarly, gamified rewards, achievements or awards are not the value or meaning to engage in something. It's a bonus perk, but not the reason to do something.
If you get into something for the gamified reason, then you should know you have been had, bamboozled, hoodwinked, tricked, and psychologically manipulated into engaging in that task or activity. It's often for lower valued reasons, like giving time, energy, attention or money, just to get some attention in return through the recognition and status of having an achievement or award given to you. "Look at me, I got this, pay attention to me!" Our desire for attention is strong, and the advertisers and marketers know psychology to get us into their attention economy.
The Game to Play
In any activity, limits, constraints or rules can be imagined and added to what we do as a way to change the familiarity that becomes boring. Novelty and new things is an attraction for our attention and valuation for us to derive enjoyment from.
One problem is the paradox of choice, where we have many goods and services available, giving us so many options, sometimes too many. There are so many different ideas to contend with.
Setting a meaningfulness to what we do, is a choice we have daily. What we value, the importance it has to us, and the attention we give towards it. We have to face our boredom. We have to look around and find more freedom of choice to engage in an activity. We can still enjoy things, even if there is work, effort, energy, routine, repetitiveness, familiarity or boredom with it. Fun can be enjoyment coupled with effort and work.
Don't Sugar Coat, Be Real
We don't need to put sugar on everything to make it go down easier, like Mary Poppins suggests. Putting on rosy colored glasses, or a positivity mask, is not how to deal with reality honestly. Don't dress things up. Face what's going on honestly, but then also see the other choices you have to change your condition. It's not about dreaming of your next vacation, another life you can make for yourself, or hoping for the afterlife or living in some other dimension. This is about real life, here and now, today, and in the days to come as you live.
Ability to Change
Some things in our individual lives can be changed by ourselves. We are not simply at the hands and whims of society, unable to change anything about our lives. We need to look at things differently. Instead of looking at how we may or may not be doing exactly what we want to at particular time, we can look at it differently.
Why not choose to see what we can do, what the choices and possibilities are, with what we have or are given in life? Rather than expect something else, deal with what we have now, and turn it around, make it something else, add novelty to it and make the familiar the unfamiliar to drive interest and attention.
Adding Novelty
Swim with others, bike with others, challenge each other to mini games, set obstacles, constraints and limits to the interaction you have in the activity or with objects around. Children can easily find fun in the constraint to not touch cracks as they are being pressure by a time limit to get to a destination. The sidewalk, and walking somewhere, becomes play and fun, rather than just a walk to get somewhere. Even other games, like hopscotch, can be done alternatively.
Doing activities with others is a good place to setup new games and play by some set of rules that challenges us to engage in an activity in a different way. This gives us new attention grabbing stimulation, while also continuing to feed the value and meaning we originally want from it, such as exercise for an exercising activity, or money and knowledge for a career activity. The original things we need or want are still getting satisfied, but instead of the task being boring, it has new life from the novelty added.
This makes it more fun, which creates endorphins in our body and makes us happy. This is who we naturally get high all the time: inducing happiness through enjoying fun and play in activities.
Conclusion
To change how you get misery, boredom, enjoyment or satisfaction from something doesn't seem hard. You are already doing the things, either because you think you need to or because you want to. Find a positive outlook to get some satisfaction or enjoyment from doing a task. Time will go by faster and you will be a bit more happy. If you can't, then you can hopefully work to find something else to do, such as another job you do like.
Don't deny the reality of the negatives, but if some task, job, or whatever you are doing is so bad that you can only be down about doing it, maybe you should find something else to do? Some things in our lives can be changed by our own actions.
Look for the choices to expand, change or introduce new imaginary constraints and limits into what you do. Set goals and challenges for yourself to make something that is required to be done. Give it more meaning to you personally, other than simply something that needs to be done as part of your life. You can introduce play in almost any part of your life.
Steem is interesting for many who enjoy what they post about. For some, they are just trying to make money by posting all sorts of things. Some people don't really enjoy posting and earning their way to recognition and attention, they expect more and prefer to buy votes that propel them to gain attention and rewards that they desire.
Curation is a chore for many to gain rewards, and that's why selling their votes through bidbots is their chosen way of doing things. Curating is not enjoyable to them and they view it as a chore to do in order to get rewarded. Rather than curate themselves, others pay them for votes and they get curation rewards on top of it.
The chore and boredom of putting time, attention and energy into not being monetarily rewarded enough is unrewarding for some, and they don't find value or meaning in what they do. Maybe it would be more meaningful and rewarding to them if they could set goals and objectives to reach where they have to work for it and feel a sense of earning what they get. Maybe selling their support or buying attention and rewards is what matters more for them to find value and meaning.
References:
- Games designer Ian Bogost: ‘Play is in everything’
- How to Use Fun to Find Meaning in Life
- New Scientist September 24, 2016
- Play Anything: The Pleasure of Limits, the Uses of Boredom, and the Secret of Games
- Gamification
- The paradox of choice
Thank you for your time and attention. Peace.
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