Easy Mode

I'm adding a couple of new suggestions to the instructions concerning lessons I've learned in this last maker. Here's a copy (I moved what I had as #1 down because these are more important).


1. Start off as easy as possible - your quest log should only have things you look forward to changing. As you gain confidence and create more time for yourself by doing the easy ones you can move on to higher difficulties.
2. Makers are easier than Breakers - always use a maker over a breaker if you can. Example - if you want to eat out less, don't make a breaker to eat out less - instead, use a maker to eat in more.

Success = Sweet

Some things are just so much easier once you get started. The eating at home more maker is working out great. My wife and I are enjoying having food in the house all the time and not having to go out every night.

I think there's another suggestion in here - that we should start off with makers/breakers that we look forward to, making it that much easier to stick to it.

Epic Failure

I'll just say that...every time I fail, I learn something new or something real motivational like that. I sucked at the 10 things cooked from my kitchen every week.

But truthfully there is something to learn here - there's not a daily thing to do in this quest - it's vague because it's a 10 times a week thing. It at least needs a better way to track it - a list to check off to track my progress through the week. I lost track of this one was really the only problem.

I'm going to try again with a check list this time. I'll start it on the best day there ever was - today.

Also, I don't want the lessons learned from these failure to be lost with me - and need to be redone by others so I'm also going to start some kind of suggestion list - what to do and not to do while making these lists - this lesson was, always make sure you have a way of continually monitoring your progress through the maker/breakers...something like that.

I'm adding it to the rule book.

Private Breaker 1

If you missed it, this post has information on what private maker/breakers are. The possible pitfall I see with these is that you could drop them without feeling any pressure because nobody really knows what they are. But I think if we say you can't just post them on your quest log and delete them if you fail - you have to post saying you are creating one and post when you fail so the pressure is still there.

Anyway, I'll give it a try - posting a private breaker now.

Rule Book goes live

I finally pulled the trigger on my rule book post. I'd love to get feedback. It should explain the game in full to anyone who comes here and hopefully answer any of the questions people would have. It should continually evolve as the game does and I'll be creating a link to it on the header of this blog.

Please make any comments on the rule book to help me make things more clear - is there anything you see I can change to make it better? Are there any areas of the game that aren't clear?

http://levelupnewb.blogspot.com/2008/06/how-to-play-lifecraft.html

thanks

Rule Book, Private Quests, and Kill Quests

So far Lifecraft has been about me, but I've always planned on doing work to make this easier for other people to pick up and try out on their own life. So I'm just putting together a rule book now.

This brings in a whole new set of issues, for example privacy. The major strength of this game is that I've sent this link to a lot of friends and family - that creates a huge motivation for me to keep going with it and succeed because I don't want to come here and write about failure. When it comes to things people want to change about themselves, some things should be kept private - some of the more important things, in fact. That is, if you have something you'd like to change about yourself but wouldn't want people to know about it - it's probably important and shouldn't be left out of your journey.

The important part about journaling my success and failure is the part where I say I made it or not; the details of the quest aren't as important. As long as I'm journaling enough to draw an honest picture of my progress. There's a real simple solution here - just call it a private maker/breaker and report the important part - success or failure.

This issue is important enough for me to think we should always have at least 1 "private" maker/breaker going - even if there isn't necessarily something private to change yet. But if it's a standard to always have at least one private in your quest log, people won't hesitate to use that and nobody will wonder why it's there or try to figure out what this issue could be that you wouldn't want people to know about. So if all of us use at least one it will act as a cover for anyone wanting to use it on something that really is private.

Another thing I want to mention that the game is obviously leaning towards having a growing number of quests as we level up, to at least 4 and then maybe hold steady at that for a bit. 4 should be able to cover your 4 focuses. It would be best to vary these as much as possible covering as many focuses as you can as well as different types of quests - makers/breakers/kill. That is the kind of thing that may change as I level up and examine my progress - I want to use my own natural progress and motivations as a starting point for this game - so we will see how it goes. This game will work best if it uses natural motivations and just gives them a little more support and encouragement.

What are "kill quests"? I changed the name of on-going projects that I put time in (like organizing the house) and 1-time deals to "kill quests" just to call them something that has to do with quests. This is a grey area for me right now - there are many possibilities of the direction this could go. The thing about projects that need to get done is that there will always be things to do, it's getting in the habit of knocking projects out consistently and in the right order that would be the life-changing upgrade.

I've also been toying with the idea of having a 4th type of quest that is similar to kill quests but a little different - some kind of "weekend quick list" - where there is 3 or 4 things I try to knock out over the weekend each week. I've been doing this kind of thing already anyway, so it's natural to put it in the game. Although I have been doing this, what I haven't done is track it and don't get as much of it done as I'd like and it's not prioritized. Bringing it into the game will help a lot with that - planning these things out makes it where you get the more important things done first and gives you clear goals consequently more motivation to complete them.

How to Play Lifecraft

Object of Lifecraft:
To develop new habits, break bad ones and prioritize and complete projects that will improve your life. Lifecraft is about improving your life via gradual and easy change over time.

Everything you need to play:
This blog has everything you'll need to play your own game of Lifecraft - all information is free and open to all. You'll need a way to track your progress - it is very much recommended you start your own blog for this purpose and track and discuss your progress publicly. Making it public and inviting your friends and family to check on your progress creates a bigger commitment from you. If any of the specific things you want to change are private, just write "private" for the description and track it like that - the content is not what's important, only the part where you write "I succeeded" or "I'm going to try again on this one" - that is what's important because that is what will help keep you committed.

Preparation:
The first thing to do is decide your focus. What are the 4 most important things in your life? All your work should have something to do with these areas. Begin to imagine what you want your progress through this game to look like - create a vision. Consider that it should start off gradually and build as you go along - careful not to burn out at the beginning - be ready for slow and steady progress. After you've thought about that, decide on your first quest (quests will be better explained below). The vision you have should be a reasonable amount of change over a long period of time - for example a ~20% improvement of your life over a year's time.

Game Play:
Quests are what make up the game of Lifecraft. They come in 1 of 3 forms - breakers, makers, and kill quests. Breakers are the breaking of a bad habit and makers are the forming of a new habit - I have been using 3 weeks as the time frame for daily habits but any time frame can be used and habits that are less than daily would need a longer time (for example a once a week habit may need 2 months to complete). After the goal is consistently made for the time you decided you reward yourself with XP points and post that it's complete - I've been using 10,000 XP for 3 week maker/breakers - that's a lot of points but if there was something bigger you may even want to use more XP as a reward.

Kill quests are generally a 1 time deal - like organize the storage room - you do it and it's done (at least for now). I've been using 1k per hour for on-going projects and roughly estimating any 1-time projects to be around that rate but don't stress over the details, just try to be consistent so you can plot your XP over time and try to develop a strengthening pattern.

Every 10,000 XP you gain 1 level and reset the XP - so if you are at level 2 with 9,000 XP and complete a 10,000 point quest, you go to level 3 with 9,000XP.

Lifecraft is in a constant state of evolution, especially right now. All these "rules" are actually just suggestions. You can take this game in whatever direction you want. Just have a clear vision of what you think your journey will look like. Be realistic; look forward to and take pride in gradual change. If one week is the smallest bit better than the last you are doing great.

If you are still unsure where to start - read my journey so far - here's the first page of posts start at the bottom and read your way up through time. This is just a good example of how to play, a way to start out - but you should allow your journey to form-fit around your life and motivations. As long as you are keeping steady easy pressure on yourself you will slowly change. Think of it like braces for teeth. You wouldn't want an orthodontist to try to straighten your teeth quickly like within a few weeks. The pain would be unbearable - you want the changes he makes to your teeth to be slow and gradual. The same thing is true of making improvements to your life.

If you start to feel a little lost at any point- not sure what to do - try to be creative and come up with any kind of solution, it doesn't have to be perfect just keep going.

Suggestions:

1. Start off as easy as possible - your quest log should only have things you look forward to changing. As you gain confidence and create more time for yourself by doing the easy ones you can move on to higher difficulties.
2. Makers are easier than Breakers - always use a maker over a breaker if you can. Example - if you want to eat out less, don't make a breaker to eat out less - instead, use a maker to eat in more.
   
3. Always have some way of tracking your progress through any quest. Even if your quest is vague - try to track regularly if by no other way but to make regular posts explaining how good you are doing with it.
   

Double or nothing done

I completed the breaker double or nothing yesterday and didn't even notice. Ok, I can go smoke a cig now....just kidding -but I did make level 3 - grats to me.

Eating in

I'm still wanting to work towards being in the habit eating at home more - but I guess I need some "baby steps" toward this.

New maker - eat in at least 10 times per week for 3 weeks.

House projects

Organizing the house is going ok, slowly though. I'm going to start putting in other projects into this. Here's a quick list, I'll be adding to this so this post will get edited for a while.

• Replace back door (kitchen - patio)
• Replace other back door (bedrood - patio)
• Replace outside power outlet
• Change storage room door knob
• Install attic door sealer
• Look at better ventilation in attic
  
• Better/More insulation in attic
  
• Hang Pictures
• Get bookshelves
• Medicine Cabinet in master bath
• Hang towel rack
• Fix ceiling at ceiling fan in MBR
• Fix wall in living room
• Seal 2 holes
• New floor in guest bathroom
• New Fence
• Paint back door and frame
• Touch up paint through-out house

Broken Toe sucks for Wii Fit and other Epiphanies

My toe and really whole left foot has been killing me after doing the wii fit for a few days now. I guess the broken toe makes doing the balance board a bad idea, imagine that.

hm...I'm really having a lot of new makers crash on me in this game so far - there has to be a certain part of that caused by resistance to change. I'm carefully considering whether anything should be done about it and what. I want Lifecraft to be easy and as gradual as possible - like braces for your teeth. You wouldn't want an orthodontist to try and straighten your teeth in a couple of weeks, no - you want him to take his time with that - same goes for your life. The better part about changing your life though is that you can slowly crank up the speed, unlike braces. The more ducks you have in a row, the more time you have to line up more. My ultimate goal for Lifecraft is of course to have virtually all my ducks in a row - at least the big ones.

This really tied in with my brewing ideas about changing the XP to Levels ratios. I've been considering making each level increase the xp it takes to get to the next like real RPG's.

But then while thinking about this idea of a more gradual startup then picking up steam I was considering what I'd want them to look like, for exampled graphed with XP over time would look like a french curve showing that the rate of gaining XP starts off slow but goes up in rate along(XP/day) with total accumulated (Level + XP). Thinking about that made me realize I needed keep the XP per Level flat (it's 10k per) to be able to see what my progress looks like accurately.

So instead of making the level scheme have a curve in it, I'll make it flat and look for the curve I want in the analysis of my past progress. That's the plan - it seemed like a bigger ephiphany back when I first drafted this post last week - too many days in between drafting this and posting it...I have more thoughts on this too, just haven't fully developed them. But I will just post this for now...

Name change

I decided to change the name of this blog today. As you can see it's now just Lifecraft...much better imo.

Wii Fit maker

Well, I've played around with the Wiifit for a couple of days now and I'm ready to make a habit maker for it. It's really cool, by the way. It shows you your BMI and gives you a Wiifit age (mine was a ghastly 10 years older than my real age - I'm 37 and my Wiifit age is 47 - ack!

It has goal setting and tracking built-in to it so I'm not going to set a specific goal on this maker - WOL is about changing habits. I'll try this out - do a Wiifit workout session (at least 20 minutes not including the games) everyday with 2 "holiday oppurtunities" every week. That seems easy enough.

First Breaker/Maker down!

Funny thing happens after a few weeks of quitting smoking. You expect it to get so much easier after a few weeks go by and it does, but the cravings still come and start to wear away at you in this amount of time. Because you start to think 'well crap, I guess I'll always have to deal with these cravings' and start to feel like it's not worth it.

Honestly if it weren't for this game I would have never made it. Several times it kept me from smoking. I was going to smoke and thought I didn't want to have to write about failure on this blog. I tend to down-play how hard it is to quit - to really quit that is, without starting again. I have a pretty easy time - not too many cravings, but when I do I'm weak and tend to give up easily.

But I didn't have a single miligram of nicotine and I'm betting the 10k xp I made that I can do it for another 3 weeks.

And hey, I finally leveled up - woohoo level 2 look out!

Wii Fit

I pre-ordered the Wiifit a couple of weeks ago and it finally shipped today. It just so happens to come in the on the 27th which is the day my smoke breaker completes next Tuesday. I think I'll extend that with a double or nothing bet and add a new health-related maker to do the wiifit thing daily and resolve to make progress with it.

In other news, yes I'm still level 1 - what a newb!

Scaling back

Melinda sent me this article about forming new habits. This paragraph is especially relevant to me right now:

Ms. Ryan and Ms. Markova have found what they call three zones of existence: comfort, stretch and stress. Comfort is the realm of existing habit. Stress occurs when a challenge is so far beyond current experience as to be overwhelming. It’s that stretch zone in the middle — activities that feel a bit awkward and unfamiliar — where true change occurs.

I'm pretty sure I've been over-challenging myself with this and it's time to scale way back. I want to get to this "stretch zone" rather than stress. I've decided to take on no more than 2 things at a time - doing the 2 step, pfff.

I'm going to pull everything but quitting smoking and working on the house for now. I'm almost done with the smoke breaker so I'll add something new at that time. I think this change will help me keep this going.

Broken

I broke my toe night before last. Out of all the bones I've broken this one is up there on the pain level, just below the collar bone. Anyway, yesterday got screwed up. I'm not satisfied with my level of commitment to this game in general either.

I'm disappointingly resetting several of the makers today. All I can say is I'm glad to be a non-smoker still - hehe. I've made some definite progress on the house, too.

But as far as the failures, I need to remember to see these life changes as a process - not just a straight win/lose but an on-going daily process. I look forward to gaining momentum, rather than it waning. We'll see.

New Maker - Home-cooked

One big problem in our house is eating out too much. I'd like to get more in the habit of eating food that comes out of my own kitchen by default and make eating out the exception rather than the rule. A new maker should help with this.

All meals for 3 weeks will come out our own kitchen - with 2 exceptions per week being available to eat out. This is a pretty ambitious habit for us - so I need some time to plan this - a couple of days.

I'll make it a goal to start this one Monday - the 19th. This is the first part of a series of habits centered around eating better. Rather than start off with eating right, which to me is really 2 adjustments - 1) cooking a lot more and 2) eating differently - I'll start with just the habit of cooking everything, then after I'm in the habit of making my own food by default I'll start changing what we eat.

Lanie's challenge

My female went into season - ack! This messes up the park and obedience class. I may have to move some higher level quests ahead of schedule. I'm working on it - I'm going to call my trainer today and see what he says about it, but I'm sure he's not going to want her in class for the next 3 weeks.

Edit - I talked to Dick and he said she would be ok for the obedience classes, just don't bring her to socialization. So I can keep going with the training, but need to put off the park. I'm going to add a new maker to replace it.

Details of organizing the house

Here's more details of my plan to organize my house. The best way would be like that TV show where they take every single thing out and put it all back in. I can't really see doing that, so I'm going to try to do it virtually.

The Plan:

1. Raw clean up - I'm going through every inch and mostly just throwing away stuff. Out of all the clutter, it's amazing how much of it can just be put straight in the trash. I'm doing my best to stay away from the packrat thoughts like "you never know when you could use this" - if I never know that means I probably never will. (this the stage I'm at now)
   
2. Inventory - a rough estimate kinda inventory. I'll put this together and categorize it - most importantly by frequency of use.
3. Then I'll go back and get a rough estimate of the amount of storage space I have and categorize that, most importantly by how easy it is to get to (starting to see where I'm going with this?).
   
4. Take the information from step 2&3 and decide what storage could be and needs to be changed. Get more shelves, re-do closet shelves, get the right kinds of boxes, get some filing cabinets and book shelves, etc.
   
5. Virtually (on paper) fill #3 with #2. I'll try to leave the perfectionist in me out of this part and just do it roughly - it doesn't have to be perfect. It's more important for me to get the ergonomics right - having the things I use most in the places that's easiest to get to.
   
6. Do #5 literally
7. Profit
   

Today

It was a good day. Got in an hour of grinding and good to go on everything else (except the creative Maker). I've been terrible with the creative Maker so far, I'm putting it off once again - I've silently moved it back a few days and need to do that once again.

I'm going to be hard-headed about keeping this going even without getting it perfect. Which is a challange for me - because I'm a perfectionist and start to lose interest in things I can't get perfect from the start.

As far as the follow-through of Makers I think I'll leave an option to make a "Continuation Bet". If I like the habit enough I'll actually risk XP to keep it another 3 weeks. Same goes for Breakers. Still working on that idea - it breaks away from the RPG analogy but I'm more concerned about the game being as good and meaningful as it can be than strickly following the analogy.

Birthday

Yesterday was my birthday and I let it screw me all up. We did walk the dogs, but we didn't get to the training - boooo!

I've been thinking how to handle this and I think this is what I'll do - if I miss a day on a Maker I'll do 2 things - 1) extend the 'date completed' 3 more days 2) add a strike to that quest - 3 strikes and I have to start over.

I've been thinking about how to ensure these new habits don't fall off after the 3 weeks - I'll have something for that when the times come, remember I am making this up as I go along.

On a good note, I didn't smoke again - no problems with that, I'm going to pretty much forget about that until the 3 week mark comes.

Yesterday

My first day really doing this (yesterday) was good. I exercised and engaged the dogs at the right time, I didn't smoke, and I got an hour of working on the house in. Tuesdays for the dog training will be different though, because that's when their official class is - so it's at 7:00. Which actually makes me think I should move the training time to 7:00 to be consistent. Yes, I think I'll do that. But anyway, yes we made it to class with them so that was done too.

But anyway, an hour of working on the house is work my first 1,000 xp points - I'm on the board!

I'm still trying to think of what rewards I can use for leveling up, etc. But one thing that's coming soon is Age of Conan is coming out - the next big MMORPG. I'm considering ordering this and using it kinda as a reward for myself somehow...

Bump not block

Today, right off the bat I got a great example of something that's killed my progress in the past. Obie, my male GSP had started limping last night out of the blue. He really seemed to be hurt. He was much better today but I didn't want to bring him to the park today because he runs so hard when we're there.

This would usually be the kind of thing that would start the inevitable veering back to old habits and cause more and more times of not doing the new habit, which would eventually lead to failure to create the new habit. So I decided that when I see something blocking what I want to do, instead of just blowing it off completely that I'd do something as close as possible.

So I walked the dogs for an extra long time at 4:00 instead. It worked out good, they enjoyed it and we got in plenty of leash training. So - that'll be part of the plan - when something is in the way, I'll substitute instead of blow off.

Quest Log

1. Breaker > quit smoking, started May 6 - completes May 27
   
2. Maker > dogs to the park everyday at 4:00 - started May 5 - completes May 26
3. Maker > dog training everyday at 7:00 - started May 5 - completes May 29 - Strike 1
   
4. Quest > organize the house - 1k per hour
5. Maker > create every night from 9 till at least 10 - starts May 8 - completes May 29

(edit: 5/7/08 - changed training time from 6:00 to 7:00)
(edit: 5/8/08 - extended training 3 more days because I missed a day - and added a strike)
(edit: 5/8/08 - moved creative maker start and complete)

(eh, I'm not going to go back and edit this one every time anymore, I'll just make notes on the new post for that day if there is one. But in any case, the summary will be edited with these changes)

Newborie

To make this mean anything I'll be focusing on the 4 most important areas of my life in order (subject to change):

1. Family/Friends
2. Health
3. Home
4. Creative output

I'll try to keep my quests and habits having something to do with these areas. My dogs are included in family and my mental health is included in health. Improving these things is going to be my drive. A wise friend of mine tells me that if I take care of the 4 most important things, everything else will fall into place (that's the very short version).

I'm starting today on a quest to quit smoking (again) - 3 weeks without a smoke and I'll give myself 10k XP- wow, a whole levels worth - I'll probably make this my standard for big habits and build everything around that rule of thumb.

That's a breaker - I have a starter habit too - I'll commit to bringing my dogs to the park every day at the same time. I've been doing pretty good with bringing them, but some days I miss and the time hasn't been consistent enough - they need a routine and really so do we. So another 10k for bringing the dogs at 4 every day for the next 3 weeks. If the weather doesn't permit I'll play with them inside for a while - they love hide and seek.

Another one for the dogs - obedience training every day at the same time - I'll say 6:30, but it doesn't take long. We missed a day or two this past week, so I'll say this one started yesterday too.

I have lots of projects to do around the house, but one of the problems I have is having to look for things because of how disorganized everything is. One of my projects is to organize everything so it makes sense to start with that one so it will help with all the other projects. This is a big one. I'll say 1k an hour on this one and see how long it takes, I'll try to work on it a little each day.

Finally, to cover creativity I guess I'll do another habit - like work on something creative from 9 till at least 10 every night. 3 weeks = 10k. Playing guitar, working on some maps, writing, whatever as long as it's not playing a game or watching TV - something creative during that time.

I think I'll recap this in a new post.

World of Lifecraft

This is my attempt to make a game out of my quest to improve myself. I played World of Warcraft for a long time and really enjoyed it. I always thought about mapping out some things I want to change in my life and putting "experience point" values on them. Then I'd track my progress and give myself recognition by gaining new levels.

So, this idea starts out as simple as that and I'll see where it goes. I am making this up as I go along - but that's what I'm using this blog for. I'm posting it publicly in case anyone happens by and gets something out of it, and there's the possibility that this may create more incentive for me to keep it going.

I'll call my current level level 1 - I could have come up with something arbitrary but I'll just use that as a starting point for this experiment. Rather than making it complicated with each level requiring more xp than the last, which would also mean I'd need to set my "quests" to give higher XP values as I go along - I'll just make it simple and make it a flat rate and consider all improvement work done to be equal in value. Let's just say 10,000 xp points per level and I'll try to keep XP values to something in the area of 1k per hour kinda thing - with some things not necessarily taking time (like breaking habits) but given comparable xp points according to their real value or...I'll think of something.

So what are some quests I could come up with. I have a long list of things I need to work on around the house, and these are simple time-taking, sometimes money-costing things and I'll just put a 1k per hour rate on them all. I'll make a list on another post and X things off it as I go.

There is a lot of discussion about how long it takes to make and break habits but I'll call them both at 3 weeks to keep it simple and hope for the best. I'll consider not doing something for 3 weeks a broken habit and doing something new for 3 weeks a new one formed. If it's something that's easy to forget and slip up with I'll allow myself up to 3 slips as long as for the most part I've changed my ways. This isn't for things like quitting smoking where you can't accidentally smoke a cigarette. This is for things like remembering to focus on what someone is saying to improve my listening skills.

So, it's looking like I'll have points for certain projects done (quests) and points for breaking/forming habits on a daily grind kinda basis - quests and grinding...hm. I have plenty of quests and habits to grind that all-together concern things like health (like eating better and exercising), some to do with projects around the house, some to do with things I'd like/need to do for friends and family. And that's about it - I'll try to keep it as simple as it can be - but this is pretty broad and who knows, it may not get any further than this. But if it does, I intend to see if people can really change or not - or at least whether I can.