On Progress and Motivation

Progress: too slow
Motivation: too little

When I originally came up with this "LEVEL UP" idea, I was attempting to motivate myself through a form of gamification.

This hasn't been working so well, because I (just now!) realized that the inherent "reward" of reaching the next level doesn't actually motivate me; it's just a way of measuring progress in fractions. Well, it turns out I need motivation if I'm going to speed up.

I've decided to attach rewards to each of the next milestones. Of course, it would defeat the purpose to just buy something new when the whole point is to reduce the amount of things I have, but the obvious answer to that is: upgrade. If I replace some thing I have with a better/newer/cooler version of that thing, it's a neutral-count upgrade, but I get something new, too, which is (hopefully!) rewarding.

It feels a little weird to share with the world what luxuries I'm planning to buy myself, but hey, admitting your embarrassing lack of progress is part of the deal when you share your project with the world, so let's see if this helps fix it. Here's a first draft of a progress chart that I'll use in future posts once I've decided what to use as actual rewards.

Level	Achieved	Reward
LEVEL 1	Jan 01 2011	excitement of launching a new project
LEVEL 2	Mar 29 2011	hard work is its own reward
LEVEL 3	Dec 18 2011	+1 Self-Awareness
LEVEL 4	Jan 28 2012	intangible religious benefits
LEVEL 5	Sep 03 2012	a small spike in blog traffic
LEVEL 6		??
LEVEL 7		??
LEVEL 8		??
LEVEL 9		??
LEVEL 10		??
LEVEL 11		??
Project Complete		??