1 Task, 1 Stone

Experiment: Physical representation of progress
Subject: Matt Agnello
Tools: 2x mason jars, 1 black whiteboard marker, about 750 glass stones

About a month ago, I decided to start an experiment in physical representation of progress and motivation. It’s not a very scientifically rigorous experiment, but I’ve shared it with a few people, all of whom showed interest in copying it for themselves, so I decided to do a quick write up about it here. And it’s quite relevant for game designers, since I think it sheds some interesting light on game design in general and gamification in particular.

There’s a big debate happening now over gamification. Gamification is generally defined as adding game-like systems on top of things that aren’t really games — points for credit cards, badges for visiting businesses over and over again, etc.

The consensus among game designers is gamification is bad. It cheapens what a game means, and it makes people do things they wouldn’t do under different circumstances. I agree with this, and it’s a place I don’t want to see games go. However, it clearly hooks into something that’s inherently motivating to people. The success of credit card rewards points and Foursquare badges is evidence of this.

But how does this work, and how can we use it for awesome instead of for evil? I decided to explore this for myself using a standard 1-pint mason jar, some glass stones, and a To Do list.

The system is pretty simple. It has only one rule:

• When I check off something on my To Do list, I put a stone in the jar.

To make things more interesting, I drew lines on the side with a whiteboard marker and gave it levels. I didn’t do any rigorous balancing; I just spaced them out at intervals that increased over time. I decided to go with a triangular relationship because, if this worked, I wanted to encourage myself to increase my productivity over time. I also needed a reward somewhere down the line, so my wife agreed to make me a Farmer’s Market steak dinner once I’d filled a jar.

So, I began: one task, one stone at a time. As the day went on, I would check off items on my To Do list and line up all the stones I’d collected in front of me. The next morning, I’d collect all the stones from the previous day and drop them in the jar. Slowly, the jar started to fill. If I completed a project in full, I put in another stone. Sometimes I’d split projects into small sections, and whenever I completed a section, in went another stone, and another when the whole project was completed and checked off.

Over time, a little voice in the back of my head started pushing me to check off more things on my list. Every level I gained would give me a little thrill and a little burst of productivity. I started to think of chores in terms of the stones I’d get, and that usually provided the little extra nudge I needed to get something done that I’d been putting off. I even started tracking more things on my To Do list, like eating breakfast (which I sometimes miss), taking medication, and taking out the trash. Why not? More things to check off meant more XP and more levels.

I also felt far more accomplished at the end of the day. More projects got done quicker, and I felt better about each one. I actually had a number to attach to the things I did, and I could see over time how well I was doing. I was also wasting less time checking Facebook or news sites during downtime, because I would be able to instantly tell how on task I’d been at the end of the day.

My wife noticed. More points. And the tastiest steak dinner ever.

Today is day 52 of my experiment, and I can say with some confidence that I’ve been far more productive in that time, and the only real difference is now I can see my progress, and that adds a little bit of extra weight to the things I do every day.

How to do it yourself

If you want to try this for yourself, it’s really easy, and it’s cheap to get started. Go to a local craft shop or grocery store and buy the following:

• 4x bags of 1/3”-diameter glass stones, about 750 of them (~$16)
• 2x 1-pint mason jars (wide-mouths work best) (~$4)
• 1x black whiteboard marker (~$2)

You can replace the mason jar with anything else you want. Just make sure you can measure ounces on it somehow if you want to use the leveling curve I’ve laid out below.

With your standard RPG, the leveling system often uses strange numbers along an explicitly triangular leveling curve. Following a rigid curve for this system would be annoying — you’d be marking off a level at 0.353 ounces — so I decided to make all levels fall on an ounce. Take your first mason jar and mark off levels at the following ounce amounts:

You’ll end your first jar at level 11. Now, start Jar 2 with 11 at the base, and the following levels:

You’re probably starting to see the pattern now. You’ll end jar 2 at level 15. Jar 3 will start at 15, with a new level every 8 ounces, and end at 17. Jar 4 starts at 17, also with a new level every 8 ounces, and ends at 19. Jar 5 is the first level to take a full 16 ounces, and you’ll end at 20. After that, every level is 16 ounces, or one full jar.

The whole thing looks like this:

Give it a shot! Seeing a jar fill up is very rewarding when it takes real effort to do it. It might be like getting stars in elementary school, or badges in Foursquare, but the motivation is still just as real.

Why this is interesting

This is interesting because of its simplicity. There is no grand design behind it. It’s just a collection of stones in a jar. However, the relationship I have to those stones influences my emotional response to them. There’s some part of my brain that sees a jar filled with stones and intuitively knows the effort it took to get them there, which is a virtual construct created by rules, and is motivated purely by seeing that progress manifest. This, I think, is the root of gamification: that human beings are naturally motivated by seeing progress in a way they can relate to spatially.

Plus, I can tell I’m a lot more productive at the beginning of the week than at the end. Like, a lot.

Something I plan on improving.

This system thrives on simplicity, but there’s a lot of potential for expansion. What other special rewards or abilities could I get at each level? How could I feed this leveling system into some other game, where “leveling up” in the real world results in some in-game change? What if you had several jars, one for each area of focus in your life (work, self, family, etc), and you leveled each one up individually? Even though the system works on its own, there are lots of interesting other places to take it that would increase its usefulness. I encourage anyone interested to expand on this idea. It’s yours to play with.