How Animal Crossing Can Help Us Crush Our Goals

Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp is incredibly addictive.

That should be no surprise. In April 2020 alone, the game gained over 7 million new users. Since starting in early April, I’ve played every single day and am now on Level 116.

Over 11 million people play Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and its sister game Pocket Camp continues to be almost as popular worldwide. Many of Pocket Camp’s new players came amidst COVID-19, limiting all of our social activities. We are now spending the bulk of our time with anthropomorphic animals (and I wouldn’t have it any other way). With the release of New Horizons, players wanted to enjoy the game without purchasing a Nintendo DS, and Pocket Camp provides that happy alternative.

In a matter of two weeks of social distancing, I went from abandoning the Sims 4 to reading audio books to checking in daily at my camp in the game. Being sequestered at home prompted me to not just want a fun distraction but genuinely needing one.

The mechanics of game design have always been an interest of mine. Mainly how game design works in the brain. Dopamine, serotonin, and adrenaline all come together to get you hooked on the pursuit of “the next level.”

Secondarily, I just knew there could be a way to extract some productivity secrets hidden in the game design and apply them to everyday life. And these are the few that I’ve been able to find.

Doing the “work” in a game comes effortlessly

It’s much easier to hit goals in a video game than in real life, but what can be learned to make real-life goal-setting easier and fun?

You can always see the finish line

In Pocket Camp, the in-game progress bar always shows how far you are until you reach the next level. In terms of daily game goals, you can always see how far you have until you get to the next subgoal in the daily goal.

These two things are incredibly motivating because you know that you're always only a few steps from completing your next task, and there's always a reward at your next checkpoint. You are rewarded for both effort and achievement.

Depending on the current main challenge, there are usually several goal maps, showing you precisely what the next step is and how many levels you have until you reach the final destination.

Real-life application: While life is hardly so neatly contained, pre-planning, even when you don’t know the destination, is still statistically proven helpful.

Having the initial steps in mind, writing them down, and checking in with your goals and subgoals daily can have a similar effect. Checking off each sub-task will give you the dopamine hit that will motivate you to continue.

An extra step to make this more practical is providing flexibility in the tasks and actions you need to take to reach your goal destination. The sub-goals for your main goal will likely develop as you do them and can be swapped out when necessary.

Rewards that lead to more rewards

Something endlessly fascinating and fun to me is the concept of receiving double rewards for a single action.

So, in Animal Crossing, let’s say you're completing a daily fishing task that also fulfills a Fishing Tourney mission that rewards you bells and goal tickets; once redeemed, you will reap leaf ticket rewards that count as a stretch goal. Whew!

That one action sent off a ripple effect that leveled you up in the game and got you multiple wins.

Real-life application: The rewards we reap from completing tasks can be both tangible and intangible.

I think the focus here is naming the things we want and monitoring it as well. In our everyday lives, we have walking steps and fitness goals, a need to go to the doctor, and a task to pick up something for a spouse. Assume the spouse’s Love Language is Acts of Service, and you’re doing your yearly physical at the doctor. So, you decide to walk to the doctor, get in 3.5 miles of walking (hitting your fitness goals), and get your physical. Once there, you’re offered a yearly flu shot (ticking off your errand as well as the flu shot upgrade), then head to the pharmacy for your spouse and get offered some free CBD oil (cool sample and leveled up in your relationship by honoring their Love Language). You just got eight wins for four distinct actions. Efficient and effective!

Think about what you want and how you can leverage tasks and take advantage of everything you do to gain more wins and level up in life.

Small wins for the win

Every step taken is an actual win.

I wish we could get 500 bells, three-leaf tickets, or various other prizes for everything we achieve daily. The average person makes 35,000 decisions daily. Those are all significant wins! It all breaks down as steps on your life journey. The journey of 1000 miles starts with a single step.

Real-life application: Imagine every move you make as something that brings you closer to your dream life. Your small rewards can be anything from tiered breaks, 4-minute YouTube videos, or permission to take a “sick” day in terms of daily actions. Any time you reward yourself for healthy, positive life actions, it motivates you to continue doing them.

Each set of goals has a corresponding list

Every set of goals in Pocket Camp has its corresponding tab. While simple, it helps contextually keep your mind focused on just the next step and the following step in a related cluster of steps. You also have your daily, stretch, and challenge specific goals.

Similarly, context lists kept in a binder or journal can help us mentally sort out and keep our projects organized. Think about which tasks you want to complete in a week. Then move that task from its context/project list to your weekly or daily task list.

That way, you’re always making progress on your goals while still getting your everyday grind items out of the way.

I love context lists because they become a little hub of infinite imagination and interest. Everything on your context lists will not get done. But they give you a solid starting point. You can play around and dream big on your context list because, ultimately, to get these big projects done, we have to do some tiny, rote “zombie tasks” to start it.

Real-life application: As days or weeks go by, we can begin to see the fruits of our efforts in having these big, “impossible” missions that we somehow make possible by breaking them down into little steps.

Things we can't replicate from the game: cute animals!

Unfortunately, we can’t do trade deals with anthropomorphic animals, but pets are a welcome substitute!

Leaf tickets are hard to come by in the game, just like actual dollars in real life. Both are hard-won fights!

Set routines, but cycle said routines just enough to keep it fresh

Pocket Camp has about 5-7 daily goal lists that cycle weekly and four different main challenge goals that cycle monthly.

The main challenge goals are usually the Gyroid Challenge, Fishing Tourneys, and Garden Challenges. There is a dependability and a familiarity factor that all players have with these challenges. We know where in the month we expect them to come.

Still, the variable in all these tasks will be the types of things we are gardening, picking up, or fishing for. This allows variety and flexibility in the building and perfecting of your real-life systems. You may write every Wednesday at noon, but what you write will likely be different each time.

Real-life application: In our case, maybe Wednesday, we work on articles, and Mondays, we meal prep. So, you can depend on Mondays being meal prep day, but you know that you can swap that out each week and, if needed, make meal prep days on Sunday.

The same goes for articles. You will work on your piece every Wednesday, and each week there will be a new article. This predictable method takes the “work” out of achieving our goals because the decision is already made for us.

We need a basic framework, and out of that framework, anything is possible.

Weekly wild card activities that shake things up

Another predictable element in the game is that in-between main challenges, you get small side quests: finding lost items for villagers, fishing for specific, time-limited creatures, or picking out specific furniture gifts for friends of villagers at our campsite (isn’t it a bit odd that all animals in the game only have gifts as their primary love language?).

Real-life application: Likewise, any small thing that you can fit into your day to give it that much more interest will increase your overall “fun” factor.

So, this is finding a 30-minute window of time to catch up with friends and try out specific vape juice mixes or plan your next vacation. Anything to make the “grind” more tolerable.

A spoonful of sugar.

Takeaway

Video games are fun work consisting of tasks, missions, and quests. They are digital jobs disguised as fun. And they are fun because of the mix of challenge, fantasy, and reward.

Besides the tangible benefits of playing video games, including increased concentration, decreased stress, and improved brain processing speed, the structure itself can be used in your personal and work life to make goal-setting more fun.

Any chore or task you gamify will make you complete it faster and with increased efficiency. Give it a try and let me know!

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Venita can be reached at Twitter/IG @This_Evil_Bunny