This article is an extract from my book 50 Life-Changing Study Hacks, which you can download and read for free here.
Humans are difficult creatures.
We’re basically programmed to seek out and indulge in pleasurable activities and avoid stressful or unpleasant activities.
That means surfing Reddit, Instagram, or Facebook is easy.
That means playing Clash of Titans or levelling up in our favourite RPG is fun.
That’s why we’d rather do those things than completing that overdue algebra problem sheet.
That’s why we find ourselves fiddling with our iPhone or watching funny videos on YouTube rather than completing that essay on 18th century religious sermons.
We love playing games. We hate doing work.
This is true even if we love our jobs.
For me, I’m a writer. I love writing. I love reading. I love improving my craft and evolving my ability to weave a narrative, concoct complex characters, and overturn generic conventions.
But 9 days out of 10, I would rather be playing my favourite video game than pouring in the work, concentration, and effort it requires to get a couple of chapters written.
So what’s the solution?
The solution is a hack that is so powerful that it feels like a secret weapon.
This hack feels like an unfair advantage.
This hack will ensure you study more, complete your tasks on time, and have a blast doing so, while your peers struggle to find motivation to study for the upcoming test.
Gamify your studies.
Turn your studying into a massive game.
Ever notice when you’re playing Pokemon or an RPG that much of the game is actually technically boring?
Hunting through fields and battling low level creatures so that you can level up and gain more experience. That’s not technically fun. It’s repetitive.
But games like this still manage to keep us hooked by highjacking the pleasure and reward system in our brain.
When we accomplish something in a game (like experience level up or obtaining a rare item) we get a small burst of dopamine. We feel good.
And when we’ve done tons of little tasks and built our way up to the big boss and defeated it, we get a big burst of dopamine.
Instead of battling fake monsters in a virtual game, let’s transfer the same method of accessing the reward center in our brain to our studies.
Enter Habitica.
Habitica is a free app (iOS and Android and also a website) that turns your whole life into an RPG.
• Check out Habitica here.
You have a character.
You have an experience bar and a health bar.
You start off at a low level with no equipment.
But you build your way up by completing tasks.
You set habits, daily tasks, and your to-do list.
You assign difficulty levels to each of the habits and tasks and completing them will level you up.
As you level up, you receive experience, gold coins, items, points, even pets, and rare items.
You can also designate real-world rewards and give them gold coin values.
For example, you might set the reward of going to the cinema for 70 coins. Once you gain those coins, through ticking off your habits throughout the day, you can then spend them on your reward.
In addition to all this, you can join guilds where you and other community members battle together to level up and fight monsters.
You can start your own guild (a popular thing to do among college students) or you can join a preexisting one.
You get some social pressure and a likeminded community. Whether you complete your tasks and habits affects the wellbeing on the whole guild so you will feel way more accountable.
Habitica is very popular with over 2,000,000 members at the time of writing.
As it’s completely free and fun and a good way to trigger the reward pathway in your brain, I highly recommend you spend an hour or two getting familiar with it and setting everything up.
Spend the time you normally would planning your study habits and put them into the app.
There is another app that works on a very similar principle.
Enter Forest.
• Check out Forest here.
The basic principle is you designate a block of time to focus purely on your task at hand.
If you concentrate, you earn coins and you grow a virtual tree.
The more you concentrate, the more your forest grows.
And if you collect enough coins, you can use them to actually plant a real tree in the real world! Or you can use them to access goodies like nicer looking trees or background music and so on.
These are just two powerful ways you can gamify your studies.
- Habitica will help with long-term commitment and motivation.
- Forest will help to keep you focused for shorter stretches of time.
You can also gamify your studies using other (more traditional) methods.
You could use flashcards with a friend. You test them, they test you. Make it a game and get into super competitive challenge mode. Winner buys the other a chocolate bar or whatever you want.
You could race against yourself and set small deadlines. Get the timer going and see how much you can do during that time period.
Or you could make your own Dungeons and Dragons style ability sheet and assign points to the tasks you need to complete. Assign points based on difficulty and track down everything you do. You can get your buddies in on this and see who can gain the most experience and points.
There are tons of ways to turn studying into a game.
Implement these techniques and you will be less likely to struggle with motivation.
In fact, you will correlate studying with fun and get more done.
The more fun you’re having, the more you will retain, and the more you will want to do it.
This was just 1 study hack out of 50 from my book 50 Life-Changing Study Hacks.
Want to see the other 49 study hacks?
Tell me where’s good to send it and I’ll email it to you for free.
