How You Can Create Your Own Reward System on Medium

For example, by giving yourself cool titles every time you level up in your blogging game and rewarding yourself with more writing work.

I thought I wouldn’t have much to say in conclusion to my future book about turning blogging on Medium into fun games. I thought I concluded it with the following article and that I would just need to repeat a few key messages from it and the rest of the book:

[A side-note: at the end of the article you are reading now, you will see a link to the introduction chapter, at the end of which you will find the links to all the other stories that will go into the book. So, you practically can read the original manuscript of the book here on Medium.]

In the story referred to above, I described my current approach to writing and publishing on Medium briefly, summarizing how it changed since I started writing here, and invited both you and myself to continue being here, but in a gameful and playful state of discovery and wonder.

Uncovering the missing puzzle piece

I thought those few sentences would be all, but something unexpected happened. During the past weekend, and more precisely on Saturday, which was the day after drafting those few concluding sentences, I recalled a few things, which superimposed into a realization.

I remembered that I was only one article away from writing and publishing a story number 200 here on Medium since I published my first story on April 30, 2020. I keep count and have an index listing all articles and newsletters, each of which gets a sequential number. I don’t include any of my comments in this list, even if I share some of them on my profile. I also use the index to keep track of the content of my books I already shared on Medium so that I don’t publish these bits twice.

Further, I recalled the self-motivational game I play to maintain the healthy habit of getting enough sleep, which I call the Super Sleeper Game.

In this game, I earn cool titles like Super Sleeper, Mega Sleeper, Giga Sleeper, and Tera Sleeper, for sleeping on average over seven hours a night for one, thirty-five, fifty, and seventy-five nights or days (naps are counted too) in sequence, correspondingly. I am now a proud Tera Sleeper, and when I manage one hundred of these nights (days) in a row, I will be the fantastic Peta Sleeper.

Recalling the titles in my Super Sleeper Game, I decided to give myself the Super Creator title as soon as I submitted or published my 200th article here on Medium. The word “super” came naturally as one of my favorite words — I use it often. I am a content creator here on Medium (and also elsewhere), hence the word “creator” in the title. I guess I could name my writing and publishing game on Medium the Super Creator Game.

An epiphany

And then, immediately after the contemplations above, another creative thought appeared. I could celebrate my article number 200 directly in the article. I could celebrate it in the text. But above that, writing the story itself could also be a reward.

I was still one article away as I had this idea. I had “only” 198 published. So I needed one more article before working on and publishing (submitting) this one.

Almost magically, my gameful drive became unstoppable. I jotted several pages of notes for this article. Then I looked into my other notes about the parts of my books I wanted to share on Medium, picked one, and started a story.

A couple of hours later, where I did various things at home on that Saturday, I already had several ten-minute sprints working on article number 199. And I finished and published it. To my immense joy, shortly after that, it was chosen for further distribution and got through that views, highlights, and claps.

When I had another minute for myself, I started happily savoring my reward by writing this article for you. It felt like playing my favorite game. Yes, writing and self-editing are my favorite creative games.

Some words on cool titles

With this article, I rewarded myself with a higher level in my blogging game on Medium by giving myself more writing work. And I love tasting this level of the game.

Plus, as soon as I submit or publish it, I will award myself the Super Creator title. I will record it in my “Points and Badges Game Book,” a weekly calendar where I record points and badges I earn in my various self-motivational games.

In real life, we often complain about additional or harder work, but in games, we are looking forward to it and even are willing to work harder than before.

I addressed this willingness to invest effort into activities we enjoy doing in this article:

You might find the idea of giving myself titles (as well as points and badges) quirky. You don’t have to do it. I have a full understanding if you think that this idea is silly. And it is! But I learned, the sillier the rules in my self-motivational games, the more excited I am about trying them out. There is some “silliness” I won’t try. It just has to be right silly for me.

Earning titles while leveling up in games is well-known. And Medium has a similar concept too. It awards the title of a Top Writer in various topics.

I did earn the top writer title in a couple of topics, but there’s no guarantee whether I will keep them or earn others or not. I can’t really control the factors to earning them. Once, I got the top writer title in Books and lost it shortly after. I am still holding it in Games and Ideas after earning them already during the first full month of blogging here. Medium creators and top writers in many topics sometimes share tips on how to become and remain one. But you can’t say for sure whether you get a top writer title or when.

The situation is different in games. You know which title you get in which situation or at which level. There is a specific amount of experience points you need to collect or a specific number of monsters you need to slay to become a “Super somebody” in your game.

So a top writer title is not the same game mechanism as it is in many games.

I can’t control when I get a top writer title and in which topic. What I can control is how many articles I write here. I can stop or continue creating, playing, and leveling up. And I can come up with my own titles for a specific number of articles I published on Medium.

After gathering such a great experience with fun titles in my Super Sleeper Game, I was super excited to develop a system of these titles for my blogging game on Medium.

Similar to the Super Sleeper Game, I decided to use the unit prefixes for my cool titles after the Super Creator title for the 200 articles:

• Kilo Creator → 250 articles
• Mega Creator → 300 articles
• Giga Creator → 350 articles
• Tera Creator → 400 articles
• Peta Creator → 450 articles
• Exa Creator → 500 articles
• Zetta Creator → 550 articles
• Yotta Creator→ 600 articles

Since my current goal is to publish one to two stories on Medium every week, I could collect one such title or maybe even two within a year. It’s something fun to aspire to.

I am sure I will come up with more cool titles after collecting the above. Niklas, my ten-year-old son, had an idea for the following title: “Super Intense Publisher.” We both grinned at that. Later he had another thought and said, “It would be good to create a completely separate term, without the use of super.’ Like ‘Diamond Creator or Publisher.’”

Perceiving the work itself as a reward

Besides the perspective of getting a cool title, the idea to celebrate and proudly announce getting that title inside this article was very enticing.

Thus, yay! I am celebrating writing and publishing my 200th article on Medium and getting the cool Super Creator title.

I like this idea so much that I might celebrate my future cool and gameful titles in 250th, 300th, 350th, etc., articles inside them too, but I won’t mandate it. I am just curious whether I would recall this idea and what thoughts will come to me when writing those articles.

I am also curious, where I will be with 500 and 600 articles and which year this will be. My adventure here on Medium will change considerably by then. And I am excited about discovering it, one step, one story at a time.

This excitement, which I create myself, is what will keep me going here on Medium.

Coming full circle

What happened last Saturday morning in the story above about how I followed my intuition, curiosity, and creativity and adjusted my blogging on Medium game design summarizes my whole book's message on turning writing and publishing on Medium into a fun game for myself wonderfully.

In the first story about my adventure here, I mentioned two important aspects that can help us with “living happily here ever after.”

I illustrated them through reasons of possible giving up writing and publishing on Medium.

The first of these two reasons was forbidding ourselves to follow our intuition, heart, gut, or what I call the“Fun Detecting Antenna” — which is the awareness of what is fun for each of us right now — or whatever else moves us forward to our dreams and wishes. And the second is that we often try to force ourselves to play the blogging on Medium game the same way over long periods or even forever.

These would be the reasons to give up. Instead, you could follow your Fun Detecting Antenna and write the pieces you are excited to write — just like I couldn’t wait to write this one and don’t seem to be able to stop until it is done and the Super Creator level 200 (oh, I love how this sounds!) is reached — and then add some fun elements to your feedback systems, like levels with cool titles or anything else which appears fun and cool to you. Then the probability that you will be eager to engage in spending your time writing and publishing on Medium will grow exponentially.

Continually adjusting the game’s design

And here’s another clue. Adding fun elements once is not enough. You need to observe and listen to your player — yourself — continually and adjust the design of your self-motivational games as you and your interests change with time.

In games, that design adjustment is vital for the game to engage its players because, as we discussed in the article about giving up, the games become boring as soon as we perceive having learned everything there is to learn from them.

Further adjusting and tweaking the “game design” is exactly what Medium developers do when introducing changes to the platform. I believe that the platform's continuous development, growth, and evolution keep it going strong and attractive to authors.

I find it interesting that we don’t often blame online games for change. We might not agree with every modification, but the players rarely complain that changes occur. In fact, the players often expect and even request new features.

Simultaneously, in projects and activities, which we don’t see as games, we resent changes. So at least some writers on Medium saw the changes in October 2020 and at other times as disrupting and disturbing.

I am glad that I learned to turn my life into games before joining as a writer on Medium because I might not have appreciated the relatively frequent and considerable changes occurring here.

While researching this article, I briefly looked at Medium’s CEO’s, Ev Williams, profile. I was excited to discover that another big change, or rather an addition, is coming to the platform soon. This addition comes through Medium’s acquisition of a Paris-based company Glose. The upcoming addition of features are announced in the following story:

Here is what Ev Williams says in response to a reply to his article:

“we’re getting into the book selling/reading business.”

Here are just a few things Medium wants to reach with this new addition to their business:

• “We want to rethink the book-reading experience.”
• “We are not planning to bundle books into Medium Membership, though there could be book-related benefits. TBD.”
• “help [book authors] sell books.”

As a book author, apart from many excerpts of my books, I also shared a whole book (Gameful Writing) here on Medium, and I am super excited about this development and can’t wait to see what it will bring.

Conclusion and outlook

As in many non-fiction books, this article, which will serve as the concluding chapter to my book on turning blogging on Medium into fun games, is both a collection of conclusions and an outlook.

It is definitely an outlook for me and a bright one for that matter, both through the changes I can’t even fathom that Medium will bring over the years and which keep my curiosity peaked, but also the awareness that I have my own game I continually design and play here.

There will always be low months in one or another writing and publishing “game” or “platform.” The key is to keep playing and designing — which is a game in itself. I’m super glad I discovered Medium and re-discovered the necessity to enjoy it as just one of my many projects and activities games instead of putting all my hopes into it.

We wouldn’t think that our whole happiness depends on a single video or board game or even a game platform. We might have a favorite, but we won’t blame it for not experiencing happiness in some circumstances. So, why do we blame our experiences in real-life projects, activities, platforms, etc., both when we fail or succeed compared to our preferences? It never ceases to surprise me—the mystery of the human brain.

I hope that reading this article, and those related to it, sounds like a bright outlook to you as well, and I also hope that if you had any doubts about the worthiness of spending your time on Medium that you could see it now in a gameful and playful light.

The adventure continues

So, my adventure on Medium continues from here, and I hope yours too.

I have no idea how this book might have looked and felt in ten, five years, or even one month. I will discover my mindset for those points in my life in due time. And you will discover yours too.

I concluded at least one of the stories about my adventure on Medium with an invitation both to you and myself to live wherever we spend our time — be it on Medium or anywhere else — in the state of discovery.

May all your discoveries — on Medium or anywhere else — be joyful and gameful!

You bring value by writing and publishing on Medium. There will be at least one reader who will resonate with the words you put on the screen. Words can change an instant, a minute, a day, or even a whole of people’s lives by showing different, possibly new to them, perspectives. Let these be honest, kind, and helpful. None of these attributes can truly exist on their own.

And now, without further ado, happy playing and designing your blogging (as well as reading) games on Medium!

Thank you!

Thank you for reading this article! I hope you enjoyed it. Here is the story I mentioned at the beginning and which contains the introduction and links to all the other articles that will make part of my upcoming book with the working title, Gameful Blogging on Medium.com.

P.S.

To stay in touch and keep updated on the fantastic possibilities of turning life into fun games, join my e-mail list, Optimist Writer.