Do you have a task on your to-do list that you’ve been avoiding for a while? Or maybe you’re looking for new ways to add a sense of fun and competition to motivate your colleagues or household members? Gamifying events, tasks and aspects of your life can help you to increase productivity, stay on track with your goals and even help you manage your mental and physical wellbeing.

What does ‘gamification’ actually mean?

While ‘gamification’ may have become a bit of a buzzword lately, there’s no denying the actual science behind it.

Simply put, gamification is about adding elements of game mechanics to a non-gaming scenario – such as point-scoring, leader boards, strategy, rewards, challenges and achievements. Often, this is done in order to increase participation, collaboration and productivity. More than that, gamifying an event or a task can make it so much more fun to accomplish.

Examples of gamification in the real world

Gamification works because it encourages real, positive responses and emotions. The sense of competition, achievement, curiosity and connectedness can all be very positive drivers when it comes to helping us achieve a task.

Here are some examples of successful gamification apps in the real world that you may already be familiar with:

• Duolingo – This popular app helps you to learn another language through gamification. The more you learn, the higher your level and the more badges you obtain. Maintaining a winning streak is one of the key motivators that help users stay on track.
• Headspace – Another well-known app is Headspace, which aims to help users create and stick to a healthy meditation routine through gamification.
• Nike Run Club – As you may have guessed, the Nike Run Club app is all about fitness. This app provides users with an online community to connect with, and can also be used to track progress, unlock achievements, challenge friends and celebrate milestones.

The best ways to gamify your life

Gamification isn’t a new concept, but there has been an influx of apps lately that have sought to help us gamify different aspects of our lives for the better. Whether you want to gamify the task of tracking your budget, or you want to gamify prioritising your mental health, there’s an app for that.

Gamify your chores and tasks

We all have tasks and household chores that we absolutely loathe. Whether you’re trying to motivate yourself or other household members to pull their weight, gamifying tasks and chores can really help to get these necessary jobs done to a level everyone’s happy with.

If you struggle to find the time or motivation to complete household chores or other life admin tasks, you could consider an app like Habitica. This is a great RPG-style app for people who need help staying on task. Habitica essentially allows you to gamify just about every aspect of your life and turns boring, everyday chores into fun quests. Your in-game character receives rewards for achieving goals (for example, cleaning the bathroom or paying your bills on time) and is punished for skipping tasks.

On the other hand, if it’s your family members you need to motivate and the old star chart just isn’t working any more, you could take a look at OurHome. This is a household app designed for families and allows you to set tasks for your kids where they can earn rewards for completed chores and goals. It also allows you to better manage your grocery shopping and your family calendar.

Gamify your job or study session

Many of us find that working from home has increased our productivity levels. However, if you’re someone who finds themselves constantly distracted at home, or you’re just having an all-round unproductive day and suffering from Zoom fatigue, there are a number of apps that can help you liven things up.

Productivity Challenge Timer uses the pomodoro method to help you get things done. The pomodoro method asks you to work in 25- minute chunks to help you stay focused and avoid procrastination. Add work projects in the app, track your progress and continue to jump up to different levels the more goals you accomplish.

LifeRPG can be used for daily life admin and chores, but it also works really well for work or study. You can set yourself tasks and organise your goals by level of priority. Unlike Habitica and similar apps, LifeRPG doesn’t ask you to accomplish quests and missions or share the same cartoony aesthetic, and instead has a much more sleek user interface. It’s a great choice for those who just want an intuitive, straightforward app that can help them tick items off their to-do list while still making things fun and interesting.

Gamify your wellbeing

Whether you want to get on top of your mental health or your physical fitness, or both, there is a huge host of apps out there that can help you.

One of the most interesting fitness apps out there has got to be Zombies, Run! If you have trouble getting motivated to jump onto a treadmill or get out for a run, this app might actually make exercising more fun. This app literally gamifies the act of running, rewarding you the further you run. There’s even an option to toggle on ‘zombie hordes’ that randomly begin at any time during your run which you then have to outpace!

We’ve already mentioned Headspace above as a popular meditation app, but there are plenty of other mental health apps out there – such as Happify, which is a more general mental wellbeing app, and SuperBetter, which specifically focuses on anxiety. SuperBetter is all about helping you achieve positive change by utilising a tried-and-true framework that “brings the psychological strengths and mindset of gameplay to real life.” By challenging yourself, battling baddies (real-life anxiety triggers) and recruiting allies (building strong social connections), SuperBetter aims to help you tackle your anxiety to live your best life.

Gamify your life and start getting things done

Video games are played by billions of people across the world, while Esports is gaining real traction as a serious, competitive sport and growing its fanbase every year. Gamification is not new, but in the digital age it just makes sense to take gamification to the next level and translate it into a digital context to help people achieve their goals – no matter what they are.

As we see games and apps become more complex and offer more features than ever before, it’s important that we have a network that can stand up to the task. That’s where 5G comes in. 5G offers increased speed, reduced latency and a high-speed, reliable connection, which means you can use your productivity app to help you get things done from almost anywhere, whether you’re at home or work.

Vodafone 5G is now rolling out in selected areas of major Australian cities. If you would like more information on 5G, make sure you head on over to our 5G support page.