up:: Productivity
Many RPG games use these five elements to increase the player's dopamine levels and thus make them addicted for a while:
In real life, you may not know what you want to achieve at the end and what steps you must take to get there. But usually you will have assignments, which can be overwhelming at first sight. If you make a to-do list to achieve a goal, you can break it down into smaller chunks and set achievements. You can find different variants of the way to solve. In the case of writing a book, these can be, for example, tasks:
The game, instead of showing you've made 0.7% progress to level 100, shows you've reached 70% of level 2. There are multiple factors, and you are aware, that you're constantly close to completing something, which makes you want to keep on playing.
In real life, you can achieve progress awareness by tracking daily activities, e.g. reading 20 pages of a book, completing User Stories for functionality, writing a backlog for implementation, running 3 km, writing 500 words, studied for 1 hour or saved 200 gram of your weight by skipping cake - write it down. This way you will see if you are getting closer to your goals or sub-goals. Seeing that you are close to accomplish one of those tasks will make you motivated to continue moving forward to reach that milestone.
After completing some real-life endeavor, you could give yourself a reward that would actually be a punishment - for example, after spending 5 days in the gym and eating healthy, eat a cake.
Find a reward that rewards you back, or at least make sure it doesn't sabotage your progress.
If you're going to be doing something for a long time, try to incorporate something new into that activity. It could be a different approach to the same type of work, a temporary side project, or a different lunch spot. It doesn't have to be permanent or big change.
Your challenge must be neihter too hard nor too easy. During a game, you don't fight final boss when you are on level 1. Instead, there are multiple difficulity levels on your way.
In real life, if you encounter to big overwhelming task, step back and start slowly. Break this task into managable pieces. Then tackle those pieces individually, and focus on the easiest one first.
If your task is too easy, set yourself a time frame and try to do the task before time runs out.