Last time I talked about anti-patterns (bad habits that games teach us). Today we’re coming back to the positives.
The point of these “Games have taught us” articles isn’t to talk theory. I want to focus on things I’ve actually improved in my life thanks to games.
This time they inspired and helped me to improve my morning routine. (And habits in general.)
Morning routine
Long story short, I wanted to improve my morning routine.
That is, assuming I even have one. I usually just get up, brush my teeth, comb my hair, grab a drink, and go sit at the computer to work.
For the most part, that’s good enough. But I’ve had plenty of days where I felt like I needed something more.
If I just sit at the computer and I start reading mail and messages, I forget what I was supposed to be doing. My day easily becomes unorganized. And that makes work much more difficult.
To combat that, I wanted at least two things in the mornings:
- a little time to organize what I need to do that day
- a little time to think and reflect if I’m doing the right things
Solution to organizing
As a gamer (and also an advocate of the agile methods), the answer to the first one was somewhat simple.
Quest logs are one big reason why it’s so easy to know what to do in modern games. So I might as well use that to my advantage, in the form of task lists.
(I’ve talked in length about why I don’t really like quest logs in games – but I do think they work wonderfully for work.)
So, that means writing down what I need to do that day and splitting it all into smaller tasks. It takes a while, but it really helps to give priority and structure to my day, and remind me what needs to get done.
A thing to keep in mind: games are fun; work isn’t necessarily.
To combat that, it’s usually best to splice your work into small enough chunks. Otherwise what should be a simple “task” may end up feeling more like an “achievement.” Big tasks can be okay in games, because the fun drives you forward. But for work, if you find that big tasks just don’t get done, you need to make them smaller.
My rule of thumb is that ideally, a task should never take longer than a few hours. If it does, it needs to be split. For tasks that are inherently massive (e.g. “Make a computer game”), I tend to just make a tiny starter task that gets me going (e.g. “Google what engine to use for game making”), and then add next small steps after that’s done (e.g. “Download and install engine”, “Watch a tutorial”, “Jot down some basic game documentation”).
Tools for task lists
I ended up using two different methods for task lists: one for personal life, and one for work.
For work, I wanted to try a traditional, physical kanban board. My personal experience when working with software development is that it’s important to have your kanban board visible to all team members (even if in this case, it’s just me) at all times.
The board is not just a tool that tells what to do, it’s also an object of motivation: showing you that you’re accomplishing things. (Much like a quest log in a game, where you get a fanfare every time you finish a quest).
My tips for working with kanban boards:
- Always have them visible (when working). If you’re using a digital one, such as Trello, it helps to have a separate monitor where you have it always open.
- Maintenance is essential. Start every day going through the tasks and see if there’s anything that needs to be added or removed. The board doesn’t work if it’s full of old tasks that you’re just never doing. Learn to recognize when something just isn’t going to get done. If you get stuck during the day, don’t be afraid to take a break and rearrange the board.
For personal tasks, I wanted to see if there’s any digital alternatives. I found an app called Habitica that works very well for my needs (and it’s free to download, with zero ads). The reason shouldn’t be surprising: it’s a task list app that’s very gamified.
But more importantly, it’s not just a straight list of tasks. You can separate tasks into habits (things you want to do more or less), dailies (things you should do regularily), or To Dos (one-time tasks that need to get done).
I find this separation of task types extremely helpful, and it makes the app work much better for me than generic todo lists.
My tips for Habitica (and similar apps):
- Maintenance is essential. The absolute first thing you should add is a daily that repeats once or twice every week called “Clean up task list.” Use it to look through your tasks and see if it’s getting cluttered. If something isn’t getting done, do something about it: split it into tasks so small you can’t fail, or just drop it altogether.
- If you want habits to stick, be kind to yourself by making them lax enough. One of my dailies include “READ any book”. This does not mean reading through an entire book. Some days I finish several chapters, some days I read a single paragraph. What matters is that I open up a book and read a bit. Usually what follows is that I end up reading more than I expected.
- Use the description field to add some details. In case you’re afraid that you can’t remember what to do about the task just from the title, the description field can give you insights you might have thought about.
Solution to reflecting
Now, for the second thing, the time to think and reflect. For that, I thought that perhaps I should take a moment to do a bit of morning meditation.
Meditation is something that I’ve had a vague interest towards since childhood due to its presence in Ultima IV (and other Ultima games as well).
But there are a few reasons why I’ve never actually managed to stick with meditation. On the top of the list is that it is extremely repetitive and boring. That’s a deal-breaker for me, so I started looking for alternatives.
Next up, I thought about prayer.
Now, I’m not a religious person. But the concept of prayer has intrigued me for a while. Unlike with meditation, where you traditionally repeat a meaningless mantra to clear your head, in prayer you can go through various thoughts: things you’re thankful of, wishes, lessons you’ve learned, and so on.
This makes prayers much more versatile and less monotonous.
And on top of that, there’s a thing called prayer beads. As you pray, you go through the beads with your fingers counting how many prayers you’ve gone through. The importance for me there, is the tactile feeling – having something to fiddle with while praying.
(Also, the materialist in me often yearns for neat tools for new hobbies.)
(source: Wikipedia)
Improved beads
As I was going through the lessons that I want to include to my “morning prayer”, I felt like something was still missing.
I managed to come up with about 14 lessons I wanted to remind myself every morning. But is it going to be enough to go through them in the same order every time? Is there some way I could mix things up?
Then another inspiration struck.
I remembered Blasphemous.
Blasphemous is based on a world filled with catholic ideals, visuals and miracles.
That includes collecting and carrying around your own rosary beads.
It made me realize: I could gather and combine my own beads! Each bead representative of the lesson I wanted to remind myself of.
Better yet, if I wanted to make sure I wouldn’t get stuck always going through the lessons in a specific order, I could put my beads into a box instead of a string. (Although having them on a string would make them more portable, but that is a non-issue for now.)
Random ordering is important so that I don’t just go through a bunch of prayers, but instead have to stop and think. What lesson does this bead represent? Have I been following that lesson? Am I actually doing what I’m preaching to myself?
In fact, the “beads” don’t then need to be beads at all.
Hustling through the apartment for various nicknacks and a box suitable for them, this is what I ended up with:
Most of these are trinkets that have been just lying around, waiting for some use or a place to sit on and look pretty. Some are from physical editions of games. There’s a few souvenirs from overseas. Some are things I’ve literally just picked from the ground.
Each has a bit of history with me, from where they come, or what they remind me of.
A match made in Heaven
Prayer beads that remind me of what I should strive for.
And a quest list to remind me to use it every morning.
And a kanban board to give structure to my work day.
My experience is that habits like these won’t last forever, but we’ll see. For now I’ve seen a ton of improvements.
Games played a huge part in inspiring me to adapt these methods. I can also see that they played a huge role in the making of Habitica.
And so, games continue to occupy a big chunk of my time.
But also, to improve my life.
As a religious person, prayer isn’t exactly the term I would use for what you’re doing. I’m not saying that it’s wrong or anything like that, just that prayer is a rather different practice. I would say your prayer beads are just a different form of meditation based on organizing your mind rather than emptying it, or perhaps you could use the term “re-centering”. That’s just a matter of semantics to some extent though.
Your descriptions did also remind me of the Elfhome series by Wen Spencer. One of the practices that the titular elves all use is much the same thing, but with the goal of remembering important events, people, and motivations over the course of a functionally infinite lifespan. There’s an elaborate ritual every… year I think, where they spend a day poring over their memories and ensuring that the important pieces of information are being retained. It’s a good series. That ritual is only a small part of the story, but it’s a nice piece of worldbuilding about how people can deal with living for incomprehensible periods of time.
I thought I wasn’t doing meditation, but ended up doing meditation anyway 😀 Oh well! Thanks for chiming in!
Now that you mentioned it, Vayandil did mention to me that the praying she used to do in Orthodox Christianity used to be very repetitive…
That’s interesting! I love hearing about how characters cope with long life spans (since living forever is definitely part of my personal power fantasies). I’ve been waiting to watch Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End at some point because I understood it tackles that topic as well.
The basic difference, at least as my mind delineates it, is that meditation is inwardly focused, while prayer is outwardly focused, in particular to the divine. I’m sure a theologian would have a more rigorous definition, but that’s usually how I think of it.
I also have been meaning to watch that for a while. Just have to finish up Assassination Classroom first 😉
Oh, and I should also mention martial arts as yet another form of meditation. Do you have much familiarity there?
That inward/outward focus sounds like a pretty valid distinction (at least to someone like me who isn’t super knowleadgeable about the subject).
Thanks for mentioning martial arts! Did you have something specific in mind? I don’t actually have experience with martial arts specifically (I have mostly dabbled in a few other sports), but it reminded me that I forgot to mention in the post that we practiced yoga for a few years before the whole corona thing.
Meditation is big part of yoga both in preparing you for the session and ending it (much like stretching). And yoga sessions themselves are more or less meditative in nature, depending on what yoga you’re doing.
I think I was fine with meditation in yoga, mostly because it was a once-in-a-week thing and because it had the purpose of preparing you for the session. But I never managed to come up with anything to convince myself to make it a daily thing.
The only thing I really had in mind as far as martial arts is my own personal experience with it. I’ve been practicing traditional Taekwondo for several years now. It’s not one of the main focuses, but we are encouraged to develop “meditation in motion” while practicing forms (also known as kata, patterns, or a few other names depending on the lineage of who you’re talking to). In that context it’s essentially an extension of muscle memory, allowing you to stop focusing on controlling every individual part of your body, and instead honing your intent of what you would actually be doing with these movements. Through this repetition, if I ended up in an actual fight, I don’t have to spend time thinking about every little thing my body is doing, and I can instead react immediately. That’s also not the entirety of the training, just a portion of it.
From what you’re describing as well as my cursory knowledge of yoga, the two ideas aren’t entirely dissimilar. In the case of yoga, instead of combat specifically, it’s intended to more generally get your body and movements synchronized and balanced, ideally letting you move more gracefully and smoothly. And of course get your body in better shape in the process. The meditation you’re talking about may be less about the motion, and more a matter of forcing you to be focused on what you’re studying instead of distracted by everything else going on in your life. Does that sound accurate?
Yup, that’s very much it!
In yoga, many of the poses (asana) are actually somewhat dangerous or hazardous to your body if done incorrectly. So to protect yourself, it’s essential that you prepare yourself both mentally (focusing on the exercise, and getting rid of the feeling of urgency) and physically (learning to hold your core steady at all times, and making sure you listen to your body so you don’t overexert yourself). If you can’t hold your core while doing the poses, then you can injure your back. Many poses and sequences exist mainly to warm you up and improve muscle strength, flexibility and balance so that you’re more ready for the tough poses.
That “meditation in motion” sounds like an important thing to develop. And it actually reminds me of a state you sometimes get while playing games as well. If you’re playing a repetitive game enough (or just play so much that your actions get ingrained to your muscle memory), it feels like you go into an almost meditative state where you can start to look at the bigger picture and ask yourself questions such as “I wonder if I could just build a house here instead of a wall” or “I think I can squeeze a jump after that hit and continue my combo while the enemy is in the air”…
Rhythm games particularly for me, for that last bit. My eyes glaze over a little, my mind wanders, but my fingers are still zipping.
I enjoyed the post. Your comparison with work task management and video games was interesting. Elder scrolls was my inspiration. I do find writing your task each day very helpful. I keep a small memo book just for that reason in my pocket so I can update task and changes as the day goes. At each break or meal I review my memo book. and at the end of the day I remove from the book what I’ve accomplished or is no longer relevant.
A small memo! That sure brings back memories. I used to do the same thing back at high school during one cold season, having the memo in my breast pocket. But as soon as it got warmer and I stopped wearing flannel shirts with breast pockets, I forgot all about it >_< Hope you can keep it up for a long time!