Page 103 - The Power to Change Anything
P. 103
92 INFLUENCER
Make It a Game
Let’s look at another way of transforming neutral or detest-
able behavior into something enjoyable. Let’s say an indi-
vidual tries the new behavior but still doesn’t like it all
that much. Now what? Take hope from the fact that humans
invest themselves in a wide variety of pursuits that on the
surface don’t look particularly engaging or rewarding, and yet
somehow they extract enjoyment. So, what’s the trick?
It turns out that one of the keys to motivation lies in a force
just barely outside the activity itself. It lies in the mastery of
ever-more challenging goals. Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi, a
researcher at the University of Chicago, has devoted his career
to what he has come to call “flow” or the feeling of enjoyment
that comes from losing yourself in an engrossing activity. He
has discovered that almost any activity can be made engaging
if it involves reasonably challenging goals and clear, frequent
feedback. These are the elements that turn a chore into some-
thing that feels more like a game.
For example, imagine that you removed the scoreboard
from a basketball court. How long would you expect fans to
stick around without knowing the score? How long do you
think the players would run breathlessly up and down the court
destroying their knees with every step? Much of what we do to
transform intrinsically unpleasant behavior into something
enjoyable is merely to turn it into a game.
Keeping score produces clear, frequent feedback that
can transform tasks into accomplishments that, in turn,
can generate intense satisfaction. The designers of many of
today’s video games have an intuitive feel for Dr. Csiks-
zentmihalyi’s research and have used it to create games
that call for highly repetitive activities that end up being
amazingly addictive as individuals strive for that next level of
achievement.