Use the "Battle Pass" Method to Win

Uh-oh. Chris is using a video game analogy to talk about business. You can hit the back button. It's okay. :(

In video games, especially those who want to encourage repeat use, gaming companies concocted a concept called the battle pass. You pay a little real world money, and this enters you into a system where you can play the game with specific extra objectives, and use those efforts to earn (often cosmetic) prizes for your "hard" work.

Your character can get new "skins" or clothing. You might gain access to interesting tools. It's silly, and yet, what it does really well is convinces people to stick around even more, and do some tasks that aren't always especially highlighted in the actual playing of the game.

What About "Battle Pass" Rewards for Life (Or Work?)

Recently, I did about 14 days straight going to the gym, and then one pesky trip to London took me off the rails and I haven't motivated myself to go over the last four days.

What if I built a little reward system for myself? "Go five days in any week to earn 3 Audible credits," for instance. Would that motivate me? Well, speaking as a guy who "blew" his Audible credits so fast he forgot he had them, maybe so.

A Battle Pass tends to have a bunch of ways to earn points on it. For instance, here's one from Fortnite:

Maybe you're the worst in the world at sniping (takes a whole lot of aim) and you won't get those ten stars for that. But pretty much anyone could land in Pleasant Park and look through a few chests for five.

That's important to designing your battle pass for life or for work. I think 5 gym trips in a week is probably a 5 star task. (Worth about $25 which is around what 3 Audible credits will cost.) I might think that writing three newsletters ahead of time because I'm going to travel my face off is a little harder, so maybe I'll reward myself $100 for that.

It doesn't have to be money. Maybe you can use the battle pass method to limit your time bingeing Better Call Saul. One episode per one task checked off the battle pass.

It's Stupid, But It Works

Before you discount this idea, realize that we do this informally all the time. We reward ourselves allllllll the time for tasks we perceive as less than palatable. I know many people who write a to-do list with one instantly cross-offable (that's a word!) task so they'll feel the rush of accomplishing something.

I've got a battle pass set up for some of the more recurring tasks that I want to do that I'm not prioritizing to see if I can motivate myself into taking actions I really need to do anyway. I'll report back, hopefully far less fat and with lots of audiobooks to quote to you whether or not you ask me.

What's going on your battle pass?

Chris...