137 - Gamification and Community Works!

ADHDers have interest-wired brains. So it stands to reason that if things aren't fun, or interesting, we'd have a hard time getting going on them. And yet, there are many aspects of life that are ultra-boring....and we still want to be able to do those things. Thank god there's such a thing as gamification! 

Let's talk about what that can look like

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SPEAKER_02 0:00

Adults with ADHD, we we need interest, right? We need novelty and urgency to get started on tasks. We know that, and we often hear the word gamification. Make a game out of it. And I used to really hate how that made me feel, because I'm not a child, goddammit.

SPEAKER_03 0:14

I'm a grown-up, and games are for after the work is done.

SPEAKER_02 0:17

But I am full circle on that one, and I'm coming around to it, and I'd like to talk to you guys about gamification. You are listening to ADHD Big Brother, the podcast for adults struggling with their ADHD and comorbid depression symptoms. I'm your host, Rush Jones, author of Descending to the Top, believer that you can actually have a smile in your life despite this diagnosis. So let's make some sense out of this struggle. Let's learn some stuff, let's laugh at some stuff. Ladies and gentlemen, here's some stuff. Welcome to the podcast. That's what this is, you know. This is a podcast. It's a I'm casting out to you guys from my pod. I'm glad you're out there receiving it. Welcome. First up, let's get some businessy stuff out of the way. You guys want to learn how to do shitty things? We have these interest-wired brains that are oddly not interested in boring crap. And yet we would like to be able to do those things. I know I would. So I'm going to host a free workshop to help you jump over that ADHD hurdle. It's coming this uh Saturday. So link to sign up is in the show notes. How to do things that we want to do, but that we aren't interested in. And no, I'm not gonna tell you to delegate. Just have your assistant do it. Oh, oh, you don't have an assistant? Well, I guess then you should work harder and get to a place where you have one, and then you can reap the benefits of delegating. Let's go! Nope, not gonna do that. Also, this is the final week to get into the ADHD Big Brother community with the uh discount for April. The best way that I have found for adults with ADHD to get our shit together, it's with the accountability and the support of a like-minded community. That's we're just all gonna get our shit together. Oh, together. If ever there was a pill that I've swallowed, and I have swallowed a lot of pills, the pill that has had the most profound effect on me has been community. And that word, it's it's starting to become saturated for me, and I don't have the right new word just yet, but I'm gonna quote a scientific study that I can't remember, but the gist of it was that hills don't look as steep when you're walking with a partner. And that's what we're doing in there, and you can do it too. Use coupon code uh April 25, though, when you do it, because then you'll you'll save on the first uh subscription. So sign up. We'll see you in there. Okay, mental health update. Uh, I'm feeling pretty good. Pretty good, all things considered. I gotta say it's getting really tiring though going into work. It's a really odd dynamic where you get laid off, but you still have to show up and do a job for a few more weeks. My separation date hasn't happened yet. I don't like that feeling of not working hard. My givea shits for my work output is usually very high. And so I have this draining inner conflict when I make decisions there now during the day that are they require going above and beyond what what I'm supposed to do, um, uh because these are decisions that are good for the company, and it's which is normally how I work, but it feels so gross right now. And I I'm like, don't give them any extra. But then it feels grosser to not do the work. So it's all about what feels less gross, and that's not good. That's not a good place to be in. I think it just uh just tells me I'm ready to go. So outside of that, I feel pretty good. Um, I am getting back into that vibe of complete transformation time. I can feel it, new beginnings.

SPEAKER_01 3:36

You know, do you guys ever get that way where you're like, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna become a new me, I'm gonna cocoon myself away from the world, and I'm gonna emerge a new with the endless possibilities. Who do I want to be?

SPEAKER_02 3:46

It basically means that uh you guys in the community, you're probably gonna start seeing some randomly ambitious life change attempts from me. Um, I know we have our May monthly goals call coming up, and I'm uh starting to think about going vegetarian again. Uh that's that's on my radar. Hey, by the way, if you're an ADHD who is vegetarian and you have an ADHD way to do it, like if you can make it easy for me, then uh like ADHD friendly vegetarian recipes, then maybe contact me. Let's hang out and we'll talk about it. I'm in, I'm in for that. Okay, so gamification. Gamification. If you're new to the term, here's what Chat GPT calls it. And I think ChatGPT is pretty on track. Gamification involves applying elements of game design, such as points, levels, challenges, and rewards to non-game contexts to enhance motivation and engagement. That's that's nice work, Chat GPT. I think you know it. Uh individuals with ADHD often struggle with maintaining interest in routine or mundane tasks due to difficulties with attention regulation and motivation. Yes, I can relate to that, ChatGPT. Um, by introducing game-like elements into daily activities or therapeutic practices, gamification can help make these tasks more engaging and enjoyable. That's right on the money. I should just have Jay ChatGPT do this podcast. I mean, I should just I should do that. I should do an entire episode that is me reading. Oh, that would be interesting. If I did an entire episode, I'll I'm I'm open to suggestions. If you guys want to reach out through the contact form on the website, maybe we do an episode of like a topic that I don't have full authority to talk about. Like how, I don't know, relationships, how to make relationships work with ADHD because I don't have a fucking clue. That would be fun and interesting. I may do that. Oh shit, guys. Shiny object alert. Okay, let's focus on the task at hand here. Gamification. I'm actually on board with gamifying things, it totally works for me. I personally love challenges. I'm into friendly competition where it's fun to try to win, but I don't truly care about it one way or the other. Because I grew up in a very competitive leaning family and like we compete hardcore, man. Uno, phase 10, dominoes, come on, let's go. Skipbo, bad gammon. Oh my god. And we get into it and we talk shit. We talk crazy mad shit, but it's 100% fun. And even though we get into the winning and we feel that sting of defeat, it's all good. You know, there's no ill will or that loss anger that you see in those big sporting things. There's none of that. So making things into a challenge that makes great sense to me. Here's what took me a while to get over though. Uh, and I wonder if this is a common feeling. You guys have to let me know. Uh, there's this feeling that gaming is for fun times, not work times. And children play games. You know, adults engage in recreation when the work is done. So anytime I'm playing a game, it's because, well, the work is done, or I'm avoiding work and I would deem it as bad, like I shouldn't be doing this right now.

SPEAKER_03 6:50

There's also this feeling that everyone around me is an adult that doesn't need or do games, and they are they're all adulting and they're being grown up and they're talking about grown-up stuff like stocks and 401ks and politics and incubators and funding capitalists and entrepreneurialism and court findings and and I try to fit into that because that's what adults do. You know, oh, adult, oh, adult conversation, oh, and work and responsibility, taking care of business, retirement plans, do what must be done. God damn it. You know, and the children can play, and then soon enough they'll be too old for that. Adults need to act like adults.

SPEAKER_02 7:27

That whole vibe feels awful, and it's pr, you know, it's pr clearly like a projection of what I think that is going on, and probably there's just all a whole bunch of adult kids running around. You know, maybe it's because I'm getting older and like this masking thing of trying to be an adult, policing my behavior and course correcting all day long because, you know, I oh god, I think I'm being too weird. You know, I'm being too silly. And I would judge myself on that a lot. Like, when am I gonna start giving a shit about grown-up things? I don't know. Do you need to care about that stuff? So you guys are hearing like this is my inner dialogue.

SPEAKER_03 8:04

This is the fight between myself and myself to I want to stay young at heart, I want to enjoy and live, live for my soul, that you need to have responsibility and think about adult y things.

SPEAKER_02 8:13

Ugh. The older I get, I think the less I care about pretending to be interested in those things. I don't know. I really don't know why it took me so long to come around to this kind of thing. Like, because I, you know, I like having fun. Uh, but uh what I don't like is that self-judgment that I'm acting like a child and it that and that means something bad. I'm gonna say enough of that already, you know. Let's put that to bed, shouts to him. Gamification can work. That's sort of like gamification can work, you gotta put your mind to it, you gotta make a game out of the There's a number of ways uh to make it work, and I'll share the ways that I've seen it working, especially in the ADHD Big Brother community, because a big part of that place, like the most highly engaged parts of it, is the gamification stuff that we do. There is success in that. So let's talk about what those things can be like daily accountability, right? That sounds boring and it doesn't sound very game-like, but hold on, I'm not finished. We call it the School Spaghetti Accountability Club, and that's a little bit more fun, not all the way, but kinda. And we do awards for day streaks. So like every day we post in the community the thing we want to achieve that day, no matter what. And then we have rewards for milestones as you work your way to the grand finale of earning the final reward of school spaghetti master. And this is how doing bullshit can be gamified. Like we have people in the community who are legit school spaghetti masters. A hundred days in a row of doing the thing that they said, going after that prize. I that's a big deal. And those streaks, they end up building in more tension for not doing the thing. You know, we have the tension for doing stuff. Like we're all of us we're on day one of something, of some bullshit task, right? And that it's a thing that we don't want to do because there's tension to it. So it's pretty easy to give that up. But now imagine yourself you get to day 85, 85 days in a row of doing a thing that you said you were gonna do as a streak, and you know you declared that you were gonna do this one thing. The thought of having to go back to posting day one, that has potentially a lot more tension to it than the tension of actually doing the task, so it's actually easier to do the task. It's a bizarrely wonderful thing. And we're stacking the chips in our favor. Stacking the chips or stacking the deck. We're doing something, we're stacking something so that it's better for us. That's what I'm trying to say. Oh, and I can speak from experience when I say it is, it it hurts. It definitely hurts to be on day 90, and then you wake up the next morning with that gasp because, oh my god, I for Oh shit, I forgot to do the thing. And then and then I'm posting in my own community a humble day one. Hey guys, I forgot to do the thing that I said I was gonna do. I have forgotten my task more times than I care to admit, but I'm also a two-time skull spaghetti master, and it's kind of a big deal. And as of right now, I am 20 days into my three-peat. Here we go. And the gamification continues. Luva and I were talking about doing like a skull spaghetti club nightmare mode, or we call it the normie mode, where we uh up the stakes. I don't know what it would be yet, but it's fun to talk about. And this, all this really this fun talk about skull spaghetti mastery, it's about doing the fucking dishes or paying our taxes or putting in time looking for work. It's the crappy tasks, but it's gamified, so it makes it a little bit easier. Another way that we gamify is we'll do community challenges. Like we have one right now going for cleaning and one for cardio. And you can you can see these all the time in the diet world, like, oh, it's a 30-day detox, or 15 days to a better memory, or 25 days to get your black belt and karate, finding a way to make a game out of the awful craptastical task, it may help to get those things done. And some of the other ways that people gamify is that they'll do like sprints with timers. So you could set a timer for 10 minutes and race yourself to see how much you can do, or listen to a song or a playlist. What can you accomplish before the song ends? That's not really my speed. Like when I do timers, it's usually because I want to half ask something and I'm just trying to get started. But I know people that use sprints and they work awesome. So put that in your option bucket or your briefcase or wherever you keep your options. Luva also in the community has a point system that he'll use sometimes that's super cool. And I tried it for a bit, it was fun. You give uh certain tasks a number of points, and then the way we were doing it is like a friendly competition where you see who can get the most points by the end of the week. And it's just a for funsies way to slog through the shitty stuff. And you can even compete with yourself, try to get better your number each week. Like maybe meditating, it's worth 20 points, and you got 60 points meditating last week. It's this week you're gonna try to beat that number, and maybe there's a reward when you hit that certain number of points. Like maybe you buy yourself that thing, you know, that thing that makes no sense to purchase, like whatsoever, and you're probably never gonna use it, but you just really want it. That's something to reward yourself with. What can you do to make this crappy task more fun? And I want to say a thing here because uh sometimes these things work great and then they don't. And then, or we'll forget it, we'll just forget about it, we'll stop using it. And that's actually normal in my book. It's in my book. I have a book. Yeah, it's it's there. You if you look, yeah, I'll wait. Open up to page 35, line eight, uh third paragraph uh down, yeah, says right there. Uh that's actually totally normal. If we lean on the fact that we're compelled through interest, then it stands to reason at some point the interesting game may lose interest. So I want to encourage you to refrain from thinking that this means that we suck, or this means that it didn't work, or it like it worked and then it stopped working. And now the challenge is how soon can we recognize this and put something new together to try? And again, this is why community is so gosh darn great because you get an ongoing supply of ideas and support. Oh my god. I don't even care. If it's not my community, join somebody's community or join a community or fucking start your own. Community. Here, take the pills, take this pill called community, swallow it, drink it, drink some water, drink it down. My challenge to you guys this week. Uh, see, we're doing a challenge. We've we've been gamifying this all along. You son of a gun. I challenge you to spend five minutes cleaning your bedroom. Random challenge out of the blue. How lucky if you have a spotless bedroom? And you can be just like, all right, I'm done. I guess you win. Set a timer for five minutes and see how much you can do. Don't even think about it, like what you're gonna clean. Set the timer and oh my god, quick, uh laundry. Oh my god, what do we do? Nightstand, clutter, oh okay, haul ass for five measly minutes, and then send me a message and tell me how it went. Like, were you surprised at how much you accomplished? I want to set a timer for two minutes to clean my bedroom. Guys, I'm I'm in service of getting started. And what we do is what's we gots to do's to do that. So I did a two-minute timer, and it turns out I can make my bed in less than two minutes. That's freaking crazy. Time is weird. Alrighty, guys, that'll do this week. I hope this was helpful. Uh, try gamifying, man. Try gamifying, buddy. Let's go. Remember, if you're signing up for the community, uh, use coupon code April 25. It's good for the rest of the month. Save yourself some money already. And I'll look forward to us getting our shit together. Uh, together.

SPEAKER_00 15:35

Ding ding ding.

SPEAKER_02 15:37

Reach out anytime if you have any questions or if you want to connect. I love hearing from you guys. And with that, I hope you have a fantastic week, and I will talk to you later.