The Routines Challenge: Conclusion

Challenge 5: The Routines Challenge

I owe myself an apology for vanishing from my blog for a good while now, with very little updates to the progress of the challenges. Now, I can see better why my blog’s viewer count has not increased at all and why there are no loyal site visitors - it is because I am not faithfully updating my blog regularly myself. This needs to change if I want to turn my blog into an exciting, living space from a mediocre personal diary. Such a desire was also the basis for one of the reasons why I decided to set up this Routines Challenge, which is to add more routine into my life to create more positive experiences and make out things I can look forward to.

Having painted a bleak picture of my Routines Challenge, not all is lost. I found that I had a sense of responsibility to complete all the tasks that I planned out. Even though I did not give my best effort every day of the Challenge, as there were days I forgot about it, it is staying committed that counts. Before this Challenge, I thought that it would be because there was something wrong with my willpower or my motivations for starting a task when I ended a day completing far fewer tasks than I envisaged. Going through this Challenge woke me up to the fact that none of these reasons mattered. By giving myself enough time, I would be able to do everything. Instead of focusing on whether I am up to a task, I should be asking myself when I could find the time to have it done.

Therefore, the part of this Challenge that crumbled had nothing to do with the completion of tasks. What I failed to achieve was the systems that were designed to spice things up so as to keep me motivated and coming back to the Challenge. I wanted the gamification to work so badly that I lost myself in the writing of the rules for such systems. The work eventually expanded into something that I would not be able to manage within the tens of days specified in this Challenge. I am republishing my Rulebook so that anyone can see how complicated the rules ended up to be (it is still under the same old link as the previous post: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vQidqH1KYebjyJcRFHsRaL2tYXjtjG0c3m7YRml1UThOnTt9GMq83EZFZVf6gKJEjSstARdtCjZcctK/pub). After this Challenge, I will do well by considering design elements (such as colours and how I allocate my time) as the main source of system for future task management systems, instead of trying to create a value for my work out of nothing through spinning out new systems and games in exchange for productive work.

Here is a list of what I have done in this Challenge, plus the lessons I learnt in the process:

• I split the Challenge up into six Periods of 10 days. This allowed me to review my progress periodically and make adjustments to the Challenge rules so that I can better support my behavioural change to enable me to spend more time on productive work.
• I listed out the tasks and the routines beforehand which gives me a clear structure of what I can do. Being able to choose the tasks was empowering and made it easier to stay committed to the routines. However, one shortcoming of this system is that it is not time-bound and I lack measures to ensure that I balance out my time with all the different tasks
• I came up with different levels of difficulty of the Challenge which reward various amounts of points proportionately. It failed to make the Challenge more exciting through strategy-building. This may be due to the lack of distinction in the value of higher amounts of points, so there was little meaning in exploring different difficulty levels
• I extended this differentiation in difficulty levels to the Routine Goals, which were the main part of the Challenge. When I start to actually attempt the Challenge, I rarely touched the higher-level difficulties because they were too time consuming and there was no enforcement of going to higher difficulties. In many video games (especially those based on dungeons), attempting higher-level difficulties was mainly for better quality loot and to improve a player’s reputation. In a solitary Challenge, I need to review my motivations as they are not the same as that of video games
• I categorised the goals into Duration Goals, Commitment Goals and Task Goals. There were loopholes in the Task Goals because the completion of tasks were poorly defined. I could bend the rules and set the task completion goal as the duration committed to doing the task and every task could become completed that way. However, it is not realistic to aim for completion for every single task because some tasks like writing blog posts take a longer time to finish.
• The Bonus Points system gave me some additional objectives to look out for in the Challenge. However, they were not enticing in the long run especially when the only reward for them is additional points.
• As for the benefits systems, I failed miserably in coming up with suitable amenities to spend my points on. Their development became increasingly complicated and tedious, with no end in sight. However, as I believe they are key to giving me a greater sense of purpose in my tasks, I will continue to develop them after the Routines Challenge and integrate them into the Challenge’s successor, my Productivity System 2.0.
• The penalties were insufficient and poorly enforced. I cannot be basing everything on differences in points because numerical values do not mean much to me. To improve on that, I can consider adapting penalty games and forfeits to make the penalties more intimidating.
• The Gold currency helped to make the tracking easier since there were too many things that could influence the points. It helped to act as a bridge between points and the usage of benefits and amenities. Basing the amount of Gold I get each day on the amount of points I have is an interesting concept for a currency, giving me more options to develop future productivity systems.
• I had a very elaborate tracker that keeps tabs of all changes in points but it is just messy and hard to navigate around with everything put together. I should consider splitting the different sections up and only display the relevant values (without the calculations) so that the tracking is easier.
  
  

  

  The tracker is absurd because of its monstrous size. It looks more like a database than a tracker. If not for the colour coding, I would have gone crazy from updating this.

  
  
• I recorded down all the rules needed to run the Challenge in a Rulebook and found them to be insufficient. That made me create a second version of the Rulebook. However, I got stuck at determining how to enforce the rules and motivate myself to work on the Challenge, hence I could not complete it at the end of the Challenge.

Because of how much I have done and learnt in the process, even if I did not manage to complete everything that I had aimed to, I will still be proud of myself for being a Challenger. It is not easy to keep going at something for 60 days, hence I shall not beat myself up over the many inadequacies I displayed in the Challenge.

Time passed by too quickly. I might have more thoughts on this Challenge so there may be a chance of me coming back to update the post. I will release an announcement through a new blog post when an update is made.

The Routines Challenge

 

Challenge 5: The Routines Challenge

27 June 2021 , Sunday - 26 August 2021, Thursday

Half a year has gone by in 2021. I looked back at how I spent my time, and I did not like what I found. I caught myself engaging in many unhealthy habits. I cut down on my sleep in order to continue any unfinished task I had on my hands. I was stuck in the pleasure trap for a long time, where I could not free myself out of the cycle of getting pleasure from doing something, craving for more of that pleasure, and continuing whatever I did to satisfy my cravings. 

I was sure that these actions were undesirable for my health. I felt that I squandered much of the precious time I have to prepare for higher education, careers and all the things adults do, spending the time instead on fruitless endeavours that only made me feel good for a moment. To get out of this predicament, I needed some form of push to get myself on what I believed to be the right track. As for what the right track means, I define it as a state of life where there is moderation, balance and happiness in everything that I do. And that push is a Life Challenge.

Here I am, declaring the steps that I will take to remedy the ills I had been doing to myself. I hope that anyone who is reading this will be able to support the change I am trying to make, and not denounce my efforts too early on because of the widely held belief that changing one’s behaviour is hard. Changing a person’s behaviour is not entirely impossible. Our brains have a certain level of plasticity which enables it to have the potential to change itself.

I intend to maximise the chances of succeeding in this challenge by gamifying the tasks involved in this challenge. This will entail the setting of clear goals, the tracking of progress, and providing myself with rewards and penalties to help me stay committed to the challenge. I look forward to inspiring people who intend to change their life by sharing my gamification approach and the systems I used to help me with forming new habits and changing old behaviours.

If you are still doubtful, continue to watch this space for the subsequent posts documenting my progress I make with this challenge. Some goals may even overlap with what you are trying to work on, making the systems and games I make adaptable for your personal use. 

The game is on. Challengers, ready your move!

Here comes the all-important rulebook, which also contains links to the supporting documents: 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vQidqH1KYebjyJcRFHsRaL2tYXjtjG0c3m7YRml1UThOnTt9GMq83EZFZVf6gKJEjSstARdtCjZcctK/pub

Gamified systems for productivity

 

Life Challenges #4: Gamification 

Results post - gamified systems for productivity

Time really flies! It has been more than three months since the official release of this challenge. At the time of the release, I have already had a Google Sheets prototype of a game to help myself figure out what gamification should be like. That prototype was called “Gamechanger”..

“Gamechanger”: a bar set too high

“Gamechanger” was a game where you play the role of a character and go through different stories, gaining useful items, social connections and skills on the way. The aim is to make the character a successful person, measured by the “Satisfaction” metric, which is influenced by various factors such as wealth, health and quality of relationships. However, all these had a catch: a player needed to complete tasks in real life, track the time spent on doing them, and use formulas to calculate into “Offering Points” which can be offered to Gamechanger in order to exchange for a certain amount of time that can be spent playing it.

The creation of this game was a fulfilling process. Gamechanger was my attempt at imitating how a role playing game would be like without actual graphics and game engines and very complicated code. It was pretty hard to create something fun without the proper software: I had to think hard about how to create timers, how the scores should be updated, and what kind of design I would need to make the game interface as clean and functional as possible.

However, the method of progression in this game, updating of the stories and transferring of the content from one spreadsheet to another was too much of a hassle, so I discontinued work on this prototype. Although it left me wondering whether I could have started on something simpler, I managed to learn how to create cool things such as countdown timers and stopwatch going by the minute, progress bars and graphs with a tracker point that can display your progress at any point of time.

“Commitment Tracker”: the master planner and schedule

The Commitment Tracker appeared in the later stages of my work on Gamechanger. It gave legitimacy to the concept of Gamechanger as a game to incentivise productive work.

I started creating the commitment tracker while I was hospitalised for severe heat exhaustion. The original idea was to organise everything that I was doing into specific commitments, then try to fit all of them on schedules that repeat themselves after a certain frequency of time (which I call “cycles”). This would help me to balance how I spend time on all of them, as well as to better track the amount of time I spend on each of them. 

I first input the commitments within a column and the dates go on a single row. Within the space governed by both axes, I shaded each box corresponding to the date and a certain commitment according to its completion status. The shaded boxes would act like plots on a graph, charting out what I have been up to during a certain period of time. This design was inspired by the idea of the duty rosters for cleaners we see displayed in some public toilets, where there is a rotation between different cleaners for cleaning a toilet. When cleaned, the duty cleaner would sign on the roster, and it can be audited by someone else to certify that the cleanliness of the toilet had been checked.

To help me manage the commitments better, I categorised the commitments and added a filter to find the commitment that is to be updated more quickly. 

In order to help me better prioritise my tasks and feel better about my progress, I started assigning multipliers to commitments to define the value of doing them. The multipliers would multiply the duration of time I spent on different commitments to derive a score, which I named Offering Points (OP). Why name it as such? It was to reinforce my purpose of doing all the tracking, which was to keep a tab on any kind of contribution I made to improving and preparing myself for future challenges. The multipliers, in addition to the cycles gave structure to how I should sequence my commitments when I schedule them on my calendar.

After spending some time using the first design of the tracker, it became harder to locate and make modifications to individual squares on the graph. Also, I wanted to be able to include more information about a commitment to provide more content for feedback on how to improve upon how much I gain from each commitment. Instead of a graphical representation, I put all the information into a list view resembling a computer database.

By the way, MOAT stands for "Mother of all tasks", which originally took the form of a large, messy checklist that contained all of my to-dos on Google Keep.

“Motivation System”: the place for my breaks and rewards

Then finally, the motivation system. The reason for my creating of this system was in response to the question of what to do with the OPs when the chances of Gamechanger being operational became more and more unlikely. The Motivation System was a place for me to track the OPs I have earned and spent, which was mostly to exchange them for rewards I developed for myself. They can be things I already enjoy consuming such as anime shows, or games that I create.

This system once had a space for tracking the number of points earned on a daily basis, a place for exchanging points for rewards, and some room for the administration of penalties. Now it has become a pretty messy place, and I am trying my best to find out how to simplify its functions.

Soon, I added more features that I felt would keep me motivated in my doing of my commitments. I had analytics tracking changes in my OP and how much time I spent on each commitment. I had penalties for procrastinating and missing deadlines, while coming up with remediation plans to tackle these problems. I even had a shop which sells virtual rewards, a game that can potentially replace Gamechanger, and a place for self-help whenever I am feeling low, and it helps support me by reducing stress and helping me see the uplifting, positive sides of life.

Eventually, I dropped some of these features because I found out that they were of little use to me and some even started to overlap with the Commitment Tracker. To remedy this, along with the many other problems I found in the rest of my productivity systems: Calendar, Google Keep, Habitica and Commitment Tracker, I had a really long reviewing of systems which took me the last few weeks of year 2020 and the first two weeks of year 2021 for me to finish.

I did away with the penalties and remediation plans because they made me dwell on my failures and caused an aversion to going back on doing the commitments because I did not want to spend so much time thinking about my failures every time I use these features when I knew that having these problems were inevitable. It would be better if I could just reflect on myself and not penalise myself so much, otherwise I would just get more disheartened and avoid trying again.

All these systems work together to form my personal productivity system

If you think what I had described was too complicated, I have created a presentation to summarise what all these mean to me and my productivity:

What I learnt from trying to master time

One: Starting small brings better outcomes

My plans were initially really ambitious when I started out completing this challenge. I wanted to build a game from stretch using simple code. I aimed for a system that could track anything meaningful I did efficiently. I desired for a mechanism that could help me balance out my commitments, my breaks and my rewards. As such, the duration I spent on this was overstretched, and the process of gamifying what I want to do evolved faster than I could keep track. Large investments of time are often risky. And when faced with much uncertainty about what I should do, it is much better to set manageable targets which would enable me to be adaptable, because if one failed, I could easily work on something else right away.

Two: Coming back to my purpose can expedite my work in this challenge

Creating a game has been more exciting than I had thought, so there were months where I was too carried away with exploring new concepts and building new features that everything became messy. By reminding myself of what the systems I designed were for, and to include more reviews while I tried out and created the systems. It was to this end that I put Gamechanger to a stop and focused more on the tasks tracking and rewards tracking.

Three: Gamifying my tasks provides the good mix of creativity and data that would help me to improve more rapidly

Designing gamified systems gave me the opportunity to think of stories and objectives that give greater meaning to what I am doing. It also allowed me to see how I am spending my time. Just the awareness of where my time went alone had a lot of effect on my deliberately cutting down on anime consumption, as I knew that I needed to clear more tasks before the reward would be able to serve its purpose of feeling good from having accomplished something. I also thought a lot about motivation, and what kept people coming back to games. At the most basic level, people would be motivated to do something that fulfils their needs. For most games, it would be the need to unwind and escape from the stresses of daily lives, and find a channel to express one’s creativity and to socialise with others. This meant that the success of my systems would be defined by the meeting of my needs - having a body of data to help me make better decisions and habits in time management. 

Becoming the back burner!

 

Habitica Crossover #4 | Becoming the back burner!

Note: 

• This post also functions as a teaser to the upcoming post detailing the progress of Life Challenge #4: Gamification.
• This will be the last post on this series for a long while, and it will decouple itself from the "Life Challenges" series

After a few months of using Habitica, I have found it increasingly difficult to maintain it as my mindset and my tasks have more or less migrated to the two new productivity tools that I have created to organise my life and inject some fun into my clearing of to-dos. These tools are namely, “Commitment Tracker” and “Motivation System”.

I can only share some basic information about these two productivity tools because I will be divulging the details of how they work in the upcoming post about my progress in the Gamification Challenge. To put it simply, the Commitment Tracker is to help me organise my tasks my regular cycles and quantify the value for each task (assigned to a commitment) to me, while the Motivation System takes these numbers and either process them into trends that give me a bigger picture of my productivity over a certain duration, or exchange them for rewards that I can enjoy, so as to give me the last push I need to complete a certain task and to give up a certain distraction or reward.

With these systems, they have effectively rendered Habitica obsolete for me. My usage of Habitica was mostly concentrated on its task management system. In comparison to that, I spend much less time engaging with different people on guilds or on the shop and stable for the virtual rewards. The pixel art loses its charm over some time, because I find that its visual appeal means nothing to me, and I have no actual use for these pixels on the screen.

For instance, these equipment does not make sense to me, because there are no monsters that actively appear at the “Tasks” tab trying to gobble my character up if I am lax in my checking off to-dos and habits. They only serve to enhance my attribute points, for which there is little use other than changing how fast one clears the quests (which is just a progress bar) and the rate at which one's health drops for a missed daily or a negative habit.

Another example of why I do not find the rewards provided by Habitica appealing is the system on its Stable. Although I admit that the pets look cute and value-added to the visual appeal of my character avatar, after a long time trying to get along with them, I cannot quite figure out what the use of them are other than being decorative items that can only eat food and grow (which I pity the pets and mounts for not being able to present themselves as lively creatures that actively bring joy to their masters and assisting their masters with various tasks).

How about supportive communities like guilds which are one of the biggest draws to this gamified task management site? In general, I feel that many Habiticians are either talking to themselves or responding to each other’s questions quickly. Unless one is lucky enough to join into a very supportive and family-like party, it is hard to develop any kind of relationships with other users or engage in deep conversations over productivity with other like-minded people. Maybe nothing will happen if I do not get the ball rolling, but this is not where my life interests lie, and I have other hobbies and commitments to attend to. As such, there is no reason for me to continue contributing to these guilds, unless there were some extremely kind guilds that would give me gems for completing something and I would be able to unlock something cool on the shop for them (still, it will only be for a very short time).

The fear of incurring penalties such as reduced health and mana, as well as getting hit by the monster of the party quest I am on, also contributed to my lack of willingness to check in to Habitica. I know that skipping on dailies and habits will be detrimental to my personal growth in the long run, but there were days where I felt so tired and burnt out that I wanted to escape the reality of holding myself accountable or responsible for all the tasks and habits that I am struggling hard to maintain.

All these negative experiences I had on Habitica had led me to the conclusion that I am able to make something that is better than this site and I will not need to pay a single cent for anything when I am designing the reward systems and progress trackers myself. Perhaps I am asking for too much, but it is worth a try to see what I can make on my own. As such, I have decided to put Habitica on the backburner and use it mainly as a source of inspiration for future ideas about self-improvement.

Semper prorsum!  V 

Official release of Life Challenges #4: The Gamification Challenge

 

I N      C O N J U N C T I O N     W I T H

Life Challenges #4 & Habitica Crossover #3 | Gamification Challenge

Part 1: Release of challenge

Background of this challenge

Have you ever done or experienced anything boring before, so much so that you really wanted to doze off or do something else? That was the kind of feeling I had when I went about doing most tasks in a day. I started to dread most of the work I did and wanted to dive into something that felt good, like going on social media and finding out the high life my friends were having, or bingeing on shows and manga, which mostly ended up to be a waste of time.

But before we think, “Life’s like that. It sucks. Suck it up,” let us give ourselves the chance to entertain the thought of making the most monotonous tasks more interesting. I did a bit of Googling, and it hit me back with this term, “gamification”. 

The gaming industry is massive, with games being increasingly popular and engaging. Games have allowed us to see traditionally boring tasks like walking, reading and doing housework in a new light, by employing some of the features in actual video games that affect us psychologically.

Seeing something that could be boring turned into something that everyone wants to be let in might sound far-fetched, but take a look at how this presentation (on presentations) was turned into fun games: 

As such, I have started exploring this concept with Habitica (you can learn more about my exploits in the “Habitica Crossover” series). However, I became disenchanted with it after some time because it did not offer much engagement for this. It is hard for me to be invested in pretty pixels without a compelling story to back them up, and only be focused on logging in my tasks and watching my points gauges get filled up. For gamification, this RPG for being productive was doing its job, but it was not good enough for me. I wanted more customisability and unpredictability in the mechanics of the game.

Description of the challenge

Overarching purpose

To help myself in staying accountable and productive in completing this goal, I have set up a motto for this challenge. It is semper prorsum,  a Latin saying for "always forward". Through gamification, I hope to create something that I can look forward to, be it to see what kind of rewards and achievements I will be unlocking, to look out for what crazy challenge awaits me to be conquered, or to find out how much progress I have made in my work. In this way, instead of being held back by past mistakes and fears, I can take the one step forward in the direction of my goals that is set to generate countless steps more.

Having a cool motto is nice because it can serve as a catchphrase to remind myself about how deeply related the challenge is to my life, which makes it too significant for it to be ignored and be left on the back burner.

The specifics

I will be giving myself until the end of this year to complete this challenge, since trying to gamify my life from scratch is a really challenging undertaking.

For my first phase, I will complete a system where it will quantify what I do and develop some rewards and penalties (so that the reinforcement of any behaviour that makes me more productive can be done in both positive and negative ways).

For my second phase, I will make use of analytics tools such as point gauges and graphs to make my progress behaviour and motivate myself to improve on my previous performance in my tasks.

For my third phase, I will be integrating these personal systems into Habitica. With the points or rewards I accumulated in these systems, I can use them in exchange to make myself move faster in the game. Also, I can measure up to how another Habitica user has been progressing to add in the element of competition, so that I can catch up to others. Finally, by mixing my own games and the mechanics of Habitica, it will make the element of play stand out more in every task that I do.

As I could not wait to get on this challenge, I have already started this in August. However, it is going to take quite a lot of time before I can conclude what I am doing in this challenge, because I have to test these systems out and determine whether they are fun enough for me to progress smoothly in my work, but not so addictive that I push off the important work to get on with the game.

In my next post under “Life Challenges”, I will share some sneak peeks of what my gamified task management systems are like, and what kind of features I have built in to hack my own psychology that drives me to work harder.

Semper prorsum.  V 

The finale of the Bookworm Challenge

 

Post identifier: Life Challenges #3: Bookworm Challenge, Part 3

After 3 months of painstaking effort, I have finally produced good news for the Bookworm Challenge - I managed to complete the goals that I set out to do (read a book, do a reading summary and read the news for at least two days in a week), even though it took much longer than I had expected.

Results of the challenge: A partial success.

The task of reading itself was not that difficult. I just needed to be consistent in how long I read and how much time I spend reading. But being consistent was not easy because of other competing priorities and commitments. By the time the training of the day had concluded and I had some time to myself, I realised that I was usually too tired to be able to understand what I was reading.

This was especially the case for the task that required me to complete reading a book. I had 210 pages and just reading a couple of pages would take me an hour. Progress was slow, especially in the middle part of the book because I felt that I was so far away from my goals that I would despair and give up on this challenge. Fortunately, I gave myself more deadlines to help me see this challenge as a priority, and tracked my progress to motivate myself.

Completing the reading summary was relatively easy. All it took was for me to type out the key takeaways in bullet points for a new article in one sitting. Only a few hours of work was required for this.

I also had some trouble with reading the news on a regular basis. They took up mobile data and I only had enough time to scroll through headlines before I felt less interested. I think reading the news can be the main focus for the sequel to this challenge. I get the importance of reading the news as a means of staying informed so as to make better decisions in my life, but I get overwhelmed by the many things that are going on that I have trouble concentrating on understanding current affairs.

The lessons I have gathered after reading the book (which was written in Chinese) would be published in my Chinese blog. As for the reading summary, it will be uploaded soon on the Vincent’s Academy website. When these things are ready, the links for them will be appended here. As these outcomes were delayed for too long, I cannot say that I have completed this challenge successfully.

Delays after delays - what went wrong again?

There were a few weeks when I just got exasperated by the many things going on at the same time, which drove me to give up and indulge myself with all sorts of distractions for days on end. After a while, I eventually realised that instead of feeling good, I felt more guilty and unsatisfied instead, because losing myself by mindlessly watching videos and seeking forms of entertainment and pleasure was not what I had wanted. I got back on track by measuring my progress in the various things that I got involved in, and put in more effort in planning my time so as to maximise my productivity.

Most of the time, it seemed that reading was not so high on my priority list. I also had the thought of delaying it till my weekends because I thought that it would be easy to catch up on the pages that I have missed. This was blind optimism unsupported by any knowledge of how much work I need to put in to complete the reading. When I got back to reading the book I started on a more regular basis, I realised how wrong I was - reading just a couple of pages took me up to an hour, and reading a chapter or two could easily let me spend half a day!

This was also why I had not been updating my blog as regularly as I liked to. The permanence of the blog as a space to write out my thoughts and the lack of viewership made it hard to nurture any kind of urgency in completing my posts. It became a side hustle that was not unlike an untended backyard, with wild grasses growing unchecked, flowers and potted plants withering, and branches becoming tangled and messy. I was always looking for some suitable time, such as the period of time where I had a long break, before I would pick up blogging again. The key to overcoming this was to develop systems that helped me to keep track of all my tasks and help me be more in control of how I spend my time.

Unexpected consequence of this challenge: systems to maximise my productivity

As I became increasingly frustrated with my lack of productivity. I took breaks from this Life Challenge and worked on the upcoming one, which was about gamification.

In the process, I created a role-playing game that had a lot of features, which purpose was to encourage players to check off their tasks in order to get access to more items, features and stories. It was meant as a healthy form of recreation to get a change of pace from the usual grind.

I also devised a motivation system and assigned points to my tasks and habits based on the duration it took me to complete them and how much value I place in them. This was integrated with yet another with my creations, the Commitment Tracker, which was a spreadsheet that monitors all the tasks that come up on a regular basis (these include habits, dailies and pseudo-habits).

Lastly, I brought in these new systems and the task management systems that I have already been using, such as Habitica, Google Keep and Google Calendar, together by visualising them on a flowchart map. This is what my entire Productivity System will look like.

More elaboration and sneak peeks of these systems will be revealed in my upcoming “Life Challenges” series post, which will be introducing a new Life Challenge.

Life Challenges #3: Bookworm Challenge | Part 2: Progress update

As I go through the challenge of trying to complete a book in a month, I had a taste of how I underestimated the difficulty of the challenge. I also experienced some of the bad practices I had when it comes to reading.

Lesson 1: Being successful in something is not influenced by strength, intelligence or wealth, but by how often this something is prioritised above other things.

Towards the second half of September, when I was supposed to be half-complete with the challenge, my progress fell behind because I gave up my time for other commitments. I was hooked on to anime, and got immersed in what was supposed to be the next challenge - #4: Gamification.

Watching anime was such an easy task while it allowed me to feel good with the excellent graphics, gripping storylines and brilliant music. On the other hand, setting up the game that my productivity system would be based on was very difficult, with me needing to learn up on a lot of formulas to get the game's spreadsheet to function well and trying to integrate real-life tasks with online rewards. The process of growing and seeing my game becoming closer to reality gave me a huge sense of satisfaction every day. These observations meant that my putting in of consistent effort is not dependent on the difficulty level of a task. Instead, the decisive factor is about how much gains I can perceive from having done such a task. The expectation and realisation of rewards (be it a good stimulation of my senses or expanding my knowledge base to increase my capabilities) made the doing of these tasks look attractive to me.

Lesson 2: Great progress comes from small actions, hence habits are not formed through big undertakings.

There were many days that I dropped the reading because I simply did not feel up to it. Such a feeling might be because of how much I demanded myself to read regularly. Setting expectations that will be difficult for me to fulfill will only lead to disappointment and cause me to miss out on many of the things that were taught by the trainers. I should fight back the guilt of not reaching the daily reading quota, and do the longer and safer way of only requiring myself to read very little daily (like one page per day).

The most effective change comes from within and from being regularly enforced. Limiting my reading quota could have made it less likely to put off the reading. This is so that the act of reading a book (no matter how few pages the book has) is easier to start.

Lesson 3: Time-bound tasks are more likely to mobilise effort

Creating a daily habit is not as easy as setting a deadline to form the habit by and just pray that I will be doing it everyday. Chances are, all the distractions and obligations in life will most likely prevent me from doing so. To increase my chances of success at forming a daily habit, I must set a timer for the minimum amount of reading time I must hit so that I focus on reading instead of worrying about other things.

Knowing how much time I have left aids in focus, since I do not have to split my attention to attend to the other things I need to do.

Resolution: Extension of the challenge

For the daily reading part of the habit, I will extend it till the end of September 2020. This will help me to spread out my reading more over time to avoid making reading seem like a chore.

As for the news readings, I will set more reminders for me to do it and record what I have learnt from the reading.

Finally, for the reading notes, I will only expect myself to complete one, and it will be ready by the end of September 2020. 

For now, my goal is to conclude the challenge and get ready the challenge completion post by 4 October 2020, Sunday. To help me get there, I will break the challenge down into time-bound tasks that I can jump into so that I am less able to put them off for later.

Life Challenges #3: Bookworm Challenge | Part 1: Challenge Rules

Works of the written or spoken word are unidirectional time machines, mind readers and windows to imaginary worlds. There are countless ideas we can gain and apply to our daily lives by interacting with the people of the past through words in various mediums. These mediums can be books, newspapers, journals, magazines, documentaries and many more. Going through any of the words left by people who have walked down the paths of their choice can be immensely meaningful. They allow us to understand how we come to be, and where we will be heading.

It is in such a magical world that the third in my series of Life Challenges will be founded on. This challenge is called the Bookworm Challenge, and this post is about its rules.

1. The challenge is to happen over a duration of 4 weeks, from 1 August 2020 to 30 August 2020. If you are wondering why the math involving the 28 days (4 weeks) does not add up, it is because 2 more days are added at the end (29 and 30 August 2020) as a contingency plan against any incomplete tasks.

2. A daily reading routine lasting 15 minutes will be implemented. What is to be done in this duration is up to me.

3. I am to finish reading a book during the challenge duration. For now, I am planning to read a Chinese book. It is a translated version of the biography of Elon Musk, "Silicon Valley Iron Man".

4. I am also to catch up with the news for at least two days per week. The news is an important source of information on current affairs which will be helpful in drafting future Kaleidoscope posts and help me understand more of what I am reading. I have freedom in choosing what kind of news to read and the method of consumption. It can be videos, online articles or infographics. As long as I learn of something, anything is good.

5. Finally, I will submit at least one reading note every fortnight. Submissions will appear on the Vincent Academy website. This component is expected to be the hardest as it requires the most commitment. However, I believe this can be done with consistent effort in trying to read.

I hope to be able to cultivate the good habit of reading widely through this challenge. This can also help me improve on my vocabulary and knowledge which is necessary for writing better blog posts. In addition, the various writing styles I get exposed to through reading can help me to come up with higher quality work for future Story Creation Challenges!

Life Challenges #2: Simplification Challenge | Part 2: Results and reflections

Simplification Challenge

Part 2: Results and Reflections

Results of the challenge

For seven days, I worked hard to find out what aspects of my life can be simplified. I experimented with different ideas, and researched on what makes for a simple life.

I am happy to announce that the results of the challenge can be found here: 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vTSNYKwe6fWOR85xCm-PxQbusrTaPUIrF0BdKwnYl8gLYbvr4R4hznIaDxnJR52hU5DdsofmRq2Ey13/pub

This document is not only a logbook of what I have been through for the seven days, but also contains a list of recommendations for me to be able to lead a simpler life, after collating what I have learnt from the duration of the challenge.

Since these are my personal notes, there may be some terms that are not explained well. If you have any questions concerning that, feel free to drop a comment to seek my clarification.

My reflections on simplicity

I have now thought of simplicity as being the most efficient way of doing things. Before this challenge, I was unsure about the definition of simplicity, and how it would be beneficial to my life. Thanks to this challenge, I can appreciate how much I am lacking in simplicity and how it does wonders to my well-being - I worry less and get more done instead.

This journey has been a difficult one, because my commitments and training left me with little time to work on the research and to try out some of the ideas I have come up with for this challenge. Having to juggle between the different things I wanted to do was frustrating, so I came up with a kind of a weekly roster to help me keep track of the things I am doing. Having a routine to follow can be useful for people who are involved in a lot of commitments and side jobs.

This image shows the roster I follow for all my commitments that I have in my free time. I did this in the form of a checklist in Google Keep, and included emojis to help me add some quick remarks to some of them (for instance, the pin emoji marks what I am working on for the day) since Keep does not offer much customisability for its notes.

This challenge has also helped me learn that the lack of simplicity is caused by a variety of psychological factors, many of which can be found in the list of recommendations (^ link above ^). By recognising them and overcoming them, I can look at things more straightforwardly and be more flexible in my response to different scenarios. For example, I have very little control in the training that I need to do when serving in the military, but instead of wasting my time and energy in trying to futilely reject whatever needs to be done, I can choose the mentality and the effort that I want to put in instead. This kind of mindset brings out the best in me, and allows me to see difficulties in a much more positive and a productive way.

Life Challenges #2: Simplification Challenge | Part 1: Prologue and development

Life Challenge #2 | SimplificationPart 1: Prologue and development

The bridge between positivity and simplicity

“Life is simple but we insist on making it complicated” - Confucius

Two millennia ago, the great sage, Confucius, came up with this insightful statement. Put it into today’s context, it is still as applicable as in ancient times.

This Medium article brings out the essence of the quote nicely: it is not life that is complicated but us who tend to overthink things and make ourselves suffer unnecessarily. [1]

Especially in today’s day and age when humans can do much more with technology, and are less obsessed with survival (a life and death matter, not about how others look at you), we forget that life is inherently simple. [2] Just do what we can to survive, and the rest of the time will be ours.

It is this overthinking and getting frustrated over the smallest things that prevented me from having a positive mindset. Hence, it is only natural for this Simplification Challenge to be a follow-up to the Positivity Challenge.

I learnt the need for simplicity from notebook-making

During the previous weekend (6 June), I realised that I needed to get a new notebook as the one I was currently using ran out of pages. As all stationery stores and supplies shops were still close down amidst the gradual reopening measures for Singapore’s post-Circuit-Breaker period, I decided to make my own notebook.

I gathered all the materials I needed:

• A stack of unused fax invoice papers
• Puncholder
• Scissors
• Clear tape
• File binder (basically a piece of thin metal)
• Ruler
• Plastic sheet
• Wide extendable string
• Cardboard sheets

Basically, as the papers were thick and I assumed I had no sharp cutting materials, I tore out the pages, folded them and cut the pages one by one. This was a very time-consuming process, and the pages turned out to have slightly different dimensions.

Next, I created a page with a whiteboard, which was basically a piece of paper wrapped with a plastic sheet. I wanted to include this to take down reminders and write down lists. However, it was more flimsy than I had anticipated. After that, I cut out a piece of cardboard and folded it into a notebook cover.

I decided to waterproof the notebook because I would be outdoors quite often during training, and I would hate for the notebook to get soaked by the rainwater. To do so, I taped the whole cardboard notebook cover. But before that, I used a black marker to colour the whole cover black, because it would make the notebook more usable outfield (not too eye-catching). It turned out to be more trouble than it was worth.

To bind the pages together, I used the puncholder to punch two holes at the top of every page, placed the binder through the holes and bent the ends of the binder poking out so it would not fall out.

I did not do the binding before the taping so that I could remove a page easily when I needed to access it without the rest of the notebook. This was at least less messy than tearing out pages. The removable pages feature was the only thing that turned out good in my notebook.

Originally, I wanted to make a pen holder by cutting out one small piece of the extendable string and tried to attach it to the notebook cover using tape. Normally, it would be best to use a strong adhesive such as glue that could be easily applied here, but when I asked, my mother thought it was too much of a waste, and recommended tying a string around the notebook cover to substitute as a pen holder.

The whole process took me 4 hours. My mother came to check because she wanted to see how my notebook turned out (she first got interested when I wanted to make my own when she could not find any A6-sized ones I requested for in the stores) and she was astonished to see me taking so long. Who wouldn't be?

She was perplexed how something so simple to make can make me spend hours on it. And she demonstrated a method that allowed her to churn out 4 notebooks in half an hour:

1. Measure the size of the paper you want on the first page of the stack, then with a drawing board underneath it, cut through the stack with a penknife.
2. Measure the size of the paper cut out on the cardboard and double the length, then cut it out and fold it over the paper.
3. Place the whole strip of cardboard on the drawing board and tape both sides up.
4. Using a large puncholder, create holes through the stack of paper and the cardboard covering it.
5. Use a binder (metal strip, nylon thread or anything suitable) to bind the cardboard covering and paper together through the holes.

Her way of doing things was much more simplified than the many paragraphs I spent on describing my method. And her end product looked nicer than mine too. This picture makes the difference clear: 

(Left: the notebooks my mother made. Right: the notebook I made.) The difference in quality can be seen in the evenness of the pages and how closely the size of the covering and the stack of pages matched.

The moral of the story

I made several mistakes that made the whole craftwork more complicated than it was necessary.

First, I assumed that the materials I had were the best fit for the job and compromised too much on their suitability. Making assumptions was supposed to make things more efficient [3], but that would only work if they were based on accurate information. It would be better if I had a plan on how best to use my materials and discuss with my parents about whether there would be any alternative materials that were better than what I owned.

Second, I made a fundamental mistake in product design - I tried to cram in too much functionality into one product, until I lost focus of what I wanted to do [4]. My original intent was to have a pocket-sized paper with waterproof backing for me to write down notes, but it sidetracked to adding on trivial things to make my life a bit more convenient when I was writing.

Third: I skimped on the measurements but I realised later that it was one of the most crucial process for the end product to function well [5]. As a result of this sleaziness, which was a consequence of me not making the notebook a simple one, my pages and cover turned out to be uneven. It was so had that when I tried to do the binding, a few pages tore off.

These called for some simplicity to be introduced into my life.

Taking the first step to simplicity: make a statement

Hence, I did up plans for another week-long challenge targeting different aspects of my life that can be simplified. To keep whatever tasks I needed to complete the challenge from becoming too complicated, I decided to make my own simplicity statement which will be the motto for this challenge. This is the statement:

“Think with a purpose. Don't waste time overthinking.”

As I pen down this post, I am already halfway through the challenge. Some of the to-dos are less realistic than I had thought. But these are valuable lessons for me to improve future challenges. Fight on!

Notes:

[1] The Medium article on leading a simple life: https://medium.com/@feeljoy.in/life-is-simple-but-we-insist-on-making-it-complicated-c1e910a13431 

[2] How humans are hardwired for complexity according to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: http://www.wearestop.com/2017/04/psychology-simplicity-just-make-things-complex/ 

[3] Why we assume things and how to become better at it (in short, by being open to new possibilities outside of our ‘thinking box’): http://arbingerinstitute.com/BlogDetail?id=80 

 [4] There’s a name for something that has too much functionality such that it was becomes less usable - feature fatigue: https://hbr.org/2006/02/defeating-feature-fatigue 

  

[5] Not knowing better about how something would turn out was one reason why people cut corners. There are more reasons, such as accountability. Find out more here: https://www.fastcompany.com/90264166/this-is-why-your-employees-cut-corners-and-what-to-do-about-it

Life Challenges #1: Positivity Challenge

Introduction to Life Challenges Series

Sometimes, we are so busy with our various commitments that we forget to leave some time to check in with ourselves and improve one aspect of our lives.

Doing the same old routines and work every day is just going to nurture the mentality of getting by with life uneventfully, but that is not a life well lived, for we are shelled up in our own comfort zone, and we do not experience any excitement or growth. [1]

This is why I have been trying to fight back the busyness and trying to set up some challenges for my self-improvement. These challenges usually include soft-skills that will improve my character and increase my well-being. However, the nature of the challenges can evolve in future, in line with my changing needs and the changing environment.

The first challenge: Positivity Challenge

The purpose of this challenge is to encourage me to reframe my thoughts in a more positive and constructive way so as to improve my mental well-being and feel more in control.

Many occurrences are neutral by nature. But as we colour these events with our own emotions and our biases, they will fall into the category of either what we like and what we dislike. The negative category of what we dislike can be self-defeating, as they may be necessary for our growth but our mind is resistant to change. This workings of our inner selves, combined with the negative thoughts that spring out from our interpretations of the events, make many things in life harder and more stressful than they should. [2]

What did I do for this challenge? Everyday, for one week, I wrote about at least one difficulty I faced and tried to apply positive thinking to it. You can see what I have done here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/14wnd-KJfQ5_PRE7wcXqDIpqilT8uBHzYlrnN5YY8DRE/edit

Looking back on the challenge

I surprised myself by generating many positive ways to look at an otherwise negative event. It seems like most of the time when I feel depressed or stressed by the negative things in life, it is more likely because my mind does not want to acknowledge positive side of things.

I hope to be able to gather these thoughts and find out their commonalities, which can help me set up a toolbox for helping me to cope with negativity and inject more positive feelings into my life.

References

[1]
https://www.fastcompany.co.za/inspiration/why-challenges-and-problems-are-important-in-life-12411996
[2]
https://www.forbes.com/sites/travisbradberry/2013/08/08/518/