I've been fiddling with motor vehicles on and off over my lifetime (mid fifties now) and progressed from simple tune ups to now re-building engines. It took a long time to get the "feel" of what's right and one outright failure. But I can see the progress I've made over that relatively long space of time in that I understand much better what I'm doing and why, what is OK and what needs replacing. This progression has always been confined to the vehicles I could afford (and sometimes by necessity for that reason) but it's still there. If it was a video game the progression would be marked by the prestige of the vehicle but it isn't a game.
I can see progress in my work. I'm a much better programmer now then when I was 20. I write a lot less code, it's more readable and structured in a way that makes sense rather than just works.
I guess these things are elaborate Skinner boxes in themselves, but there is no reason you can't find progression and meaning at a meta level even though you have a boring job and can't afford to play with Ferraris. It's just that you have to find it for yourself. Nobody is going to be able to do that for you and it takes a conscious effort rather than just expecting it to happen.
I feel similarly with gardening. Try growing a food forest -- it expands your mind's time horizon to try picturing your six inch tall hazelnut seedling as a 20 foot tall tree. Each year is a new feeling of progress as everything starts to bear fruit!
I love this idea but I hate gardening. It just seems like such a grind to keep the weeds down and whatnot. I do forget that planting things is like an investment in your own satisfaction.
Especially in growing non-vegetable plants your choice of species and spacing can quite often self manage the weeds. Watching someone really good at growing is the same as watching a really good programmer to me. Little choices they make early on handle error conditions months later with little effort.
That's fair. I should have said "little" sense of progress. Practice and mastery is certainly a thing you can observe progress on. But the things people are gamifying tend not to be those things.
I didn't mean my comment to come across as a criticism (my apologies), just an observation. I would agree that gamification seems to have confined itself to immediate and facile activities.
With the existence of that statement, and the truth it seems to hold, I don't think it's just about getting better but also not above overly comparing yourself to others. Of course this is why I think a lot of engagement based social media sucks because it's just a bunch of people saying how perfect their life is so they feel good.
I've been fiddling with motor vehicles on and off over my lifetime (mid fifties now) and progressed from simple tune ups to now re-building engines. It took a long time to get the "feel" of what's right and one outright failure. But I can see the progress I've made over that relatively long space of time in that I understand much better what I'm doing and why, what is OK and what needs replacing. This progression has always been confined to the vehicles I could afford (and sometimes by necessity for that reason) but it's still there. If it was a video game the progression would be marked by the prestige of the vehicle but it isn't a game.
I can see progress in my work. I'm a much better programmer now then when I was 20. I write a lot less code, it's more readable and structured in a way that makes sense rather than just works.
I guess these things are elaborate Skinner boxes in themselves, but there is no reason you can't find progression and meaning at a meta level even though you have a boring job and can't afford to play with Ferraris. It's just that you have to find it for yourself. Nobody is going to be able to do that for you and it takes a conscious effort rather than just expecting it to happen.