[For those of you who didn’t see my Week 1 article, my “GNAR Quest” is inspired by Steven Kotler, who developed a science-based approach for Peak Performance Aging (PPA) and staying “gnarly” at any age. My own GNAR Quest is to get back in shape for my seventh Ironman race, and each week I’ll share how things are going.]
I am in Week 3 of my “GNAR Quest”. The three weeks have had their highlights and disappointments, just like an any major plan you set out to achieve. I tend to start a venture like this establishing (overly) ambitious goals for each day, telling myself I can make it happen. After all, one of the tenets of the GNAR Quest is focusing the time I have on the highest leverage activities – the ones I find the greatest benefit from (creating a flow state) and the ones we know from neuroscience that help us build cognitive, physical and self-awareness skills.
To help incentivize me to stretch for my daily goals, we are encouraged to “gamify” our quest, a practice that Steven Kotler cites as a powerful way to effect quick change. I was skeptical of this at first, but quickly learned how much my competitive, achievement-oriented self wanted to finish out each day with a good “score”.
As an example, here is my current point plan for this quest, with the aim to reach a daily total of 20: (Note: some of these elements I will address in future posts)
- Morning (6AM) walk to the beach – 3
- Complete my scheduled Ironman workout – 3
- Complete my knee post-op physical therapy – 1
- Practice Active Recovery (3x day) – 3
- Schedule 2 flow blocks – 3
- Social activity (one of the PPA elements) – 1
- Set-up and set-down routines – 3
- “Finding my edge” – 3
- Trying something new – 1
- Practice Embodied Cognition (3x day) – 2
It is A LOT. But these activities can be “stacked”, e.g. I might try something new that really pushes the edge for me. One thing is for certain, gamification does incent me to approach each day with the planning and discipline I need to keep “Growing Old, Staying Rad”.
How could you use gamification to achieve one of your big goals for the remainder of 2022?
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