Turning ADHD Daily Life into a Game Worth Playing
Living with ADHD often feels like a losing battle. Our brains desperately need dopamine to stay focused, but no matter how hard we try, there's never enough. Chores pile up, tasks go unfinished, and frustration mounts. But what if we could find joy in the mundane? Harness the power of play?
Games have been with us since the dawn of humanity, releasing dopamine and making complex systems comprehendible through fun. In games, we learn without fear. We explore new worlds, defeat dragons, save kingdoms! Games are a refuge, a mental playground where we become the heroes of our own stories.
It's time to unleash our inner hero and turn daily life into a game worth playing! Equip powerful weapons like Timers of Timing to race chores and magical Rewards of Snacking to celebrate quests completed. Seek out Fellow Gamers to inspire friendly competition. Download Apps of Destiny that transform drudgery into daring challenges!
At last, release your mental shackles! With the spark of playfulness, no task is too tedious. Laundry Dungeons and Sweeping Coliseums await. Through gamification, chore becomes choice, work becomes wonder, frustration becomes fun. Let the games begin! ADHD, we're coming for you.
It’s possible we’re digging in too deep on some of our colorful gamer language there, but hear us out: there’s a lot we can learn about ourselves and our relationship with ADHD, and we’re kicking off this, our 27th Season, with a series of conversations and interviews about the value of rediscovering play in our lives!
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Pete Wright:
Hello everybody and welcome to Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast on TruStory FM. I'm Pete Wright, and I am here with Nikki Kinzer.
Nikki Kinzer:
Hello, everyone. Hello, Pete Wright.
Pete Wright:
Nikki, Season 27.
Nikki Kinzer:
Wow.
Pete Wright:
Wow. What?
Nikki Kinzer:
Season 27. What's the actual episode number that we're on?
Pete Wright:
I can tell you that. Please, stand by. I can tell you. 68, 69. We're at 569. 569, that's how many episodes.
Nikki Kinzer:
569, that's amazing.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Yeah. I know, right? 569! Yeah. It would've been nice to be on an even number for that episode. Maybe if I threw in all the placeholder episodes, it'd be better. Yeah, we'd be at 580 I think right now, so that's something. But 569, that's something to shake a stick at.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah. We talk a lot.
Pete Wright:
We did pretty good, pretty good, Nikki Kinzer.
Nikki Kinzer:
Pretty good, I would say
Pete Wright:
We are talking, we're kicking off our Season 27 with a set of conversations on games and gaming. And I swear to you, it was complete coincidence that we decided, the end of last season, to kick off this season with games. And then, that I would go to the Chautauqua Institution and an entire week would be spent on professional people talking about the importance of games in our lives. I am so overwhelmed by research on games and gaming. I don't know what to do. It's coming out of my ears.
Nikki Kinzer:
You're so happy.
Pete Wright:
And so, I'm so excited we can finally start talking about it because I gots to get it out of my face. That's the most important part. So we're going to talk all about games and gaming today.
Before we do that, you know the drill, same as Season 26, you just head over to takecontroladhd.com to get to know us a little bit better. You can listen to the show on the website, subscribe to the mailing list on the homepage, get an email with the latest episode each week. You can connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, or Pinterest at Take Control ADHD. But to really connect with us, jump into our Discord channel. We have the open community channel at takecontroladhd.com/discord, and you just visit that link, you'll be whisked over to the login page to be able to jump into our server.
If you are looking for a little bit more, you get there by way of Patreon. Patreon is listener supported podcasting. With a few dollars a month, you can help guarantee we continue to grow the show, add new features, and invest more heavily in the community. All you gots to do is visit patreon.com/theadhdpodcast, set up your Patreon account, pick a tier, and that will connect you to member secret channels in our Discord server automatically. It is a great way to connect more thoroughly with your fellow ADHD community.
And now I have to talk about my favorite tool.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
It's Text Expand, Nikki.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes, it is.
Pete Wright:
It's Text Expander. This week's episode is brought to you by Text Expander. It is the best invisible tool in my tech tool chest. Here's how it works. I know I don't need to tell you this because Text Expander is too good. You're probably already using it. If there is a piece of text that I type more than once, that's a signal that I need to add it to Text Expander. I keep my most used emails and phrases and text messages and URLs and more in my Text Expander library. A snippet can include text, links, images, code, account numbers, phone numbers, addresses, whatever you want to put in there. The trick is that for each one of those snippets in my library, I assign a unique abbreviation, then I expand it. I can deploy the content when I need it with just a few keystrokes on any device across any apps I use. Just type the abbreviation for the snippet I'm looking for, and boom, text expanded.
You can even get your whole team or family access to the content they use every day, or you need them to use every day across all those apps. Just make sure you jump into a family account or a business account, you can do that too.
Now, this month we're talking about games, so I just have to nerd out a little bit. I have this six year D&D campaign that I play with a couple of other couples, and I love Text Expander for keeping all my stats right in my fingers. I keep all my character bios and backstory and encumbrance and all of the nerdiest nerd stuff that gets updated at the end of each play session, so that when I'm asked, I can just type a few keystrokes and my DM knows exactly where I stand or don't stand because I'm not kidding right now, as we record this, I'm in a coma, whatever, don't judge me. So with Text Expander, it's that easy.
It's available on Mac, Windows, Chrome, iPhone, and iPad. And for listeners of the ADHD Podcast, you can get 20% off your first year of service. Just visit takecontroladhd.com/textexpander, and you'll be whisked over to our page on their site where you can get started. Again, if you start now, you'll save 20% off your subscription. The way we work is changing rapidly, make work work the way your brain works by saying more, in less time with less effort using Text Expander. Our great thanks to Text Expander for sponsoring the ADHD Podcast. Boom.
Nikki Kinzer:
Where do we begin?
Pete Wright:
Nikki, ugh, games.
Nikki Kinzer:
So much.
Pete Wright:
So good.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
Now we've already covered, I think we covered at the end of last season, maybe another time, so we've covered that you are a gamer. You are in fact a gamer. Yes?
Nikki Kinzer:
Apparently so.
Pete Wright:
Hardcore. Hardcore.
Nikki Kinzer:
No-
Pete Wright:
Please tell me your favorite game.
Nikki Kinzer:
That's funny. I don't even know the name of the game.
Pete Wright:
Is it the arrow game?
Nikki Kinzer:
It's this arrow game that I'm really into right now. So it's my favorite game right now, where I have all of these little boxes and they have little arrows. And you have to basically make all the boxes disappear, and they only disappear if the arrow isn't being blocked by another little square. It is the stupidest game ever.
Pete Wright:
And a very thorough explanation.
Nikki Kinzer:
Thank you.
Pete Wright:
Thank you.
Nikki Kinzer:
Thank you.
Pete Wright:
Thank you for that.
Nikki Kinzer:
I don't know what it is. And I'm thinking about dopamine because I know we're going to be talking about the ADHD brain and dopamine and those little hits of dopamine. And I was trying to figure out exactly what kind of hit of dopamine I'm getting when I click the little box and it disappears. But apparently, there's something there because I keep playing it. I haven't stopped.
Pete Wright:
Okay, all right. I have a PlayStation 5 and I have the VR headset. I play VR games. I play the driving games. I play the Star Wars games. I just finished both Star Wars games back to back, the Jedi Fallen Order and Jedi Survivor.
On my phone though, here's what I play. I play Before Your Eyes, the game moves through time every time you blink. So you play this little story game, and when you blink, the story changes. So if you close your eyes, you might miss stuff, which is a wonderful sort of feedback. It's fun. I play Lost City, which is like Altos Adventure. It's a sequel of Altos, which is a snowboarding game, which I love so much. It's completely mindful or mindfulness gaming. It's like a meditation. I play Dear Reader, which is actually a game developed by one of the speakers that I saw at Chautauqua, Colleen Macklin, which is a game that presents classic literature with the words mixed up and sentences mixed up, and you have to put them in the right order. And that game is fantastic. If you're a lover of literature, Dear Reader is fantastic.
The games I play when I'm sitting and waiting for stuff, I play Pocket-Run, which is a billiards game. I play Good Sudoku-
Nikki Kinzer:
Oh, yeah.
Pete Wright:
... which is by the same developer as Pocket-Run. I play Not Words, I think it's another Zach Gage game, which is a crossword game, which is a fantastic spin on crosswords. And Threes. If you haven't played Threes, oh my gosh, Threes is amazing. It's an adding game, but it's so fast. And oh my goodness, I love it so much. So I have the whole game set up on my phone. I have the bunch of games that I don't play, but that game I for sure play.
Nikki Kinzer:
So I have a question. Do you play games that are not video games, that are not on devices? Do you like to play cards? Do you like to play board games?
Pete Wright:
Well, I play tabletop RPGs. And so, we play D&D, and that's a straight-up role playing game, right?
Nikki Kinzer:
Mm-hmm.
Pete Wright:
And so, we take on characters and I do voices. And our D&D game is, for those who play, a first edition. We're playing because our DM had books from when he was 12 years old that he never played. He had the handbook and the Player's Handbook and the Dungeons Master Guide and a bunch of modules that he never played. So we're playing them now, which is an extraordinary kind of feat of intellectual lift, but we all do. We all jump into character and we do the voices. It's really, really fun. So I think I-
Nikki Kinzer:
But that's still on a device, isn't it?
Pete Wright:
No.
Nikki Kinzer:
No. That's like a board game?
Pete Wright:
No, it's a role playing. You're talking, you're talking through the game. He is presenting the scenario, and some people make notes on paper, I have my iPad, and I either writing-
Nikki Kinzer:
And you're all together in person?
Pete Wright:
Yeah, we're all sitting around a table in person.
Nikki Kinzer:
Oh, see, I don't know anything about this D&D thing, so it's completely foreign to me.
Pete Wright:
Well, you're going to learn. I'm pretty excited about what we have planned for this series. So more about that coming soon.
Nikki Kinzer:
Do you play traditional games? I love to play poker. I love to play Cribbage. I like card games a lot.
Pete Wright:
Okay. We play Pandemic board game, which is weird coming out of the pandemic, but that was always a fun one because it's a cooperative game and that's a fun way to play games. We also play a lot of Scrabble and a lot of Wise and Otherwise, a lot of the games that are like... What's the... I can't remember what the name is of the quintessential game like this, where is it where you're trying to make up fake definitions to words and get everybody to believe that they're real. What's that called?
Nikki Kinzer:
Oh, right. Not Categories, but I know what you mean, yeah.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Well, the Wise and Otherwise is a game just like that, but you have to make people believe that these classic sayings or aphorisms are true or real and they're very bizarre.
Nikki Kinzer:
What was the game that Brian told us about? And that's really funny too because we played that over Christmas. Ransom notes.
Pete Wright:
Oh, Balderdash. Ransom notes, that is a fantastic game.
Nikki Kinzer:
That's fun too.
Pete Wright:
We play that too. Really, really fun. A lot of good board games too. But I mean, that's real appointment gaming. And when I just want to play a game by myself, sometimes I just got to-
Nikki Kinzer:
You got to play.
Pete Wright:
... get out the device.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
And does it still count as a device game if I'm playing a game that I would otherwise play with cards like Solitaire, I have Solitaire on my phone.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
Does it count as a, could that count as a card game?
Nikki Kinzer:
I mean, sure. Yeah, because played Cribbage before online when I want to play and nobody's around to play, but yeah.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
I mean, there is a different feel I think when you're in person and you're playing those games for sure. But it's all a game. We're all gamers, whether it's in person or on a device. One's not better than the other.
Pete Wright:
So why do we want to pivot this, all of our favorite games toward ADHD? What is the point of games?
Nikki Kinzer:
Because it makes things more fun. I think that when you look at ADHD and you look at it as how it impacts your executive functions... So we're just going to do some basic education here around the ADHD brain. So executive functions are all of those things that basically help you figure out your self-awareness, getting started, it's your working memory, it's your emotional self-regulation, it's how you get motivated, it's planning, problem solving, organization. There's all these executive functions that are impacted by ADHD, and a piece of that is the lack of dopamine, which we were talking about before when we first started the show.
Dopamine is something that ADHD brains are looking for. So if you listen to Dr. Hollowell, sometimes he'll say that it's not an attention deficit as much as it is your attention's going to go where your dopamine is. So you can have attention, you can have hyperfocus attention when you're doing something that you're really enjoying. If you're doing something that you don't really want to do or you have some fear around it or whatever, then it's a lot harder to get started and you tend to avoid, and that's where those executive functions really start to be impaired.
So it's that dopamine and games give us the dopamine. And so, a lot of times, in coaching, when I'm talking to clients, we talk about how do you gamify some of these things that you don't want to do? How do you make them more fun? How do you engage in them in a different way so that it does give you that little hit and it's not as painful?
Pete Wright:
Yes. And that's one of the things that really stuck out to me as I was sitting in Chautauqua on this particular week of games. I was learning from Colleen Macklin, who is a game designer and a teacher or professor of game design. And she said this, and this is the thing that I think provoked us as we were talking about this, she said games make rules fun.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah, I love that.
Pete Wright:
Games make rules fun, right?
Nikki Kinzer:
When you said that to me-
Pete Wright:
Oh, it's such an amazing thing.
Nikki Kinzer:
When we were talking about what we wanted to do with this topic and you said that, I mean, that hit right away. I really love that that games make rules fun, and I think that's a really important piece for ADHD because a lot of times there's so much resistance from your ADHD brain to follow rules. We don't want to follow rules, we want to break all the rules. So this makes it fun.
Pete Wright:
And as soon as you subvert that quote and say something like games, make routines fun if you're struggling to do something, I think sometimes we let our assumptions around our relationship with ADHD cloud the fact that we could actually make something fun, that maybe playing the game is the thing that's going to allow us to affect change in our lives.
And in fact, she leaned in on this whole concept. She said, not only are we all gamers, everybody in the audience is a gamer at some level. We are all game designers and have been since we were children, playground games, toy improvisational play. How many times did you draw a 65-square hopscotch grid? We made up games when we were kids because that's how our brains worked. We have lost that, many of us, over the course of adulting. And now, we need to remind ourselves the value of games in making change in our lives and in being who we may be practicing being who we want to be without stakes.
In fact, I'm jumping ahead just a little bit because I think this is so important. Like she said, I wrote this quote down specifically, she said games provide a safe space to learn about challenges in the real world. She says, "I'd like to think of it like this, there's a real world with its sharp teeth and big claws and cute stripes, and then there's games, cute fluffy kittens in a bowl of marshmallows. I mean, the worst thing that can happen with a kitten is that we die of a cute attack." That's the point, right? We learn about tigers by playing with kittens, by watching their behavior. And games are the kittens. So allowing ourselves the opportunity to tackle difficult or complex real world issues, things that we're really living through in low stakes, that's the importance of game. Without real life consequences, they're just critical because they give us a safe space to do that stuff. I found myself so moved by that concept. I wanted to make everything a game.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right. Right.
Pete Wright:
Absolutely, everything of my life, suddenly, I wanted to make it a game. Yeah, right. The other piece is we learn in games through failure, and I think that's a thing that as a ADHDers we struggle with. Right?
Nikki Kinzer:
Well, yeah, and I want you to expand.
Pete Wright:
Failure's a tough word.
Nikki Kinzer:
It is. And I want you to expand on what you mean by that, because I think that my head goes to the people that are really competitive and if they fail or they don't win, that feeling of defeat. So I'm really curious to know what you mean that we learn through failure in games. Can you just expand on what does that mean when you heard that?
Pete Wright:
Because failure implies practice, right?
Nikki Kinzer:
Mm-hmm.
Pete Wright:
And I go back to my childhood in the arcades where I had to put a quarter in the machine to play a set of three tries. I get three tries, and if I can't get it in three tries, it gets more expensive, right?
Nikki Kinzer:
For sure. Yeah.
Pete Wright:
I have to keep putting money in because at the end of those three tries, the game is over and then I have to try again. If the game is important to me, I'm going to keep trying. I'm going to keep going until I can get further and further and further. The act of failing is what drives me to practice, to keep going, to keep trying again. And as an adult, maybe that looks a little bit different. As an adult, maybe the failure is I fell off my diet one day. I ate something that I swear I wasn't going eat. I ate a whole pizza. It's all at once. Well, that, in a way, going back to my video game example, that's kind of losing a life, right? I got to put another quarter in. I got to put another quarter in and try again.
Nikki Kinzer:
You get to put another quarter in and you get to play again.
Pete Wright:
Yes.
Nikki Kinzer:
Oh, I love that.
Pete Wright:
I get to put another quarter in.
Nikki Kinzer:
I love that. You get to play again.
Pete Wright:
Right?
Nikki Kinzer:
You get to keep going.
Pete Wright:
The stakes are so low right now. The stakes are so low where I can put another quarter in, it's okay. It's absolutely okay to do it, but I've learned something by the experience. As long as I remember that I am an active participant in the game. If the game is my diet, I'm the active participant. And when I fail in the game, I'm still playing the game.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right.
Pete Wright:
Right? The world isn't over. And I think it flies in conflict to some of the way we look at RSD, right, rejection sensitivity. Failure plays an interesting role in RSD with ADHD.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes, it does.
Pete Wright:
We can really perseverate on the negative in that, and I think games give us a chance to pivot on that and focus on the positive. What is it that we can get out of trying again?
Nikki Kinzer:
Oh, I love it.
Pete Wright:
Trying again.
Nikki Kinzer:
That's great.
Pete Wright:
Don't you think?
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah. Oh, absolutely. I'm so glad I asked the question and I love your answer.
Pete Wright:
Oh, thank you. I'm so glad.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
There's some other pieces about games that I've sort of distilled, and this is from both Colleen and... Oh, his name. He works for the Defense Intelligence Department, and we'll talk more about him. His name is Joseph Cyrulik. And he came and talked about using games in Defense training. And he is the guy who orchestrates games up and down the Defense Department all the way up to the office of the president. They sit down and play war games. But those war games are like scenario games.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right. Right.
Pete Wright:
Right? How can you learn about someone you've never met facing a situation they've never faced because it never existed until you play games and play out all the scenarios?
Nikki Kinzer:
Oh, that's so interesting.
Pete Wright:
And playing with experts is really important to do that. And he said playing games together teaches us about each other. We learn about each other through these scenarios. We can change the rules. As long as we agree to do so together, we can change the rules of the game. Just because written on the box doesn't mean we have to play it that way. And in fact, when you're doing international Defense intelligence work, you change the rules all the time, depending on the scenario. But he said, we have little players, we have boards, we have maps. We do the whole thing. It's a game development house.
Nikki Kinzer:
That's amazing. That's amazing. And something you just said, it reminded me of a blog post that I wrote a long, long time ago about my daughter. She was, I think, four or five at the time. So this was a long time ago. I think we were still on organizing the podcast and organizing business. But we were playing, oh, Hi Ho! Cherry-O or Cherry-O something. It was the little cherries with the trees, and then you roll or you... What's that little spin? Or you do a spin and then you get to decide what number of little cherries you take off, right?
Pete Wright:
Mm-hmm.
Nikki Kinzer:
Anyway, there's this whole rule to it, rule, I should say, rule. And she wanted to play differently. And I remember having the conversation of, "You know what? Let's play differently. I think that's a great idea. Who says we have to play it by what the spinner says?" And so, anyway, it just reminded me when you said that, it's like you can change the rules, absolutely.
Pete Wright:
You can. And that is something, again, depending on where you sit in your relationship with ADHD, that could be very, very hard. That could be very hard to give up what is written on the box, how the game was intended to be played. You can also break the game if you do it wrong.
My wife's family, going back now generations, has one rule for all games, which is every player gets one cheat. And it doesn't matter what the cheat... Not everybody has to have the same cheat. If you're playing Scrabble and you have a word and you need one square that's off the board, that might be your cheat. You can make a word that exists only by using a square that does not exist. And so, it's hard to play with them if you have an issue with rules.
Nikki Kinzer:
"You already used your cheat."
Pete Wright:
But it makes the game fun.
Nikki Kinzer:
"No, I didn't."
Pete Wright:
Exactly.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
That's totally it. That's the one rule is you get one cheat.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right.
Pete Wright:
And so, that's pretty fun. But this is what came back from the Defense gaming, games teach systems thinking and literacy. So even as an adult, it can teach you the way systems work and system literacy. Real world games like laws, computers, ecosystems, they're all very complex, games simplify them to make them understandable, they distill the complexity down to what you need to do to understand, to see toward a solution. And finally, games prepare us for real world challenges, and that's the State Department work, that's we play games with experts to actually understand the world better.
Nikki Kinzer:
Which really makes a lot of sense.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, absolutely. So ADHDers, we're constantly looking for ways to increase the flow of dopamine, as you talked about. And the Mayo Clinic seems to agree. The reward center of the brain releases dopamine in response to pleasurable experience or hyper-arousal. If a person experiences hyper-arousal while playing video games, the brain associates the activity with dopamine. The person develops a strong drive to seek out the same pleasure again and again. That makes it sound naughty.
Nikki Kinzer:
I know. I was thinking the same thing.
Pete Wright:
Dopamine's so naughty.
Nikki Kinzer:
It really is. Yes. So you have that. Yeah.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. But that's the piece that goes into retraining, and that's the thing I've been thinking about. The act of playing more games actually drives you to play more games. And the kinds of games you play are the games that help you learn. And this is why I brought up D&D and why I love tabletop games so much. What I have found over six years of playing as an adult, very different than when I played as a kid, is that all of us around the table use the game experience to practice being the person that we might otherwise want to be in another universe, to practice going through the sort of alignment charts. Are you familiar with alignment? Do you know what that means?
Nikki Kinzer:
Not in the D&D world, no.
Pete Wright:
Well, this is good. This is good. This is good. This is all part of your exploration as a future tabletop gamer. I'm very excited about this. Your characters are on the alignment chart that goes from chaos to... What is it? Neutral good, chaotic good, and all the way through evil, lawful through chaotic evil. And so, your characters will embody that role and that particular chart. And there's a nine-square grid that defines all of the roles. I should have it in front of me. I don't know why I can't say the words right now, I've been playing for six years.
I know my character is neutral good, which means, generally, I'm in favor of good in the world, but I also am kind of self-serving, right? I'm not necessarily lawful. I don't mind bending the rules toward the end of good. And there are people who are just existing chaos, and they want to explore that part of their identity, that part of their [inaudible 00:27:05] toward playing games that allow them to be a person that they don't get.
This goes into the same sort of vector toward cosplay, where you actually put on the garb and the gear of another person, of a character to embody an identity that isn't yours and experience that for a while, and give yourself permission to be that person for a while. And goes right back to the Defense intelligence deputy director who said, we all owe it to ourselves to rediscover playfulness in our own identity. That's what gaming is all about. And so, on the spectrum of gamer, from somebody who plays tabletop role playing games to somebody who dresses the part and carries a sword, that's peak playful, that's peak introspection. And I think that's a really interesting place to live. Right?
Nikki Kinzer:
I love that.
Pete Wright:
What do you think? That's pretty good, right?
Nikki Kinzer:
It's great.
Pete Wright:
We're going to talk about how we gamify our days a little bit, how we can play with it a little bit.
Nikki Kinzer:
We are going to talk about that, but I'm going to throw you a little bit of a downer for a minute.
Pete Wright:
No.
Nikki Kinzer:
I know.
Pete Wright:
It's like I just asked you to rediscover playfulness-
Nikki Kinzer:
I know. And now I'm like-
Pete Wright:
... and you are demonstrating that you can't.
Nikki Kinzer:
Debbie Downer from Saturday Night Live.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
Nikki Negative.
Nikki Kinzer:
Nikki Negative. Oh, that's so sad.
Pete Wright:
Negative, Negative Nikki.
Nikki Kinzer:
I don't want to be that.
Pete Wright:
I know you. Hey-
Nikki Kinzer:
I don't want to be that.
Pete Wright:
You're the one who's decided.
Nikki Kinzer:
I Know. I'm going to just be it for a moment.
Pete Wright:
That's mantle you're putting on.
Nikki Kinzer:
This is going to open up a whole nother conversation, and I don't want to necessarily do that on this show because we can do it on another show. But I'm just curious if when you went to all of these different sessions, did they talk about addiction to games at all?
Pete Wright:
Not once.
Nikki Kinzer:
No? No? So-
Pete Wright:
No.
Nikki Kinzer:
I don't want to be a downer. I don't want to be Negative Nikki, I'm just-
Pete Wright:
Well, you're talking about addiction to video games specifically?
Nikki Kinzer:
Right. Yeah. Just like having that addiction, like if you're so into these imaginary roles and worlds, I can see how easy it would be to use that as a coping mechanism to be out of the real world and how that might negatively affect somebody. I don't want to be negative, but it comes up in my mind.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. So Colleen did address... It was in the Q&A, where somebody asked that question. She did not address it in her principal comments. And her take was, look, games can be addictive. They're like coffee addiction.
Nikki Kinzer:
Sure.
Pete Wright:
Right? But understand, there are many games that are designed to be played indefinitely. They're designed for hundreds of hours of ongoing gameplay and constant new things. So you are encouraged to live in these persistent kind of online worlds. That's a real thing. And they're addictive because of all the things we talked about. They give you the naughty dopamine comes to work and is so naughty and wants you to give you... You're seeking pleasure and all that. But I think the-
Nikki Kinzer:
I know.
Pete Wright:
It's kind of a whole series in and of itself.
Nikki Kinzer:
I know it is.
Pete Wright:
It's like, what is the mal-addictive kind of behavior around gaming, and how is that a thing that can have a negative impact in your life and not like, look, if you don't currently game, how can you improve your life by thinking as a gamer? And I think that's the point I want to make. If you already play games, you get it already, you get what it does to your brain, and you get how you think about it. Right? And-
Nikki Kinzer:
And what we're going to talk about with how to gamify your day is certainly not things that are going to put you in any kind of an addictive behavior, it makes it fun, it makes it fun. And I don't want to make it not fun, but you asked me what I thought, and that's where I kind of started to head.
Pete Wright:
Well, and I get that. But I also think that if you have been online for any duration in your adult life, you probably know the kinds of games that are introducing what are called dark patterns. You have to buy jewels to play this game. There's some sort of dark pattern that has you playing and keeps you playing that isn't fun and is only fun in regard to... It's the same thing to doom scrolling, it's only fun in regard to the dopamine hit. There's nothing else you're getting.
And what we want to encourage, what I want to encourage is focus on games coming from good sources, sources that you trust, games that are story-driven games. And as soon as they tell you to buy jewels to keep playing, delete the game. You don't need to be a part of those addictive patterns, patterns that are designed to trigger what you're talking about because there are lots of games that don't, that can actually change the way you think and your perspective.
Nikki Kinzer:
Okay, so here's where I'm going to be positive, Nikki, because-
Pete Wright:
I look forward to meeting her. This is going to be great.
Nikki Kinzer:
Because I, for a while, I don't play this game anymore, but I used to with my mom, and it was called Heyday. And we would buy things, but I looked at it as it was a way for my mom and I to bond because we lived in different states. And so, it was a way for us to still kind of stay in touch with each other. And I remember talking to my husband saying, and this was around the time that we did this presentation, it actually does bring me joy to do this. And so, I kind of set an amount that I knew that I would be okay to buy. It was not an expensive amount, but I did purchase some things because I wanted to keep playing and I had to catch up with my mom because she was so advanced.
So I think with what you're saying too, there's always a balance too. If you can recognize that this is something that's bringing you joy, it's fun, and you're not going into bankruptcy for it, or not spending money that you know you shouldn't spend because you don't have it, that makes a difference too.
Pete Wright:
Well, I'll give you an example for me, and I have a counter example, and both of them cost money. One of them was SimCity, I played it on my iPhone and iPad. And it was a version of the Sim game where you're building a city. The city matures and grows. You unlock new building types and all those kinds of things. And I really liked the kind of architecting a city part of it.
And I played it so much, and I got such a dopamine hit out of it that I started spending real money to unlock things early, and that was very damaging. And I felt like the addictive piece of it. It was not giving me value at all. It was just the act of collecting. I was paying to collect stuff. And collecting digital bits that-
Nikki Kinzer:
Wasn't working.
Pete Wright:
... were ultimately valueless. I was able to get off of that.
But on the positive side, I am a new-found lover of Duolingo. I'm having a blast. And I paid for the family plan for that. So everyone in my family could have their own account and not have to deal with the advertising. And that costs real money. It is gamifying language learning in a way that actually works for me. I do it every day. I've learned 350 words or something. I'm making sentences. My wife and I go on evening walks. We're both doing the same language, so we're having conversation time together.
Nikki Kinzer:
That's so cool.
Pete Wright:
That's a game, right? That's gamifying language learning in a way that's really positive. That, the language result is the value that digital buildings in the Sim-
Nikki Kinzer:
Didn't do.
Pete Wright:
... world was not. And so, that's what I'm thinking about. Yeah, I'm on stupid Duolingo all the time, and I'm really okay with it because I'm learning every time I do it. That's really, really special to me. So-
Nikki Kinzer:
Great.
Pete Wright:
... that leads to-
Nikki Kinzer:
Gamifying your day.
Pete Wright:
... gamifying your day, right?
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
And we talk about what games do. Games allow us to envision and explore new worlds and possibilities. One of those, for example, is Pete speaking Spanish with his wife. That's really fantastic. So one of the things you can do is make it a race. Whatever you're trying to do, make it a race. Pull up the stopwatch on your phone and time yourself completing a task. See how fast you can complete. You got a dishwasher empty, maybe time yourself. See if you could beat your time. That's huge.
Nikki Kinzer:
Pomodoros too. I have to say-
Pete Wright:
Pomodoros.
Nikki Kinzer:
I clean my house with Pomodoros because I think, okay, how much can I do in 25 minutes? And then, I'm going to take a little break. And I'll decide how many Pomodoros am I going to do? So I'm going to only do two because I really don't like cleaning my house all that much. So I want do two Pomodoros. I'm going to do as much as I can in that 25 minutes. It's amazing when you're doing it fast, how much you can get done
Pete Wright:
How much you can get done.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. We talked about that a long time ago. If you don't want to even use a Pomodoro or a clock, use a song.
Nikki Kinzer:
A song, that's right.
Pete Wright:
Put on Bohemian Rhapsody real loud in your house and see how much you can get done before the final [inaudible 00:36:55].
Nikki Kinzer:
And I had a client, and I think I've brought this up before, but it's such a great idea. If there's any sports fans out there, which I'm sure there are, he was a football fan, so he would watch football. And he would watch live football, but he would pause when it went to a commercial and then he would go and do a couple of things like unload the dishwasher or whatever. And then, he would unpause it and he would fast-forward a little bit to the start of the game. And he did that each time. And so, it was brilliant because during a three-hour time period, he got a lot of stuff done in those little commercials. And he didn't have to watch the commercial.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, that's awesome. You have something to do. Do some pushups, do some pullups, do some cleaning during commercials. It's great. Make it a competition. Find somebody else in your house that you can compete against to do the same chore. What's really fun is when you compete against them and they don't know they're involved in a race, I do that with my son all the time. Or my wife, when we're getting ready for bed, I'll run upstairs, she doesn't know it, and I'll brush my teeth and floss my teeth, and then I'll get in bed.
Nikki Kinzer:
I won.
Pete Wright:
And she'll come in the door, I'm like, "I beat you to bed."
Nikki Kinzer:
I won.
Pete Wright:
So dumb.
Nikki Kinzer:
I love the example. Did you put this example in or did Melissa about the laundry basket?
Pete Wright:
Which one? That was Melissa. She dropped that in.
Nikki Kinzer:
I love this idea. You and someone you live with are each given a basket of clean laundry, the first one to fold and put away everything in their basket correctly wins. I love this idea, I'm doing it this weekend. Such a great way of getting stuff done.
Pete Wright:
Speaking of people we live with, we're looking for a way to gamify this experience. My son, man, he is a pill right now. He can't get himself out to bed, but he's working the early shift. He was late to work yesterday. We had to kick him out of bed. I don't want him to be fired. If I stopped participating in this little wakeup ruse that we have with each other, he would be fired from his job. And that would be bad for me. And so, we're looking for a way to turn waking up into a game. That's hard to do, so any ideas out there, please send them my way in Discord. I'm all ears.
We've got the using your imagination trip.
Nikki Kinzer:
This is a good one too.
Pete Wright:
We're going to Mary Poppins this thing. When it's time to sweep or mop the floors, pretend you're on an Olympic curling team-
Nikki Kinzer:
I love it.
Pete Wright:
... representing your country. You could even play the national anthem for your country before you start. Actually, I think you should play the national anthem when you're done. And you should stand on a chair-
Nikki Kinzer:
You should stand.
Pete Wright:
With your mop.
Nikki Kinzer:
Being really proud.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
Totally. Love that.
Pete Wright:
Hand on heart.
Nikki Kinzer:
Great idea.
Pete Wright:
And of course, awards. Give yourself a reward for completing the task. Give yourself a snack or some social media time, or maybe some other game time that you could... I don't know. You could go shopping, you could-
Nikki Kinzer:
Whatever.
Pete Wright:
... whatever you need to do to give yourself that little extra dopamine push.
Nikki Kinzer:
So there's a couple other things that I've done with clients that I think are a really good idea. You could do a bingo for chores. So you could make up these little bingo cards with different chores. And then, you have to play bingo, right? So you're playing bingo with each other. So whoever gets the bingo first wins, but you're getting all of this stuff done, right?
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Huge. huge.
Nikki Kinzer:
And then, the other thing that you can do, which is, again, to make it a little bit more fun is have the tasks in a jar, kind of like the joy jar, but it's not the joy jar, it's like a task jar. But you get to pick, you pick out something and that's what you do. So you eliminate the decision making, which is really difficult sometimes with ADHDers because maybe you really are inspired to clean something, but you don't know what to clean. So this is where you can just pick it and get it done. So yeah, lots of different ways to get stuff done.
Pete Wright:
And we've talked about Habitica before in terms of apps that turn chores into games. Habitica is a task game-
Nikki Kinzer:
People love it.
Pete Wright:
... that lets you turn your tasks into-
Nikki Kinzer:
A game.
Pete Wright:
... essentially, a fantasy game, which is super fun.
Nikki Kinzer:
Very fun.
Pete Wright:
Super fun. So lots of ways to do this. We would love it if you would share how you gamify your day. So you can find us in Discord or Patreon, all the socials, or just send an email to info@takecontroladhd. Tell us about your best gamify techniques and tools, we want to share those ideas on the show. So please, please, please just take a minute, drop us a couple sentences, tell us how you gamify your day. And links for all our stuff everywhere, website, show notes, whatever you want, you can find us. You know where to find us.
So that's it. That's it for today. This was a good kickoff, right?
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah, great. Good stuff.
Pete Wright:
I feel good about this. Thank you everybody for downloading and listening to this show. We appreciate your time and your attention. Don't forget, if you have something else to contribute to the conversation, we're heading over to the Show Talk channel in our Discord server. You can join us right there by becoming a supporting member at the Deluxe level, or better. On behalf of Nikki Kinzer, I'm Pete Wright. And we'll see you right back here next week on Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast.
