Results and some Waffle

Dr Egg's Desk: The reason he hit zero.

Introduction

Last week (and a few days, but who’s counting?) I proposed a game.  It wasn’t a difficult game, and it didn’t have many rules – There were a series of questions to answer, and you gained or lost points dependant on your answers. If you reached zero at any point you were meant to stop and tell me  – effectively ‘losing’ the game.  For everyone else, you were to submit your scores and tell me how you got to them.

I didn’t explain what the ideal score was, and I didn’t explain what my parameters for winning were. If you’ve not already played the game, go over there and do it before reading the rest of this post!  If you get your comment in before Friday 30th April you can still be eligible to win.

Prizes Recap

The prizes are a post or guest post of your choice; Those with blogs of their own were entitled to a guest post, those that didn’t have any blogs were given the opportunity to choose a topic for this blog.

Criteria

Finally, I’ll reveal to you the criteria I choose for myself last week.  Like the rules themselves, its pretty simple:

• Anyone reaching zero at any point wins.
• Those who managed to stay at 100 get a mention, but don’t win.
• Up to five people inbetween the extremes are chosen to win; the lower the score (so long as its above 50), the higher chance of winning.

Sneaky?  Not very, but let me explain why I’ve done things this way.  The game awards people with higher levels of motivation with more points; people with higher motivation are less likely to need the help.  These scores vary from day to day (its true) so there’s definitely an argument to be had about whether this method is ‘fair’.  I arbitrarily decided that you had to choose the particular day you read my post; my bad.

Conversely, aside from the people that reached zero, you’d have to have above 50 points to qualify.  This is because you have to be at least a little engaged and happy with what you’re doing (especially blog owners) or I’m not going to want to contribute to your site.  It’d buy you an extra day, but ultimately that wouldn’t help anyone.

The Point

The point here had very little to do with the competition itself; it had everything to do with the way you run your life.  I created the questions to reflect (loosely) the effect that certain actions throughout the day would have on your levels of motivation, and by extension happiness.

It will change each day however if you follow it often enough you’ll start to see patterns, ways to improve.  How you do this is entirely down to personal preference; I’m not one to preach on this subject – because I’m pretty bad at it myself!  What I really want to know is whether anyone changed what they were doing as a result of ‘having’ to play my game.  I know for sure I did.

The Results

Those Reaching 100:

• Lee from Lee’s Shizzle
• Matthew from Big Red Tomato Company

Those Reaching 0:

• Dr Egg (largely because of the photograph pictured above) – Let me know what topic you’d like me to write about, and congratulations!

Those Winning:

• Since there seems to be a dearth of entries, I can’t honestly say anyone did!  I’ll leave this open until Friday for any last minute entries, but if there’s still no one by then I’ll just chalk this one up to experience.
• First Winner: Eleanor from Give A Brick – Select yourself a post topic!

Thanks to everyone that did take part, and I hope you all have a great day!  Finally, your promised waffle:

Heather, the owner, started Shades of a Dream in January 2010 to help you fill gaps and increase your knowledge in 3D and Visual Effects. She also runs a newsletter; want a little extra punch? Sign up here

Heather Craik

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