Many Blerds wish that real life were more like a movie or a video game. Wouldn’t having superpowers or unlocking life hacks by completing certain quests be great?
Unfortunately, daily life consists of clocking into a 9-to-5 instead of hanging out with sorcerers and wizards. While drastically different, real life and fantasy life can sometimes blend.
With the coming of the new year, here’s how to nerdify your life using the same concepts as role-playing games to make 2024 your year of success.
What Are Role-Playing Games?
If you’re a Dungeons & Dragons, fan you’re probably familiar with role-playing games or RPGs. These games typically occur in a science fiction or fantasy environment. The players of these types of games take on the role of different characters that exist in the game’s imaginary world. RPGs can be played both online and in person.
What is often enticing about these games is that the characters can level up throughout the game. Characters can acquire new skills, earn achievement badges or medals, and even acquire new gadgets or weapons. Your character can become an extraordinary player if you play the game well.
If only life were like an RPG! Well, it can be.
How RPGs and Other Games Foster Life Skills
While RPGs consist of imaginary scenarios, the lessons learned in these games are applicable to real life. For instance, risk-taking and risk management are vital skills to navigate one’s career, professional, and personal journeys. Within RPGs, players can take high risks with their characters without any real-life consequences. If their character dies in the game, the player will restart with a new character, access their previous mistakes, and move forward. After taking several risks in the game and learning from them, you’ll be more equipped to take calculated risks in real life.
Games not only help you learn skills but can also help you with ordinary tasks such as to do-lists and goals. These methods reward people when achieving specific tasks or learning certain skills. An example of this is the online task management application, Habitica. It combines all of the perks of role-playing games, such as character creation, social interaction, and quests, to support users with task management. Users are rewarded with armor, swords, and other mystical relics when they complete specific tasks.
Designing Your 2024 Character to Achieve Your New Year Goals
If the idea of role playing your way to success sounds exciting, here’s where to get started.
1. Decide on your goals. Think about your goals with the end in mind. By the end of the year or the end of 6 months, what would you like to have achieved? Create goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound — in other words, SMART goals. Additionally, think about who you need to become to achieve your aspirations.
2. Design your characters. You will design two characters. One will represent where you are now. Imagine a basic, level-one character. The second character is who you want to be. Design this character as someone who has achieved all their goals. What skills do they have? How do they feel? How do they interact with others? What is their life like?
Alternatively, you can gamify your goals by looking at your life as a quest. The end of the year marks the completion of your journey. Consider the challenges you might face and how you can complete your journey. What treasure will you obtain at the end of this quest?
3. Gamify your goals. Pretend that your goals are levels. Similar to the levels in a game, you’ll need to acquire specific skills, artifacts, and tools to surpass certain levels. For instance, if your goal is to save $5,000 next year, you can divide that big goal into small goals and treat the smaller goals like levels. For instance, saving your first $1,000 is the equivalent of surpassing level one. Consider what your character will need to surpass this level.
In a role playing game, your character might need a special dagger to defeat a monster and move past the first level. In the previous real life example about having a savings goal, your special weapon could be a budget.
4. Identify team players. In many fantasy games, players are a part of a team. These fictional characters often help each other complete a mission, earn more points, or achieve a higher level in the game.
Applying this same concept to your real life by considering who your team players are. Do you have friends or family members who will support you in achieving your goals?
5. Facing challenges as your character. With real and fantasy life, challenges are inevitable. When facing challenges in real world, refer back to what your character would do. How would your dream character react to setbacks? What resources would they utilize?
6. Define what success mean to you. It’s essential to identify what winning looks like for you. Sometimes, it’s not always about achieving every single goal, but the journey you took to improve yourself.
Say your goal was to get a promotion at work. Perhaps you didn’t receive it, but you completed various projects and gained new clients. Although your goal wasn’t fully achieved, you still gained valuable skills from the experience.
On the contrary, winning in a fantasy game is pretty straightforward since it mainly involves slaying something evil, rescuing someone, or getting to some far-off land. However, winning in real life can be more complex and encompass various possibilities of success instead of just one.
With all this new information, who’s to say that playing fantasy games are a waste a time when you can apply them to real life?
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