Super Sleeper: My Latest Self-Motivational Game Design

And how my son, Duolingo, stubbornness, curiosity, and awareness, help me keep up the healthy habit of getting enough sleep and have fun in the process.

I turn my whole life into games. Many of the games I play are short. I take on a task, often just a bit of a bigger one, play that mini-game, reach its “finish line,” which is often marked by my timer going off, record my reward and move on to the next game.

And then there is the game of maintaining healthy habits. Especially the one of getting enough sleep. This game is a never-ending one. Besides, my stubbornness and reluctance to go to sleep on time, so engrained since my childhood, keep this game quite challenging both to keep up and give up. You could say my stubbornness goes both ways: I don’t want to go to bed on time, but I don’t want to give up trying either.

Before I discuss its effects and my experience any further, let me give you the description of this game as it stands today.

Super Sleeper — A self-motivational game

A side-note: A self-motivational game is a real-life project or activity you turn into fun games for yourself.

Another side-note: components of the game, according to Jane McGonigal, are the goal, rules, feedback system, and voluntary participation, where the latter means the will to embrace the first three while playing the game, as well as the possibility to leave or come back to it at will. (Source for this definition is Jane McGonigal’s New York Times bestselling book Reality is Broken.)

Goal

Your quest is to become a Super Sleeper. You receive this status if you sleep more than seven hours a day (24 hours) — naps during the day count.

If you sleep more than seven hours for five weeks in a row, you get the Mega Sleeper title. If you manage more than that, for example, ten weeks in a row, then you can invent further fun titles for yourself. (My son and I contemplated such terms as Giga and Tera Sleeper but haven’t decided on the rules for those yet, because I haven’t reached the Mega Sleeper’s status yet.)

Rules

You lose the Super Sleeper status, and the corresponding streak count goes to zero if you sleep exactly seven hours or less a day.

The streak element is inspired by how the popular language learning app Duolingo uses it:

“A user’s streak is a measure of how consistently they use Duolingo. A streak starts at zero and increases by one for each day the user meets their daily XP [experience points] goal. It resets to zero when the goal is missed unless a streak freeze is bought in advance.” — “Streak” on Duolingo Wiki, Duolingo Fandom

The third side-note: I haven’t incorporated the “streak freeze” element into my game design yet, but I might in the future.

Feedback system

There are several score systems in this game. All of them are based on a point system. One point equals ten minutes.

So if you sleep exactly seven hours, then you get forty-two points (six points for each hour).

Here is the score I recorded this morning:

• Sleep Points: 44 → So I slept seven hours and twenty minutes and got two plus points for the extra twenty minutes of sleep. If I take a nap later today as I did yesterday, I will add the gathered points to this score.
• Sleep Score, which I started to count anew on June 29, 2020 (the first date on the weekly calendar I currently use to record my self-motivational games’ points): -240+2=-238 → The minus in “-238” shows how much time I slept less than seven hours. The zero level is seven hours of sleep. So I hope this new design will reduce the number of negative points and bring the Sleep Score into the positive (black) numbers.
• Super Sleeper Streak: 2. The past Friday, it was 13. I didn’t manage to get the Super Sleeper status this last weekend. I am back on track this week. I am curious to see how it will work in the coming weekend.
• Streak Points: 4+2=6. These are the extra points (each point = 10 min) I gathered in the current Super Sleeper Streak. The last streak record (and it was the first time I introduced the game design element of streaks) was: 30 points. I’m curious to see whether I can beat that when my Super Sleeper Streak will be again 13.

Experience playing the Super Sleeper game

The term “Super Sleeper” is new for me, but I have played this “getting enough sleep” game for several years.

I tried a simple point system, badges, and many others. Now I introduced the streak mechanism. This is where Duolingo inspired me.

My ten-year-old son was responsible for the Mega Sleeper challenge. When I proudly told him that I managed to be the Super Sleeper for a week (initially, I got the Super Sleeper title if I slept more than seven hours each day for a week; now I get the title every day), then my son told me with a bright smile, “Okay, when you manage that (sleeping more than seven hours a day for a week) five times in a row, then you will become the Mega Sleeper.”

Why is turning a healthy habit into a fun game worth it?

Talking from experience, I can wholeheartedly and with great conviction say that it is easy to give up a healthy habit. Even the habit tracker won’t help you to keep it up for many years in a row. Here is what can help us to maintain it successfully and continually: It is to turn the healthy habit into a fun game and regularly adjust this game’s design to keep the player, yourself, happily engaged and entertained.

The points or check-marks were fun at the beginning for me. Later came badges in the form of stars, which became self-drawn donuts at some point. Now, the element of streaks and the challenge to get the Mega Sleeper's title add to the fun of playing the Super Sleeper game.

The little child in me protesting her parents’ call to go to bed will always be in me. As I parent myself, I resist my own good advice to go to bed on time. I can resent this stubbornness, or I can play a game with it. The Super Sleeper game might get another title and another design at some point, but it will always be fun to play because the designer, who can improve it, and have fun while doing so, is here with me. It is me.

What’s your Super Sleeper game?

I am not alone playing the “getting enough sleep” game and trying to reward myself for getting enough of it. Here is an example on a corporate level:

“SINGAPORE, Sept. 16, 2019 /PRNewswire/ — AIA Group Limited (“AIA”; or the “Company”; stock code: 1299) today unveiled an ambitious new initiative designed to help combat sleep deprivation — a critical health issue in Asia. The initiative, underpinned by a call to action in the form of #OneMoreHour, will raise awareness about the health benefits associated with getting sufficient sleep. It will also provide tips, tools and rewards that encourage people to change their behaviour to get more and better quality sleep.” — “AIA Launches Major Initiative to Promote Sleep Sufficiency and Quality around the Asia-Pacific region” (September 16, 2019), CISION PR Newswire

You are also playing this game one way or another. The awareness that you as the designer of your self-motivational games can adjust this and other real-life games’ design to have fun and eagerly engage in them can help you maintain this and other healthy habits with ease and joy.

I hope my Super Sleeper game gave you some ideas on keeping up your healthy habit of getting enough sleep and having fun in the process. I’d love to hear about your game design elements of your Super (Mega, Giga, Tera, Peta, etc.) Sleeper game in the comments.

Thank you for reading!

If you enjoyed this story, then in addition to it, you might also enjoy the ones below. They discuss some of the topics addressed only briefly above in more details:

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