This document describes how the author gamified their graduate school experience to increase productivity and feelings of accomplishment. Key aspects included: - Setting daily to-do lists with goals and assigning points or rewards for completion - Tracking productivity and a sense of achievement on a daily basis using scales or metrics - Incorporating elements of video games like levels, tasks, and rewards to motivate progress The author found that applying game mechanics and principles of instant rewards made graduate school more enjoyable and effective for staying on track with their studies.

1. Game Grad School
Rachel Cassinat
DIY Health Intervention
NTR 598
October 30th, 2013

2. Why did I do what I did?
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I like to-do lists
...but moreover, I love crossing things off of them
Lately, feeling very “stuck”
Left me feeling unaccomplished
Shifted my productivity
– Low priority items to feel more in control
– All of it left in an unhealthy relationship with my health-related
program...and myself
• I knew this was what I wanted to change
– Hyper-journaling validated this
• Overall goal: Feel more accomplished towards my degree, and
increase my productivity

3. Gaming Grad School/Attack your Day
• About the same time I was feeling “stuck”, I read
– Gaming Grad School by Katy Meyers
• Grad student by week, video gamer by weekend
“Perhaps the problem with graduate school, like the problem in
many bad video games, are the mechanics...If we look at the
game mechanics that make games successful, we can approach
grad school in a way that might make it easier on us, and also
more fun.”
– Attack your Day (Before it Attacks You) by Mark Woods
• Not time management, but activity management
“When we choose instant-reward activities at the expense of valueadded activities, our productivity goes down and very often some
self-esteem with it.”
• I knew I wanted to incorporate them into reaching my goals

4. What does my game look like?
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I have turned my graduate school experience a game
One that makes me feel more accomplished, but one that has elements
increasing my productivity so that that sense of accomplishment is
genuine and legitimate
– Define levels
– Long and short term goals
– Set up a reward system
– Color-code

5. How did I measure this?
• Productivity
– Level of actual productivity during a given day
– End of day, daily
– Count how many items had to move to the next day’s to do list
because either...
• Didn’t do the amount of it that I planned and needed to do that day;
or
• Didn’t even touch it
• Achievement
– Perceived closeness to degree
– End of day, daily
– Scale of 1-5

7. What I learned...
• Games are fun
• Grad school is easier if you have fun
• Making grad school a game has made
graduate school easier for me
The end