Rob Alvarez Bucholska
0

Level Up IRL: Designing Your Purpose with Yu-kai Chou | Episode 400

 

🚀 Want your community buzzing and bringing in more revenue? Snag my free mini course with 3 killer gamification hacks: professorgame.com/freebie-3-gamification-hacks

What if your life was a game—and you had the playbook to win? In this episode, gamification expert Yu-kai Chou returns to share his new framework, 10K HP (10,000 Hours of Play), and how aligning your purpose, role, and daily actions can unlock real-life legendary success. 🎮💥

Previous episodes with Yu-kai:

Rob is a host and consultant at Professor Game as well as an expert, international speaker and advocate for the use of gamification and games-based solutions, especially in community building and education. He’s also a professor and workshop facilitator for the topics of the podcast and LEGO SERIOUS PLAY (LSP) for top higher education institutions that include EFMD, IE Business School and EBS among others in Europe, America and Asia.

 

Links to episode mentions:

 

Lets’s do stuff together!

Looking forward to reading or hearing from you,

Rob

 

Full episode transcription (AI Generated)

Yu-kai Chou (00:00)
Intro Snippet

Rob (00:17)
Hey,

this is Professor Game, where as you know, we interview successful practitioners of games, gamification and game thinking to help us multiply retention and engagement. I’m Rob Alvarez, a consultant and founder of the Professor Game and a professor of gamification and game based solutions at IE Business School, EFMD, EBS, University and other places around the world. And yes, we will be diving into how Yu-Kai has changed the lives

a lot of people and especially with this new framework that he is talking about and you just heard about but also before we dive into the interview itself if you are looking to find out how to make sure your users stay with you to keep those retention numbers up high you will find our free community full of resources very useful you can find it for free in the links on the description so Engagers welcome back to another episode of the Professor

game podcast. This is very special. ⁓ I think I lost count already, Yu-Kai, of how many times you’ve been on the podcast, but I’m very pleased to have you back. Yu-Kai, once again, are you prepared to engage?

Yu-kai Chou (01:31)
I am so prepared.

Rob (01:33)
Let’s do this. Let’s go because as you know, if you want the full, you know, the full length of all the things that we’ve done with Yuki, you can definitely go into ProfessorGame.com. You search Yuki, you’ll find all of his past episodes. You’ll find all the episodes where Yuki has been mentioned, which are quite a few. But just as a quick summary and, you know, to highlight as well why we’re speaking today, as you, I’m sure you know, Yuki is the author of Actionable Gamification, you know.

I always say this, it’s not just a very popular book in gamification, it’s the only one that’s been translated into how many languages are there?

Yu-kai Chou (02:09)
Well, the framework’s been translated to 30 to 40. I think the book is like seven to eight.

Rob (02:14)
That’s ridiculous, man. That’s huge. I mean, I know of other books that have been translated maybe to one or two other languages. Seven is a lot. Thirty for the framework. It’s crazy, man. It’s incredible. So that was his first book based on that success and a lot of the work that you guys have been doing ⁓ on the Octalysis group, with the Chow Force, as I love to see when that’s one of the emails that you use as well. ⁓

You guys also been building on that and wrote a second book. Very, very interesting topic. And it’s all about using that play, but more in your life. The full title of the book is, I always get it wrong. So I’m actually going to read it out and hopefully get it right. 10,000 hours of play. But there’s a, there’s a long one. Unlock your real life legendary success. Is that, is that right?

Yu-kai Chou (03:07)
Yes, that is the long one.

Rob (03:10)
That’s the long version or 10k HP. I think is also a pretty pretty good one. So you guy ⁓ First things first, you know, you you you are definitely welcome back to the podcast very excited We talked about many different topics in the past this time. It’s about the book. So Why another book like, know, I know it’s a huge amount of work at least for most authors It is not something like if you’re not a professional author in the sense that you’re dedicate yourself just to writing

Typically, it’s not really a significant revenue stream, so it’s not really a business. Why write a second book,

Yu-kai Chou (03:46)
Well, interestingly, I already committed to writing this book in my first book at the end of like, my next book will probably be a book titled 10,000 hours of play. I introduced another book called subtle differences, which I don’t think will be my third book at this point. But, you know, I love to learn. love to absorb, love to create, see patterns and create frameworks. And so I think in my head, there’s at least three to four books I should be writing and.

potentially more, but some of them could just be big white papers. And I think I just like it. I really enjoy it. but the first book is about the Ahtalasis framework, which is something I created in 2012. a lot of people have used that, applied that, sold over 100,000 copies. And if you go to Google Scholar, you’ll see it’s referenced by over 3,000 PhD thesis academic journals. But

the impact of the Akalis Framework to me is still not as high as what happened in 2003, which is when I turned my own life into a game. And that was when I started gamifying everything I did, including starting my first company. And that led to the creation of Akalis Framework. So I thought that was really, really impactful and it changed my life. So I thought I wanted to share that same material to other people out there. Now there’s also a business aspect to it because I was thinking about maybe creating a

writing a more advanced version of the first book. And, you know, because people have been asking about that, you how to take it deeper. Then I thought about it, I’m like, well, that means the total addressable market for my second book is basically everyone who read the first book, which means the second book can never get more readers than the first book, right? And I didn’t really like that aspect. I like that if people want to go deeper, they can go to Octalysis Prime, my online platform that I made 1500 videos for or workshop or not.

So I wanted to go more upstream and create a book that’s more about if you’re a motivated college student or even a high schooler, you can still read it and change your life. And if you’re in some of your 50s or 60s, you can still read it and align those six steps in the 10K HP journey. So, so that was more of a business decision. And finally on Octoluses Prime out of those 1500 videos, I made some videos about those six steps of 10,000 hours of play.

and is one of the content that resonated with people the most. So that also was a good signal for me that it’s something that people want and they like. So those are the few reasons that led to the creation of this book.

Rob (06:19)
And you’re talking about the business of how much the total addressable market, but, that’s a hundred percent true. Like I’m not going to argue with that in any way, but it’s also true that if the total addressable market is smaller, also means the impact of the book is going to be smaller because less people are potentially going to read it. if by just by addressing a broader market with a book, which is something that is very accessible, like even, you know, university books that tend to be like pretty expensive.

They’re accessible. It’s not like, you know, some memberships and thousands of dollars and so on. Like a book is always going to be, you know, at least that these kinds of books, I’m not sure how’s the book going for these days.

Yu-kai Chou (06:57)
right

now is $22.22.

Rob (07:00)
I mean, super, super, almost anyone can access a $20 book, like let’s say $30 or $50. It’s very, very accessible. So the impact that the book can make is very, very broad, very large because a lot of people could really have access to that. And of course, barring their own implementation and their own, you know, their own issues with actually doing that. Anybody who has the book could start implementing and doing these things. Is that, is that an accurate comment?

Yu-kai Chou (07:27)
Yeah, everyone could figure out what the game they should be playing, their talents, their skills, their quests, all that stuff.

Rob (07:35)
So you’re already going a bit into that. ⁓ So how about we at least have a dive into the six steps and what that looks like. What are those six steps and how could people actually start thinking about lives and their lives in a different way?

Yu-kai Chou (07:52)
Yeah. So the key is that what makes a gamer extremely successful in a traditional, you know, online role playing game like Diablo or Final Fantasy is the same to make our real lives successful. And so, ⁓ and interestingly for, for all these steps, we have a lot of, historical role models that that one step changed their life. And those, this is important too, because I didn’t want people to think this is just for gamers, for kids, and it’s not serious. So.

role models like Gandhi, know, like, you know, Da Vinci, like Mary Curry. And so step one, so those are six steps. The first three steps are about knowing yourself. And the next three steps are about growing yourself. So step one is choosing your game. Know what is your life purpose? What, what do you need to do in your life to make you feel like, everything was, was well lived, well played. Step two is identify your attributes. What are your talents? What are you good at?

And you know, want to use that to choose your step three, which is your role in most games. You choose your role first, like a barbarian or like a, or a sasset or whatnot or mage. And then it gives you your attributes, right? Your stats. But unfortunately in real life, we don’t get to make that choice. We got to first figure out what our attributes are. And then say, all right, then I should go into, to this role. ⁓ but it’s important because these things need to be connected. So, so here’s a quick example, like.

If your game is to improve sustainability, right? Environmental kind of issues. Let’s say your attributes, you have quantitative skills and you can, you’re good at mathematics and whatnot. You could ⁓ choose a role as an engineer and try to invent a new device, technology that is like clean energy, helping the environment. Right. But let’s say you don’t have those attributes, you have attributes in communications and humanities, whatnot.

You could also choose the role of being a diplomat and negotiate international treaties that are environmental friendly. You could be a social activist. You could be a lobbyists for these issues, or it can be a YouTuber that, you know, gains awareness for these things. The key is that even though you’re playing the exact same game based on your attributes, you could choose different roles to in that game and you will still make a lot of impact. So those steps one, two, three, know yourself.

Then we go to four or five, six, which is growing yourself. So once you know your role, step four is enhancing your skills. Now, you know, your role, what are the skills, the class of the books, the podcast you need to absorb to become the highest level character in that role on the server, our, our, know, our earth server basically. And then step five is building alliances. So these are people that are playing the same game as you, but they have different attributes, different skills, different roles.

So you get to team up with them and you can synergize and you make up for each other’s weaknesses. And then you finally go to step six, which is achieving quests. And the quests are activities you do that can help you grow the skills that you need. In step four, it helps you build chemistry with your allies and you’re growing together, leveling up together, and then ultimately gets you closer to beating that game, which is step one. So those are the six steps of 10K HP, 10,000 hours of play.

And one thing that was so interesting about these six steps, I’ll let you ask your next question, is that we looked through all the characters, successful people in history, and we noticed that all of them have these six steps aligned. And what’s interesting is when they only had five of the six steps aligned, they were not as successful. Like Leonardo da Vinci only had five, despite being a genius, having amazing talent and skills.

Before he was 40, he only had five out of the six steps a line and he was seen as a loser. Um, and he was just completely not successful only when he found the six steps, then he became successful. So I’m very passionate about this because I think there’s so many people out there who have great talents. have great ambitions. They have, they want to do amazing things, but they just have, you know, three or four or five out of the six aligned. But if you, they’ve just aligned all of these six, I think they could become.

the next Steve Jobs, the next Mary Curry, the next Oprah DaVinci. So I think that would be really cool.

Rob (12:14)
That’s amazing. and, know, I, I saw, course, you know, we’ve been friends for a while. We’ve been chatting a lot. And I of course saw when you launched the Kickstarter and I put in my, my, my two cents, but you know, one of the things I saw there is just like when, when, when you started the Octalysis, ⁓ no, that’s not the explorers for the, the, the platform that you have where, where, where people go to know more about Octalysis. You also put that on Kickstarter.

You went in with allies, which is one of the things that you talk about in the book here. I think his name is Mark Diaz. Is that right? So I’m guessing, I’m guessing that, you know, with Mark and with other people before this book actually went live, this was something that you were already, you went and or Mark were already helping people with. Is that, is that accurate?

Yu-kai Chou (13:05)
Yeah. Like I said, this content was already a banger in my Octalysis Prime community. People loved it. People liked it. All good. OP. that was the reason why I really said this is going to be the next book. even Mark Diaz himself, he was just an Octalysis Prime member. I met him as my student there.

Rob (13:16)
I flinched on the name.

Yu-kai Chou (13:32)
And we worked together for so much and he wanted to help me with the project. so he, ⁓ he first wanted just to ghost, right. The book for me to do some research, but he contributes so much. said, Hey, there’s no way I’m not going to give you credit. So I’ll put that you have major contribution to it. And then he contributed so much more beyond that. Then I said, okay, I have to make you a co-author. So he’s a co-author with me right now.

Rob (13:54)
That’s very cool. So again, you know, with the work that you both have been doing with this, I’m guessing there’s people you’ve already helped. So you have success stories of people doing this. there like, it be anonymized or however you want, like, is there somebody you’ve run through or you or Mark run through these steps and have had success with that? Like you were mentioning before, like, you know, somebody who is in an environment to environment, environmental issues can be in math. And so is there like one person, one persona we could focus on again?

Yu-kai Chou (14:26)
One of my favorite examples is a psychologist from Peru and he was actually working at the second largest insurance company as a behavioral scientist. you know, his respected well, you know, very successful in what it does. But one of the things that he loved to do was he loved to volunteer for his ⁓ local fire department.

And I don’t know, like I keep hearing stories from around the world that, Hey, fire departments need a lot of volunteers and everyone’s fighting to volunteer. want to go do this thing. Like, wow, I’m very inspired by, by them doing that. But then he said there is one time when there was a huge accident that happened and three of his colleague volunteers passed away. Okay. And that’s, those are moments like, wow. Like, you know, things become real. And so a lot of people stopped going and he stayed on.

for a bit more, but his family convinced him to not be there because it’s so dangerous. So he stopped, but then he always felt like that was what he was really passionate about. And he felt like there was a part missing his life until he went through the six steps with me. And then he realized, wait a second. I could be still playing the same game, but I was just choosing the wrong role. I could be a different role. So he realized that he could actually go back to the fire department and says he wants to volunteer and help the firefighters as a psychologist.

as a, you know, psychotherapist to help them. And they’re like, wow, that’s great. Please come and help. So he’s making that same impact in terms of helping the fire department. And of course they’re saving lives, but in a different role, which is going to step three based on his attributes. he then later on, this is aftermath. He told me that what was amazing is before when he was an actual firefighter, you know, he’s more of an academic scrawny type, right? And he was not respected. He’s not the one that carries the heaviest, he runs the fastest, but now

he has that badge that says he’s the psychologist. Everyone sees him and treats him with respect. He’s like, yeah, I was having the wrong role. Before it was like, he’s supposed to be a mage, but he was choosing to be a tank. Like in the front line, he was like not a strong tank, right? And now he finally chose the right ⁓ role as his attributes to mage. And I was like, wow, like please use all the spells. We want you everywhere. So that is a very memorable and concrete example of how someone

even very successful took these steps and his quality of life just went up by a lot.

Rob (16:50)
Just by aligning who that person is, right? It’s just about putting the stuff together, as you were saying. I love that example because sometimes when people think of steps, how, yeah, people are always going to be missing the last one, right? Because if you’ve already done, if you got so far, it means that you’ve done the other steps. And no, you could have figured out what game you’re in. Or you could be doing all of the other things and that’s step one and not have even figured out yet which is the step you’re on.

You haven’t figured that out. That’s fundamental and that’s going to bring a lot of value in what you can achieve.

Yu-kai Chou (17:24)
Yeah. Some people, let’s say their roles are accountants and, but they’re just not interested that they’re just paying their, their, their, um, you know, mortgages and whatnot, but they’re really passionate about playing, like say tabletop RPGs, right. And playing the guitar and all that stuff. And they actually develop a ton of skills in that. So that means their role and their skills are not necessarily aligned their accountant, but they’re kind of a mediocre accountant, but they actually have really strong skills in.

and those other things. So is there a way for them to find a game, find a role, do quests, relative to that? And the whole literature talks about, that considered a side quest or a main quest? A main quest helps you further yourself towards your beating your game. A side quest, it’s like Legend of Zelda where Link runs around and catches him and like chases after the chicken when he should be like stopping Ganondorf, like destroying the world, right?

And these are side quests and they could be fun. can learn some things from it, but ultimately, you know, it distracts you from, ⁓ being your main games. If someone else allows being equal, mean, we’re, we, we know this term very well in our, in our field, right? All else being equal, they just do main quests and you do a bunch of fun side quests. Then obviously you’re going to be behind that other person.

Rob (18:39)
Yeah, if they dedicate the same amount of time, you know, have roughly the same amount of talent, they’re going to go faster through the game. That’s for sure. Absolutely. And you, Kai, this one was an anonymized example, of course, which makes sense. I don’t know if there’s anything you’d like to share about how you have done this in your life, like how, how, if this was a realization that you saw that you were already aligned with this and that’s how you implemented it, or it was kind of the other way around. You saw in your research that you were doing this and something changed.

Was there one point like that in your life where things changed because of this framework?

Yu-kai Chou (19:09)
Yeah, I think, like I said, this was the most impactful change I had since 2003. But I mean, maybe expectably, I didn’t have all these six steps all and the literature behind it all together in 2003. But that had the general concept and over the next 22 years now, you know, eventually became more and more concrete, more sophisticated. But in 2003, I started thinking that

You know, I shouldn’t spend all my time leveling up my in-game characters. I should really focus on my real character, like in this world. And I thought, hey, as a student at the time, you know, everyone else is playing that same game, but they don’t know it. So if I go out and kill monsters and level up and get experience and, you know, improve my skill points, you know, when one day people, let’s say they graduate college, they’re like, hey, I’m playing this game in the real world. I should go level up. They’re still at level one and I’m at level 28. So then I can be.

far ahead of them and growing that snowball effect and whatnot. So, so I remember before this happened, I was really a mediocre student. Like I would try to literally get 90 % on all my tests because nine in the U S 90 is a 90, a hundred is an A. So I’m like,

If I get 91%, I waste 1%, right? That’s kind of stupid. And if I get 99%, that’s even dumber because I waste nine points, right? And this goes back to my first book, know, intrinsic or extrinsic motivation. Am I doing for the curiosity, the learning, or am I doing for the grade? If I just did it for the grade, then why go beyond 90 % right? So I always aim for 90, but unfortunately I wasn’t that skill. So I have sometimes a drop to 80 or 89 and I dropped to B, which is like, it might as well get an 80, right? Why would I want to get an 88 or 89? Right.

So, so I was a very mediocre student. I studied hard enough to get my acceptable grade and I stopped and I go play games. But once I realized that my life was the game, then, then of course you don’t do the bare minimum and then go play games, right? You do the best you can. And so I remember at that time I became like a 98 % student in almost all my classes, all my extracurricular, including chess.

I wrote a Chinese novel, a few string quartet music. My orchestra went into state competition, Suomung went to state competition, debated. So I got a bunch of things that I started competing at a high level. And that last change, that last shift got me into UCLA. So it helped me get into a competitive college in the US. And then in my first year, I was like, what is the game I’m playing in my life? And my first year in college, I started my first company.

⁓ so I think again, that’s a huge shift. I remember very clearly in college, my game had three objectives. Number one was to create a company that started a new industry. Like before computers were invented, there was no computer mouse, like monitor industries, right? before the car was invented, there’s no, no, not even like tire, tire shops and you know, oil change, all that stuff. Right? So I want to do that. Number two was I want to create a positive global impact at the top. think pop global just means more than one country and

You know, positive is positive, whatever that means. And then the third one was I wanted to try to make everyone around me successful. So I remember at the time, I, ⁓ everything I did, I was thinking, does this further me? Are these quests that further me towards my goal? And literally this, this might sound insane for some people. Like literally I had my watch have a 15 minute alarm clock every 15 minutes goes off. So I would check if I’m actually doing things that matter towards my game.

doing the right quest or I’m being distracted watching YouTube or whatnot. and sometimes some people feel like, I’d go crazy. That’s, that’s, that’s insane. I’m like, I really enjoyed it. It was so much fun. I was playing my favorite game and I didn’t want, yeah, I didn’t want people to distract me from grinding because I needed to level up as quickly as I could. Yeah. So that really changed my life. And I was, what’s interesting is, ⁓

Rob (23:04)
I’m in all the time.

Yu-kai Chou (23:17)
I think I even transitioned from being more introverted to more extroverted because I knew I had to build alliances. So was really good at going out, events, meeting everyone, connecting until I reached a certain point in my life where I felt, you know, I’m pretty high level. And then realized I actually don’t like to do this. I like to sit there and play and watch and read comic books and, you know, just it takes up so much emotional energy to interact with people. So they’re like, wow, then that means I did all of that because it was part of the game.

You know? Yeah, so I think a lot of things just changed me and everything I was doing. So, you know, I think if literally more people went through what I went through, I think literally the world will have more industries even and more positive change.

Rob (24:10)
Wow. that’s a lot to take in. So, Engagers, if you’re listening, you’re probably very inspired just like I am by that focus. The 50-minute thing is like a very clear, direct thing that anybody can relate to. If you’re every 50 minutes, you’re making sure you’re on task and you stick yourself to it. Don’t get me wrong, you could have that alarm and say, oh yeah, but I’ll wait until the next one until I refocus. That doesn’t work.

Even if you’re doing that right thing and sticking to that, makes, you know, for, the, the impact that, that definitely you guys had is that in his life. And that’s something I wanted to get into because again, one of the things that tends to happen is people start thinking about, know, ⁓ I’ll do the 15 minute thing, which I love. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I love it. But I, I, from, from the, with the times we worked together in my own experience, I think.

The biggest impact is not on the gimmick of, I used the 50 minute thing. It’s about the overall strategy. Are there any things that, you know, I know the book at this point has been living out in the wild, so to speak, for a relatively short while, but are there misconceptions that you’re seeing people coming back to, or maybe with, you know, the content you created for Talos as Prime, people sort of misinterpreted some things and went straight for something that was not the thing?

Yu-kai Chou (25:34)
Well, first of all, I want to comment on your on your t-shirt even because it literally relates to that, right? It says I pause my game I think to meet you or whatever right I don’t see below but I think To be here, right? Yeah. Yeah the same. Yeah, so so like you said, it’s not necessarily the minute gimmick It’s that attitude that I can’t be playing my favorite game. So why am I doing anything else, you know, and so it’s like My game is to grow to level up and do this and I remember in college

Rob (25:44)
to be here.

Yu-kai Chou (26:04)
I once watched a YouTube video for like 18 minutes and I felt really guilty because it’s like, this is not a main quest. This is a side quest. What am I doing on this? And I even remember what video was, was like on sea animals, like animals deep in the ocean. And it was fascinating. I love this stuff. So, so I had interest towards it, but then I had to check myself. It’s like, no, this is the, unless I want to become a Marine biologist or whatever, right? This is a side quest. It only distracts me from playing my main games. I remember that it’s emotional for me. So

It’s like, why would you want to go to the beach when you can be playing your favorite game? Right? So I, you know, I’ve people see me as a workaholic, but to me, I’m just playing all day long. play like my favorite game 90 hours a week, a hundred hours a week. So now here’s to your next question about the misconception. I think right now what I’m seeing the biggest misconception is that people is that, yeah, you wrote the book because you want to help young people. Right? It’s like, it’s a book for young people, which, ⁓ I definitely, like I said, I thought

It’s very relevant for the young people to read also. Uh, but I think when I think about the target audience, I would say it’s for people who like games, but also want success in their real lives. And as you know, this, this, demographic is probably like 45 years old and under. Right. So, uh, and usually not super young because they don’t think about their success in light yet.

life yet. But one interesting case is someone one of my readers came to me and said he he has a 10 year old son, and he reads a lot of books himself. And he likes to share his lessons to his son. But it doesn’t matter if it’s like, building habits, you know, habits or setting goals. His 10 year old son just doesn’t care. But when he started talking to his son about the six steps of 10k HP, his son got really excited, really resonated and came back and corrected some things that he was saying. So I felt like, wow.

Like I’m really getting my son to understand that his life could be like this too. So I think that’s, that’s really cool. ⁓ relating to people who actually go through the content so far, I think there isn’t a big misconception to begin with. Okay. Maybe there’s, there’s a confusion between, ⁓ attributes, which is step two and skills, which is step four. So your attributes are more natural, talents.

or things you develop over long time. so it’s like you run faster, you’re taller, right? Or you, you can, you’re, you can think of a lot of mathematical things to your brain ⁓ or, or things you develop over long-term like, ⁓ know, perseverance or, you know, ability to adapt to new environments. Whereas skills are things you can learn from reading a book, taking a class. Right. And so for instance, ⁓ you could, you know, you could be very, you can

jump very high and run really fast, that’s an attribute, but basketball skills, dribbling, shooting, rebounding, that’s a skill. So one’s an attribute, one’s a skill. Or you can’t just take a class and suddenly be really good at perseverance, right? You kind of have to go through a lot of life experience and then slowly build up that resiliency in you. So I think a lot of people get those confused. So your attributes help you determine your role, but once you determine your role, that’s when you figure out what are the skills you need to enhance.

Rob (29:20)
Yeah, because it’s like you could have the attributes as you were saying, like you can jump real high, you can be, fast and you’re sort of strong. It doesn’t mean you’re a good basketball player, but you could be like you have everything you need, so to speak, to, be a very good basketball player, even if that’s not what you’re, what you’re getting into. I love that. ⁓ that’s an interesting misconception because it’s, it’s a, one of those things that like we’re drawing a line. The way you say it, makes it a hundred percent clear, but drawing the line is always going to be difficult. Even, even with some more clarity, like.

Is this really an attribute? Is this a skill? Is there a way sort of to see through that and say, look, it’s like if the line is gray, it doesn’t really matter if it falls on one side or the other, or is it does the line have to be like super, super clear?

Yu-kai Chou (30:03)
Yeah. In most of my work, I would say as long as you make it actionable to improve your lives, I don’t like to be too technical on policing. Like what is it called? Which bucket falls under? ⁓ And I think this is okay. In game, this is pretty clear, right? You have ⁓ your traits, Dexterity, vitality, strength, intelligence. Most games have these four or five of these. ⁓ And then you learn these skills. And the skills sometimes say,

The damage of the skill is based on a formula related to your dexterity, right, or based on your strength or based on your intelligence. So now…

Rob (30:40)
in this skill or that skill rather than you know depending on your character.

Yu-kai Chou (30:45)
Like a rogue skill, right? Like our assassin skill, like let’s say a backstab is a backstab does 10 damage times your dexterity multiplier. Right? So your attributes empower your, your skills. So this is very important. You need to, you need to have your attributes, but they power your skill. Now some things I would still say they’re different, but they, they kind of group together in the same term, like doing math. You’re good at math. Is that an attribute or a skill? Right? I would say, uh, arithmetic.

thinking, ⁓ you know, is an attribute and being able to do the calculations is a skill. I supposedly I, my mental capability, I can do math, but, ⁓ math, but I don’t have the patience to solve these problems. Like when it’s like, it’s like 40 minutes in, I’m still at, and I’m trying to figure out like X equals seven. just bores me. Like I just don’t want to do it. And I make mistakes in the middle, somewhere in the middle.

So I feel like it’s my attributes that prevent me from doing the skill very well. ⁓ But if it’s like a quick, like, intuitively understand how the math connects together. Like sometimes I’m much faster than people who dedicate their lives to math.

Rob (32:01)
Huh. Interesting. Love it. Yukai, I don’t know if there’s, I don’t know any, any upcoming projects you mentioned that you had the third book. I read actionable gamification at least a couple of times, but it’s been a few years since I read the whole book itself. Is there anything, you know, coming up in that realm? Like I know with 10K HP, you have an academy going on. Like there’s a lot going on in the realm of 10K HP as well as in the realm of octalysis.

Do you want to talk a little bit about like the other stuff around 10K HP and of course, maybe what’s next as well. Maybe it’s early, but it’s always interesting.

Yu-kai Chou (32:40)
Yeah, from a book author standpoint, because you’ve mentioned like I’m not a full-time book author and all that stuff. I think the next step for any type of publishing activity, I would go back and create a, ⁓ publish a new edition of my first book, Actual Gamecation. It blows my mind, but I published that book 10 years ago now. Like, I don’t know where the years went. So, you know, a lot of examples are outdated and whatnot. And over the years,

We have way more case studies as the alcoholics group, helping various companies increase some business metrics by 80 % or 180 % whatnot. So we have a lot more personal examples that we can show that’s unique to us. Before it was like, hey, look, here’s something cool in the industry. Here’s something cool in the industry. Here’s something I read on the news, right? But now it’s like, hey, these are things we actually did. This is how we did it. These are the problems we faced.

Rob (33:33)
This is how Octalysis did this thing. Like it’s not just an analysis stuff. ⁓

Yu-kai Chou (33:38)
Yeah. Yeah. And so, yeah. And there’s, see people getting confused about stuff so I can reword things better. and all this stuff more up, even if it’s public examples, more updated, it’s not talking about like, why do people play this game in 2007? Right. It’s, it’s like, why are we learning about this? This, this new trendy book with, with something from 20 years ago. So, so I think, yeah, that will be my, my main, ⁓ publishing goal.

Now, as you mentioned, 10K HP. I think a lot of people who read it, they have good self-reflection skill. They’ll adapt it and make changes. That’s great. Some people would want to ⁓ use the worksheet and the workbook that we have attached to it to, to be more hands-on. But I think there will be some people who feel like, you know, Hey, I’d like someone to talk to me on a one-on-one or one-to-few basis to help me figure out what are my talents and attributes, right? Help me.

understand how do I find my allies or what are my most valuable skills. So I foresee that more people will eventually feel like they need ⁓ to get coaching. And so the goal is to not only coach people, but eventually certify people to become 10K to eat coaches themselves. So potentially this could be something that they can have created a livelihood for.

The division, right? Always set a high vision. The vision is that we want a 10k HP coach in every city in the world. So anyone can at least find one, ⁓ coach in their local city. want to be face to face. So, yeah, so that’s, that’s the tankage. and we want to do a lot of world building for 10k HP because you know, we have a lot of real characters in the world, right? In turn, we launched that. Hey, look at this character, this profile, look at his, actually look at his skill, look at all his quest. That’s so cool. Look at him. And it like, we want to put a leaderboard.

on like things like reputation or fame or generosity whatnot. it’s just like ranking people just like seeing all these real life people as game characters or anime characters and who are the S tier, where are the A tier and whatnot. I think it’s a lot of fun. We also have what we call real life game skills, which are just like skills that are found in games but have a real world counterpart to it. So gamification would be enchant.

which is like in games you make people fall in love with doing something you want them to do, right? But then there’s also ⁓ heroic strike, which is a warrior skill. You do something so audaciously surprising that it shocks people and they agree with what you’re going for. And there’s also divine shield, which is a paladin skill, which is the ability to say no under any circumstance, any under social pressure. There’s thunderclap, which is making a great speech that like shocks, inspires people.

You know, there’s all these really cool mind suit, the druid skill that calms people down. So we want to keep developing those real life game skills. and, know, think that’s all really cool and fun that world building. then in terms of my, my other types of work, think what I’m most excited about is we have a project to help, the Ukraine government, rebuild Ukraine after the war. So that’s a cool way to apply the Colossus framework to.

You know, back to my three goals in college, right? You know, create a global positive impact and help people become successful. you ⁓ know, I think it’s great if we’re, if we’re able to use Octalys to do that. And maybe some of the 10k HV knowledge could help the Ukrainians, you know, improve their lives too. So those are, you those are the few things I’m looking ahead on.

Rob (37:18)
Sounds absolutely amazing man. Love it. Love it. ⁓ You gotta know if you have any final remarks, any closing comments before we take off.

Yu-kai Chou (37:27)
⁓ no, think it’s just stay tuned to what we have, you know, get some of the some of them. Actually, a lot of them are just free stuff you can find on my blog on tankachip.com on kind of YouTube. You mentioned getting a book for $20. It’s not going to be that I think I it does if you go through it like I actually this is interesting thing. I also have a bookshelf collection. And I there’s one shelf

That’s like just this thick, right? And these are the books that I look at. It’s like these books changed my life. Like everything that I’ve done is powered by these books. And I’m like, it’s really not that many. It’s like 15 to 20 books, you know, like it’s like, wow, if I read another 20 of these books, my, my skills, right? Step four would be double. I would doing everything at a 200 % capacity. That’s amazing. Right? I, cause it’s easy to get sucked into watching a bunch of like these five minute YouTube videos and even shorts, right?

but I realized, you know, a lot of the deeper stuff ⁓ is like, have to kind of run through the first 40 % of a book and then you actually get to their deep stuff. yeah, books are helpful. are useful. Check out books. there’s the audio book available. So, but most importantly, if you, if you need to reach me, especially through this channel, if this through this podcast, this is like my, my home base, homey friend podcast. So

If you reach out to me on x.com or reach out to me on email, whatever form to say you found me in Professor Game Podcast, then if I see it, promise I’ll respond to you.

Rob (39:00)
Amazing! That is a big, big ⁓ gift for the listeners, for the Engagers. Yukai, ⁓ I can’t thank you enough for coming back to the podcast. I was checking it out and this would be the fifth time you come back. We’ve talked about many different things, of course, with Othalus’s now coming back to this new book. However, Yukai and Engagers, as you know, at least for now and for today, it is time to say that it’s game over.

Hey, Engagers, and thank you for listening to the Professor Game Podcast. And since you’re interested in this world of creating motivation, engagement, loyalty, using game-inspired solutions, how about you join us on our free online community at Professor Game on School? You can find the link right below in the description. But the main thing is to click there. Join us. It’s a platform called School. It’s for free.

and will find plenty of resources there. We’ll be up to date with everything that we’re doing, any opportunities that we might have for you. And of course, before you go on to your next mission, before you click continue, please remember to subscribe using your favorite podcast app and listen to the next episode of Professor Game. See you there.

 

End of transcription