I’ve had a really long week. Between work taking it out of me, deadlines for various appointments and meetings creeping up on me (and in once, dumping 8 forms that needs completing immediately in my lap), and dealing with the aftermath of a very highly stimulating and intense saturday, I’ve not had a lot of energy spare for anything else.

Plus the attempts I did have at playing pool were scuppered. My lunch break game on Tuesday had to be called off to help with stuff at home, and on Friday the second worst pool table I’ve ever played on was actually occupied by someone else that day, which is the last time I go there on a ‘normal’ lunch time.

So late on Friday night, I was considering the possibility of skipping this weeks post and practice session. A week wouldn’t hurt, certainly not on blog posts where I’ve built up a small buffer, although granted not as big as reading double the target. Plus it’s not like I don’t have legitimate reasons to skip a week. Then I checked Beeminder and changed my plans.

Sure, with blogging I had a 1 week grace period, but if I didn’t play snooker or pool by Tuesday, I’d be penalised. Now, the penalty would be $5, so around £4, and no matter how I looked at it it would cost me more to play for an hour that it would to skip.

That thought lasted about 30 seconds, and I booked an hour and a half to happen after my gym session. I even cut my session short despite trying to make my health a priority right now to ensure I got the most of my session. II was not skipping it, not this week, not while I had a hard deadline.

This isn’t my first dalliance with gamification. I’ve done the whole ‘Don’t skip days’ thing with a calendar and pen to cross out each day I’ve done a thing. I’ve tried literal gamification, using the app Habitica. I’ve tried various habit trackers, including using the ones in my mood tracking app Daylio until that got too much. All of them didn’t last longer than a few weeks, and ended up making me resent the activities in question.

Especially Habitica. No matter how hard I tried, I just could not get on board with that.

Each of them failed because it felt too much to track a daily or weekly activity that way, but they also failed because there was zero penalty for failure outside of feeling bad, and I can handle feeling bad.

I purposely set the penalty low at $5 initially because I didn’t want to fall into the trap of failing, paying a stupidly price, and then scrapping it all in a tantrum. But the idea of being hit by $5 still stings. That’s a day’s commute to the office, or the extra treats for my wife I buy. Now I’m back into, that’s half my monthly sub to WoW Classic, and if I keep the failure going it doubles. It’s affordable, but it’s enough of a sting that I paid nearly triple to get a decent session today.

So turns out gamification works on me after all, I just needed the right incentive at the right dose. And I can play catch up at the gym tomorrow, safely in the knowledge that I’ve hit my goal for the week.