This week’s “Blaugust theme” is “Staying Motivated”. These days especially, I have to say, I have, almost zero motivation. There are a lot of factors as to why, I’m not really motivated to discuss them at this time though, maybe later, sometime (X-Doubt.jpg). Instead, let’s look at what keeps me motivated.
I think one thing that keeps me going a lot of the time is gamifying things. I think the idea of “gamification” seems really stupid on paper, but it also works pretty well. Achievement badges are actually kind of a weakness. I once spent an afternoon playing around with the chat program we use at work after discovering it has achievement badges. It’s basically fucking AIM.
I’ve gotten on a bit of a kick lately trying to 100% achievements in games, for example. I don’t super-push myself when some of the achievements are annoyingly bad though. Like Blaugust here, I don’t really know how it’s graded, it’s mostly an honor system, but there is a list of made-up achievements for it. Basically, the only one I have not done is “Pickup Group”. I guess I should try doing that to get the achievement for “doing all the achievements”. I am also on track-ish to do 31/31 posts for the month, this post being number 22. Numbers 25 through 28 should be taken care of as well. One of the five remaining needed will be my “Lessons Learned” wrap-up, probably on the 31st.
- Reading the Manual – Read the introductory blog post with the rules of the event.
- Joining the Cause – Sign-Up for Blaugust.
- Recruit a Friend – Convince another blogger to participate in Blaugust.
- Spreading the Madness – Promote Blaugust on your blog or through your social media of choice.
- Friend of Wumpus – Join the Blaugust Discord.
- Sharing is Caring – Post your content in the “Share Your Content” Channel.
- Forum of Friends – Take part in a discussion on the “Post Discussion” Channel.
- The Pet Tax – Post a picture of an animal friend on the “Stuff and Things” Channel or create a blog post about them.
- Friend Like Me – Answer a question posted on the Blagust Discord or help out a new blogger.
- Shared Thoughts – Comment on a blog post from another Blaugust participant.
- Federation of Bloggers – Sign up for a Fediverse account and follow the official Blaugust account.
- Getting Inspired – Write a blog post inspired by a post from another Blaugust participant.
- Pickup Group – Play a game or take part in an activity with one or more Blaugust participants.
- Hot Topics – Write a blog post based on the Blaugust Prompt List.
- Welcome Wagon – Write a blog post based on the first week’s theme of Welcoming Folks to Blaugust.
- Introduce Yourself – Write a blog post based on the second week’s theme of Introducing Yourself.
- Creative Appreciation – Write a blog post based on the third week’s theme Appreciating the works of some Creative or Company.
- Staying Motivated – Write a blog post based on the fourth week’s theme of how you have managed to Stay Motivated.
- Lessons Learned – Write a blog post based on the fifth week’s theme explaining some of the Lessons you have Learned through Blaugust.
- Going Platinum – Complete All of the Blaugchievements for Blaugust 2023.
Completionism like this can be bad though, and sometimes I have to stop myself. Like, for while I was really bad about buying toys I didn’t really want because it would “complete teams”. Marvel teams, Transformers teams, whatever. It can certainly lead to some bad behaviors for sure.
Streaks are another good motivator. Possibly a better motivator. A few good examples of these in my life, that I may actually get into more detail on in full-fledged posts, I’m considering maybe doing a series of “Track all the Things” posts, maybe after my “Computing History” series. A lot of what keeps these going now is “streak motivation” of “I’ve been doing it, so I should keep doing it.”
- I have tracked the gas and mileage on my car every fill-up since I got it. It’s all in an Excel book with graphs and such.
- I track all my spending in categories and charts in an Excel workbook. I have done this for years.
- I have almost a 1700 Day streak in Duolingo.
- I use a daily mood and activity tracking app called Daylio that I have a 2056 day streak in.
The motivation is to not break these streaks of activity. Keep it going, keep it flowing. I would love to blog every day, and get that streak going but I find that much stress ends up killing the quality of posts (not that there is much there to start with on that).
Josh Miller aka “Ramen Junkie”. I write about my various hobbies here. Mostly coding, photography, and music. Sometimes I just write about life in general. I also post sometimes about toy collecting and video games at Lameazoid.com.