Climbing the corporate ladder may seem like a grueling and tedious endeavor especially if you’re just setting out in the early stages of your career. But it doesn’t have to be so painful if you gamify it!

We’ve all had a 9-month loading period until the game of our lives begun. Here laid out before us, were the millions of different paths we could have taken, one of which led us to where we are today. For most, during our development we relied exclusively on our parents or caregivers around us to nurture our growth and guide us into being successful and valued adults, our development was influenced by the environment we grew up using the tools and equipment to master the skills we have today.

Everyone around the world has experienced something different, these experiences have strengthened and increased certain core competencies, soft skills such as public speaking and teamwork spirit, academic abilities such as earning a degree as well as sharpening our creativeness and talent in art. These experiences make up the profile you are today and more importantly the profile you offer to the market.

So here we are, it’s 2022 and whether you like it or not, we all have a “player” stats table. On it are our strengths and weaknesses that make up our professional profile but just like previous years, this table has been ever-evolving, updating and improving – we’ve all been having “level up” moments ever since we were born.

Businesses know that all our inner child wants to do is have fun and play, and they capitalised on this! Companies such as Duolingo now a $4.1B giant in the language space has supported millions of people around the world to increase their communication skills and speak second languages. They “gamified” the process which made learning an addiction, fun and rewarding.

Zombies, Run! brought gaming to the fitness and health space by combining mission based levels and GPS tracking on your phone to encourage you to run faster, longer and with a goal in mind all while satisfying your thirst for challenge and achievement. In fact, last year (2021) OliveX bought the company for $9.5M!

So, how can we gamify our careers or even our lives?

Let’s have a look at how a great game is designed, below are seven key features that make games fun and engaging, use these in your own games and gamify your life:

1. Experience bars – these give us a visual representation of our success and achievements to-date, it’s a medal of status in the game and to the community.
2. Short- and Long-term goals – each part of the game is broken down into sections and subsections to keep us engaged and focused on short-term reward. If the carrot is too far away, we would lose interest and give up. By giving us small wins on the way, we eventually reach the greater goal.
3. Rewards on the way – throughout the game, we are rewarded with gold coins, player skins, or weapon upgrades. These give us the extra juice to push harder that day to complete the tasks.
4. Immediate feedback – throughout a game you are consistently processing feedback, such as needing to restart the level, learning your mistake and thinking of another way to succeed to the next level.
5. Uncertainty – we keep going because we want to find out what’s next.
6. Enhanced attention – boosting memory and confidence. We are more willing to take risks and pursue difficult tasks.
7. Community – games can include more than one person, by creating a peer group that is committed to the same game you are more likely to be consistent with your efforts and encouraging others.

Gamifying your life and career is a fun and incredibly powerful motivational tool, it can help you level up sooner and get promoted, learn new skills to jump into a career that is more satisfying or simply find a way to make going to work a joy rather than a chore.

I would love to hear about your gamifying experiences please leave a comment below or drop me a DM.

If you’d like support in learning how to gamify your career and interview, book a free call with me today here or email charlie@interviewcoach.me