have fun with the theme stuck in your head

I was reading a few articles today on how a video game can be addicting (I'm using that word pretty loosely here) and the choices designers make to encourage that. One especially insightful piece, written by leading game designer Erin Hoffman, puts the issue in perspective by saying

"Addiction is not about what you DO, but what you DON'T DO because of the replacement of the addictive behavior"

hmmm.

It's true to an extent. I've happily spent an hour or two playing Tetris because what I was supposed to be doing was boring enough that I sought a diversion. Plus, as others have pointed out, the sense of accomplishment we so crave is immediate and often in video games. It's an extension of the Skinner Box--mice pushing levers to get pellets. I play video games not only because they're fun, but they are also stimulated a very important but very stupid part of my brain, which I'm not receiving (or at least not often enough) from the activity I'm avoiding.

Instead of working against our addictive tendencies when it comes to the martial arts (or whatever), it's a lot easier if we harness them. While the two criteria I mentioned above--engagement and fulfillment--aren't the whole story, they are really important for holding interest. So the strategy for staying motivated is to realize that you're stupid. Now settle down, don't get all offended. I'm stupid too.

We like clear problems that when solved lead to direct, tangible results, and we like those results to happen fast. In Tetris I'm presented with a easy to understand situation. I need to flip the shapes around to make rows. Bam. There you go. The task is hard enough to be interesting, but not so difficult or complicated that I get discouraged. Most importantly, I am constantly taking action and seeing fast results. Rows are disappearing quite often, which is a nice, tangible result for my actions. I can point to the result and say "I did that".

You're probably rolling your eyes and saying "if only my life was so easy". Well it can be! All you need to do (broken record alert) is break it down. Set small, clear goals that you can accomplish in days or weeks, not months or years. The 200,000 pushups I'm doing is a great example. Thats a massive number. If I thought of that in those terms I would go back to Tetris. But I see it as 500 a day. Which is still a lot. So I see it as a few sets. When I complete one set, I tick it off mentally. When I complete a day, I get to tick it off on my spreadsheet. That makes it real. I can point to my spreadsheet of daily tics or my mounting numbers on physout and get a real sense of satisfaction from it.

So I've realized to make it simple, straightforward and rewarding. It may never be as fun as Tetris, but it'll be just as easy to start and just as impossible to stop.