You could be thinking that games and productivity are oxymorons, but we're here to talk about a couple of gamifications that can actually increase your productivity.
Research shows that gamification methodology, enables participants to experience learning in less time and with lasting results through the use of engaging themes, tactile components, and fun and relevant links to their business environment. It has become a widely accepted way of improving learning and development in the workplace.
Schedule and Prioritise
Scheduling is an essential path to productivity and creating a to-do list helps you stay focused. But what actually helps you get things done is prioritising and how about making this more fun. There are plenty of apps that gamify this, but we would recommend to not use any digital method to do schedule and prioritise, unless it's for collaboration purposes, but to do this manually so there are less distractions. Create for example an artboard with post-its, organized by urgency and importance. When you've completed a task, move this to the finishing board for example so you can look back and celebrate achievements. This could be interlinked with rewards, such as a piece of candy for each completed project. This will help you monitor your progress, gain a sense of self-control and improve productivity.
Retain Focus by Cancelling out Distractions
There are a lot of things that can distract you when you're not working at the office, like background noises, movement or even household chores if you're working from home. There are focusing apps that can block all type of things but they don't necessarily improve productivity and often add an extra burden. We prefer the more positive gamified productivity boosters like noise cancelling apps that you can use to cancel out the distractions, for example Noisli is an app in which you can turn on noises that make you more productive. I, for example, like to turn on the sound of stormy weather so my brain thinks the weather is bad and I won't be tempted to go outside. Some people enjoy train ride noises or waterfalls. Make your pick or combine different ones for full productivity.
Manage your body posture
With poor biomechanics come headaches, repetitive strain injuries and generally poor worker output. There are easy solutions to these sorts of problems. First thing to check is your workstation: does your chair support your entire spine? Next, are your arms well supported, especially your forearms? Last but not least, are you looking at your computer screen at eye level? This is very important, to decrease neck problems, which can lead to head aches and arm pain. Think about how uncomfortable it would be to walk around all day with your head bent forward! Why do it at work?!
Remember to move around occasionally. If you're into sports, you can set an alarm every hour at a specific time to do one quick yoga or stretching exercise, this will help your body relax and stimulate circulation and brain activity, directly improving your focus and effectivity. You can try swinging your arms gently, taking a few deep breaths, rolling your shoulders, or doing a few simple stretches.
Make the most of your well-deserved breaks
Frequent breaks refresh and refocus your mind. Determining when you take your breaks and for how long is definitely a motivator, but what works even better is to add a gamified aspect to each break. The first break of the day could for example be a drawing game like Piccle or DrawSomething, which are digital games you can play with your team which will boost creativity and team bonding. Or you could do brain training games by yourself to improve your focus, however, make sure you manage your time. For your lunchbreak, you could turn to a cool app like geocache and explore the neighborhood in a different way with certain goals to achieve. In the afternoon, you could take a meditation break to stimulate focus or a quick stretching activity like mentioned before.
What are your best gamified ways to beat nonproductive behaviour? Let us know!
