Gamify Your Life: Turning To-Do Lists into Quest Logs
Do you feel like you can’t keep track of all your responsibilities, assignments and chores? You don’t have to go through life living like it’s Elden Ring without any support or ways to keep things in order. Sometimes, these behaviors manifest as anxiety, feelings of overwhelm and constant stress.
When it comes to keeping track of things in life, sometimes our organized to-do lists can quickly spiral into unorganized (or, kinda organized) chaos, especially if you’re trying to keep it all in your head.
To-do lists can be super helpful for this, by creating a physical way to track your tasks for the day or week it allows you to free up brain power while also making it easier to sort through what you want to do. While to-do lists do have a lot of benefits and drivers to keep you completing tasks, such as the relief that comes from crossing an item off, the typical bullet format doesn’t fit for everyone. For some people, a little more engagement is needed to keep the to-do list in mind and that’s where turning them into quest logs comes in.
Gamifying tasks is not a new concept, but what about gamifying the way you keep track of tasks? By turning your to-do list into a quest log, it allows for deep customization to make it feel more personal and engaging by bringing your interests into your chores. Here’s how:
Switch up basic bullet points for different symbols. Instead of following just basic bullet points you could change the markers to the Skyrim quest log symbols. By doing this, it doesn’t feel so much like chores, but rather that training the Dovahkiin must be complete to defeat Alduin. Doesn’t that already seem more fun and engaging?
Differentiate between main missions and side quests to keep your priorities in order. Another incredibly helpful function of a to-do list is that it lets you organize your tasks based on priority. A way to integrate that into a quest log is by sorting your log into two different categories: main missions and side quests. There can be multiple ways to determine what goes on in each level too. Tasks can be sorted by assigning levels based on difficulty, and higher levels can be given main quests while lower levels are sorted into side missions. Another way you can sort tasks into main or side quests is by how long it’ll take, typically main quests can last anywhere from 30 minutes to over an hour while a side quest can be completed fast, usually less than 10 minutes.
Use a progress bar to visually track your list. Scratching items off a list is great but when you have too many items, progress can feel impossible. This is where a progress bar comes in! Progress bars are simple enough, just create some kind of bar to your liking and leave the inside empty. By creating quests and assigning a certain number of XP for them (depending on difficulty, length, etc.), you can begin to fill in a progress bar depending on how much XP you earn. The more you complete, the further the bar fills up until it’s completed! And, while completing all your quests can feel amazing, sometimes that’s just not possible to do in one day and can be daunting. It’s important to consider how much you really want to get done that day and set the cap of the progress there, that way you can still complete your progress bar without having to finish every task. For example, you may have quests with XP totaling up to 100 XP, but you set the progress bar to 60 XP because that feels like a more manageable amount. This allows you to take the pressure off having to do everything in one day while picking what you really want to do.
Give yourself a reward for reaching a certain progress point! Every good quest log is truly complete when you complete a task and get a reward, and you deserve rewards for completing your tasks too! Rewards can range from something small like a snack or 10-minute break for easy side quests to a 45-minute nap or watching an episode of your favorite tv show for main quests all the way to buying yourself what you've been wanting (like a new dice set!) when you fill up the progress bar and level up. You can customize the rewards to whatever feels appropriate, maybe you don’t want a little reward for every task or possibly each quest has a different reward, it’s up to you!
Want to bring these tips to life? Since we’ve gone over all the benefits of using quest logs, it’s important to discuss how to make them! It can be as simple or detailed as you like, especially if you’re making it yourself:
With just a pen and paper, you can create a simple quest log by making a progress bar and then two underlined sections: main quests and side quests.
From there, add any details like drawings or what symbol you’ll use to represent each quest is up to you.
If you’d like to use a premade quest log, The Hero’s Journal makes high quality logs and planners that include fantasy/sci-fi storylines and artwork (it also doubles as a coloring book). If you join their mailing list, you can usually get 10-15% off your first purchase and 71 pages of their journal for free if you don’t want to buy anything!
You’re all set to begin making your own quest logs and head off on the adventure that is life. Good luck out there intrepid heroes and if you would like any help with this or anything else, feel free to reach out!
