Who Do You Want to Be?

I went to a wedding recently where the groom's friends were ripping on him for always using Excel spreadsheets to make important decisions in his life. Over the year he put together these elaborate Excel files to decide which college to go to, which cars to buy, and as crazy as it sounds, he even put together a spreadsheet to decide whether or not to marry his wife. Most people in the audience were extremely weirded out and perhaps some of the uncles were impressed at his number crunching skills. Anyway, I was intrigued by the idea of quantifying life choices.

When I was in middle school, I was introduced into the world of Final Fantasy III for Super Nintendo. As funny as it sounds, the music, storyline, and gameplay are things that I am still reminded of all the time today. Final Fantasy falls into the genre of "Role Playing Game." For those not in tune with all things nerdy, Role Playing Games or RPGs are games where you usually start with a weak, simple character and throughout the game attempt the gain experience in all sorts of facets of the game world. At the outset of the game, you can't defeat any enemies and basically are able to succeed at nothing. So you try to get your character experience with fighting, magic, healing, or one of many other characteristics that makes each character special. So with some time, you have a couple characters that you have developed with different skills and expertise. Now, after marinating on the Excel spreadsheet idea for a while, the world of Final Fantasy III popped into my head.

(LIGHTBULB) Why not think of your life and your world in the same way you think of the character you control in a RPG. Develop yourself the same way you develop each character. Realize that each character is different and make choices based on what best suits your strengths. Think long-term but understand the baby steps and experience needed to develop each characteristic. And so my friends the RPG Lifestyle was born....

People hear me talking about the RPG Lifestyle all the time but usually think I'm just crazy. Here's the idea: One day, me and some buddies sat down and identified 4 or 5 characteristics that we would like to be better at. Some of the main categories were Communication (with family, friends, ladies, random people), Finance (spending, saving, investing), Home Economics (laundry and ironing, cooking, etc.), Image (personal hygiene, fashion), Fitness and Information (newspapers, books, etc.). Anyway this is a general summary of our brainstorms. Now each person makes a spreadsheet with each category and fills in the category with the subcategories. An elaborate point system was created and with each successful task completed you could move toward moving up in experience in that column. For example, maybe you get 5 points for every new dish you cook and 1 point for every repeat dish. For every 20 points, you move up a level in the Cooking Category.

Anyway, I was on the brink of launching this RPG Lifestyle to a test group to see what would happen but the point system got super complicated and difficult to understand. I'm working on it, so when it makes sense again I would love some volunteers.

Here's the point to this rant though:

Just by sitting down and creating these categories, my life changed. I wanted to try out the RPG Lifestyle because I could see my future. Two years from now I might have a sweet job and live in a fun place but as for ME and all the facets about ME, they were on a very static path. That needed to change so chalked something up with my friends and finished scoring systems for Fitness and Communication. Now I chose an arbitrary 5 points for every workout and some other random number for every personal email I sent to friends. The result: For about a month, I would wake up in the morning and literally be thinking, "Vaman, let's rack up some points today man." I would actually feel awesome when I had 10 freaking points or more by noon. It made my day feel worthwhile and I felt accomplished. I am a very competitive person too and this scoring system really brought about a game type feel to life. I was actively trying to make myself better and I could see my progress. It also forced me to think about what I was weak at and how I wanted to develop. I felt in control of my characteristics and I could decide how well-rounded I was to be. I felt empowered again.

The RPG Lifestyle is still in the works and the first experiment shall be launched soon I hope. It's a way of life. I would love if some of you wanted to help out. One idea was to keep track of points and levels online so everyone involved could motivate one another to get better. I think there is some communal potential there. More than that though I really think that the RPG Lifestyle can make our routine and banal lives fun again. We get into these boring routines and kind of forget that we can be as dynamic as we wish. Stay on the lookout for the RPG Lifestyle Launch and between now and then marinate on this..... Who do you want to be?