Making progress can be difficult, especially when you’re working on something that isn’t a lot of fun. While we can point to all the benefits of exercising on a daily basis, few people will admit that it’s actually a lot of fun. Enter gamification: using game-like methods and tools to help users motivate themselves into being productive. If you’re having trouble sticking to your fitness goals, try out some of these gamified techniques to give your workout a boost.
Track Your Data
What’s a fun game without high scores? Keeping track of your run times, your weight loss, and the amount of time you spend exercising every day can be a good motivating factor in getting you out there and staying active. These days, if you have a phone, you can easily install a number of apps that will help you keep track of your fitness milestones. Try installing one of these apps and you’ll be surprised to see how quickly it can become a large part of your life.
Compete With Friends
Single-player games have their merits, but everything’s better with friends. If competing against yourself isn’t doing quite the trick in motivating you to stick to your fitness goals, try hooking up with some friends and seeing if you can make a competition out of it. Many fitness apps have a leadership board built in that lets you see how you stack up against your friends. However, even if you feel like keeping your fitness goals low-tech, you can always keep track among your friends offline.
Use a Gamified Productivity App
For some people, trying to one-up last week’s record will be good enough to motivate them. For others, though, keeping track of their fitness stats just isn’t good enough. If you need something a little more gamey to get you going, a few apps have popped up in recent years that put gamification front-and-center in their design. Habitica, for instance, allows you to set goals and gain experience points as you work toward them as if your life was an RPG. Of course, you don’t need an app to do this; if you have the time and the inclination, nothing’s stopping you from assigning point values to your successes.
Make a Real Game of It
Even if you use a fitness app, or even an app designed specifically for gamifying your fitness routine, it still may not be enough to interest you in getting off the couch and working out. Some game developers have realized this shortcoming and created games that require you to get active to make progress, effectively distracting from the actual work of staying fit. For example, Run, Zombies! is an app that works like an interactive podcast, tasking you with outrunning zombies and reaching safety checkpoints. And of course, Pokemon GO has been responsible for getting tons of people outside and walking around.
Reward Yourself
The benefits of staying fit can be reward enough, but you may need something more tangible to work toward. Not sure of how you can reward yourself? There are tons of ways you can treat yourself without hindering your fitness work. Rewards for hitting small milestones could include having a fun night out with friends or getting that one piece of clothing that you’ve been eying. For larger accomplishments, consider larger rewards like a vacation. Be careful, though – remember that cheating on your rewards would defeat the whole purpose!
[Image via Getty]
