Life Lessons From Video Games

Hacking Your ADHD

Talking about video games so much last week got me thinking about games a lot and so I ended up getting a new game for myself called Stardew Valley. The game was originally released in 2016 but because it was so popular it has been released for a bunch of other systems - I got my copy on the Nintendo Switch. In Stardew Valley you escape the hustle and bustle of the city by moving to a farm you inherited from your grandfather. And then the gameplay is basically just running your farm. Clearing your land. Cutting down trees. Planting crops. Watering them. Talking to people in town. Upgrading your farm. I'm simplifying but honestly, the gameplay is pretty straight forward.

I know, that doesn't sound all that engaging and yet I've gotten hooked on this game. And so have thousands of other people. Last week we spent some time discussing specifically why the ADHD brain can latch on to video games so well - this week we're going to veer into specifically how games can easily get me to do things that essentially are boring - like watering my crops - and trying to figure out how we can apply that to real life. For the full show notes go to: HackingYourADHD.com/VideoGameLessons Today's Top Tips

1. Operant conditioning is a learning process in which the strength of a behavior is modified by reinforcement or punishment.
2. We can use what we know about operant conditioning to help us modify our behavior by figuring out the right rewards and punishments we need to complete tasks.
3. Video games make it incredibly easy for us to pick them up and play - for anything else in our life that we want to do more of we should reduce the steps it takes to start.
4. Video games don't punish us harshly for messing up - in fact many video games make it easy to restart after we fail making it easier for us to learn from our mistakes. If we want to fail well in real life we've got to accept that we are going to screw up sometimes and figure out easy ways to dust ourselves off and try again.