If You Think Your Reality Is Full of Obstacles, Add Some More

Do as the game designers do — the sillier the obstacles, the better.

There is probably no human being on this planet who thinks they have no obstacles in their lives.

Interestingly enough, the famous game designer and advocate Jane McGonigal says the following in her best-selling book Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World:

“Compared with games, reality is too easy. Games challenge us with voluntary obstacles and help us put our personal strengths to better use.”

She says it in frames of the “FIX #1: UNNECESSARY OBSTACLES” of in total fourteen fixes of the reality, which she considers broken and which can be fixed by learning and getting inspired from games and their design.

“Voluntary obstacles”

You might have frowned at Jane McGonigal’s statement about reality being too easy in comparison with games. Or you might have found the term “voluntary obstacles” odd.

Who would create obstacles voluntarily? Those obstacles we encounter are guilty of making our life hard, right?

Well… A species inside our human species creates obstacles happily and voluntarily—both for themselves and their clients.

These are game designers. And game players happily accept those rules. And if you ever played a game and loved it — which I bet you did at least once in your life — then you were one of those players.

Unnecessary obstacles

Just before the statement quoted above, Jane McGonigal says the following in her book Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World:

“Bernard Suits, the late, great philosopher, sums it all up in what I consider the single most convincing and useful definition of a game ever devised:

“Playing a game is the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles.”

And if you take a moment to ponder that, you will see the truth of it. Just consider all those games using a hockey stick, a bat, a club, or a racket to get their players to hunt a little, tiny object with all their might and skill to win.

It’s silly, isn’t it? When you could take that ball or a shuttlecock with your hand and drop it either on the opponent's field or in the target hole.

But none of the avid game players do that. They happily accept the goal and those “silly” rules and have their progress diligently recorded (or do that by themselves) in the game’s feedback system.

Embracing the obstacles

Is there a way to turn your reality into such a happy space as games are?

Yes.

You can start by embracing the obstacles the life poses and seeing them as “voluntary obstacles” deliberately designed in a game.

A non-judgmental seeing — as great game designers do by researching why their games are not that enticing for their players — should usually generate some fresh ideas, especially because the player of anything you do is right there with you. It is yourself.

So you should have immediate feedback from your player, yourself. The anthropological (= non-judgmental) approach to such an analysis will help you when you wear either of the hats — that of the designer of your self-motivational games or the eager player.

Silly obstacles

But if the ideas don’t come right away, then add a new obstacle.

Yes, you read it right. Add more obstacles, deliberately, and embrace all of them wholeheartedly.

The clue here is to make them as fun for you as possible right now.

What would you rather do right now?

Would you like to listen to some music?

Then put some background music.

Do you want to observe progress as you go?

Then give yourself a point for any tiny and effortlessly doable and measurable bit in your project until the work flows with ease. These tiny bits could be a sentence in your report, five minutes writing your book, editing a paragraph of the text you need to review, reading a paragraph in a textbook, learning a word in a new language, and composing a sentence with it, etc.

Is your mind still wandering away when you set out to perform the tiniest bit in a project? Then stand up while writing or take all your gear and write in an unusual place like under a table or “sitting in a kitchen sink.”

Ian Bogost wrote a whole book showing how by adding deliberate limits, you can “Play Anything.” The book’s title and subtitle are utterly telling: Play Anything: The Pleasure of Limits, the Uses of Boredom, and the Secret of Games.

Being the designer and the player of your life

Yes, the deliberate setting of fun limits can bring pleasure. The whole designing and “playing” of your life can be an utter pleasure.

“The secret to happiness and well-being is interacting with your life as though your life is your idea.” — Ariel & Shya Kane, Practical Enlightenment

So, if the player of your life’s games — yourself — doesn’t enjoy any of your project or activity games, review the rules and the limits they set already and modify them to make them fun and exciting for you to embrace and follow.

Thank you for reading!

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