Gamify Your Life
Conrad Lin
November 10, 2019
4 minute readWhy Did We Build This?
Conrad created Gamify Your Life to share an exciting realization—the same excitement and joy we get from playing video games can be used to make work fun and get stuff done.
As a lifelong gamer, Conrad noticed how easy it was to spend hundreds, if not thousands, of hours fully immersed in video games. But he couldn’t help wondering why that same enthusiasm rarely translated to real-life tasks like school or work. The answer quickly became clear: video games offer structure. Players are given clear objectives, receive instant feedback, and are rewarded with visible progress. Games have a way of pulling you in, while real life often feels repetitive and mundane.
For a long time, Conrad thought this was just the way it had to be—you work so that you can eventually play.
That all changed when he started his first company. He realized that life doesn’t have to be a grind—life itself could be play. Running a business felt a lot like playing an advanced video game, where he was the game master in control of his destiny. There were resources to manage, team members to recruit, and major challenges to overcome. Suddenly, the skills he had honed as a gamer were not only relevant but essential to his entrepreneurial success.
It didn’t take long for Conrad to see how this mindset could be applied to all aspects of life. He started gamifying his daily tasks, assigning XP and gold to his habits and tracking his progress through levels and stats. By doing this, he rediscovered excitement in his day-to-day activities and, more importantly, took control of his dopamine responses. Instead of relying on external sources like games or social media for quick dopamine hits, he was in control—managing his own game, so to speak.
After experimenting with different tools and approaches, Conrad launched #theGamificationProject in 2019. Originally created for his friends, family, and community, the project was designed to motivate everyone to live their best lives. Since then, it’s grown into a global movement, inspiring hundreds of thousands of people around the world to turn their own lives into a game.
What Does it Do?
Gamify Your Life helps you take action on the following principles commonly found in games:
- Visible Progress Fuels Motivation
- Big Results Take Time
- Better Done Than Perfect
- Immersion Drives Engagement
- Visibility Drives Accountability
- Reward Should Match Effort
- Write It Or Forget It
- Quests You Get To Do, Not Have To Do
- Habit Stacking
- Delayed Gratification
- Balance Reduces Burnout
- Perspective Changes Rewards
- Celebrate Your Wins
- Clarity Builds Confidence
- Practice With Purpose
- The Gacha Effect
How Does It Work?
There are countless ways to implement the Gamify Your Life system in your own life—starting can be as simple as tracking your tasks and wins on a piece of paper or an Excel spreadsheet (that’s how Conrad started!).
But we know that jumping in with the right tools can help you implement these principles into your life much easier. That’s why we’ve spent thousands of hours building ready-made templates for various productivity platforms, each designed to take advantage of the strengths of the platform to give you an immediate, gamified experience.
Notion Templates
We chose Notion as the core platform for Gamify Your Life because of its incredible flexibility and adaptability. Notion’s database relations and formula properties allow us to build gamification into any database. You can easily track your XP, level up, manage quests, build up an item shop, and so much more—and also build upon the templates we’ve created to suit your unique needs.
Explore the Gamify Your Life Notion Template Pack(opens in a new tab)Airtable Template
For those who prefer a more spreadsheet-like interface, we built a simplified version in Airtable, offering an easy way to track tasks, milestones, and rewards.
Explore the Gamify Your Life Airtable Template(opens in a new tab)
Last Edited By: @ on October 3, 2024