Gilad"s shared items

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

How to enjoy your daily chores or any other boring activity


Make them enjoyable by transforming them to a game.

Let's face it , chores are boring and unsatisfying. If we could we would have delegated them to someone else or postpone doing them forever. However without washing dishes, washing the floor, throwing the garbage and cleaning the bathroom our home would look like after a hurricane.

The dilemma is to procrastinate about doing you chores, gain some productivity time, and loose it because your home is all cluttered and you can't focus on achieving your goals because of the smell. Or make your chores into a game.

Games are enjoyable because:

  • There is a clear goal.
  • Three are clear rules.
  • It requires skills.
  • We have instant feedback about our progress.
  • It requires our attention and therefor life troubles are forgotten.
  • We sense accomplishment.
So why not turn all our experiences into games? For example take washing the dishes.
The washing dishes game:
  1. Clear goal: finish washing the dishes as fast as you can.
  2. Clear rules: Max time per small item 5 seconds, medium item 10 sec and large pots 30 sec. you can accumulate extra time by doing an item faster and spend it on items that take longer. Important: the dishes must be clean
  3. Skills: Time tracking, math for keeping up with extra/spent time, optimize order of items and movements, ....
  4. Feedback: Dishes are being cleaned.
  5. Attention: If you are really into the game, you can't think of anything else but the time, how much extra time you have, what is the best order to get the best time ...
  6. Accomplishment: The kitchen is clean, you exercised your brain, you know how to clean the dishes better and faster.
Let's hear you, what other games for boring chores yo can think of?
If you take this step and make a game from every activity you take, you will enjoy every activity and have an enjoyable and happy life.

picture by Foto Blitz Color's buddy icon

2 comments:

All Blog Spots said...

nice blog

TDog said...

interesting article. As I mention on my blog Productivity Drive, I was thinking while reading this that it could be very useful to motivate kids, possibly having them compete against each other.