I am a motivated person. My friends are motivated people too. You are a motivated person. Everybody is. And we tend to forget or ignore this fact. Motivation apart from biochemical reactions is the core reason why people exist, why people live, and why people strive for greater heights. And gamification in my opinion is the key to stay motivated nonstop. In this blog, I want to help everyone (including myself) to understand the factors surrounding motivation, behaviour and connected topics.
But why is this blog called Gamifikaytion? Because I want to go one step further than just explaining concepts. Let me show you ways how you can create systems for you, your friends, your team or even your company, which help you to trigger and navigate motivation to achieve your goals – whether they be private or public/professional.
To do so, we will start at the beginning of time. Big words, but we will start quite early in the history of time. This is because motivation is not so new as all those coaches make you believe. It is also nothing that fits onto your Instagram post or 30 second TikTok clip.
So join me onto our first adventure: understanding the history of why people do what they do.
The history of motivation and gamification
With regards to the various definitions, you will be able to find them in the following blog post: Definitions (click). For now, I want to look at motivation from a historical standpoint.
Where did it all start? It might be a bit weird to ask this questions, but I would like you to pause for a moment and think about the question: When did motivation start to exist? It began at the beginning of time one could say. Any creature that lived, lives and will be alive at some point in the future is motivated. The most basic motivation is surviving as we all want to survive and we do what is in our power to stay alive. This has not changed since day 1 of the history of time. Over time motivators might have been added, but we would focus on one motivator only, it would be the instinctual drive to survive.