For many of us, investing can feel like a chore. It’s generally thought of as something you have to do, not something you want to do. But what if we could change that? Wouldn’t investing in your future be easier if it were something you actually looked forward to doing? Luckily, there are ways to do exactly that. Here are three easy ways to gamify your investing efforts and hack your psyche so that you actually look forward to doing it.

Create “levels” for your investments.

You know how many video games are broken out into levels to give you a sense of progress as you move through the game? The same approach works wonders when you apply it to investing. Breaking your investment goals down into levels makes each step in the journey seem more attainable, which makes you more likely to find the motivation to achieve it.

For example, what feels easier: saving up $25,000 for a new car, for adding your first $100 to the fund?

Call $100 the first “level” of your game in this example. From there, you might set Level 2 at $500, Level 3 at $1,000, and so on. The whole thing might look like this:

• Level 1: $100
• Level 2: $500
• Level 3: $1,000
• Level 4: $2,500
• Level 5: $5,000
• Level 6: $7,500
• Level 7: $10,000
• Level 8: $15,000
• Level 9: $20,000
• Level 10: $25,000

There you go: 10 levels, $25,000 saved up for a car. Of course, you can apply this approach to any financial goal. I take a similar approach to gamify my retirement investing!

For more information on this concept, there’s a fantastic book I reviewed in an earlier post that goes way more detail on how to do this in a way that makes you want to stick with it.

Incorporate rewards into your investing.

Usually when you play level-based games, you’re given rewards along the way to help you continue along in your journey. Taking this approach when you invest can be an effective way to motivate yourself to hit the milestones you set out.

Let’s go back to the above example. Along the way, you may have been motivated to sacrifice some of the things you would normally spend money on, in order to find the money to save for your car. BUT, sometimes a treat is exactly what you need to make yourself dig deep and keep fighting for the finish line.

In this case, you might add rewards every few levels, like this:

• Level 1: $100
• Level 2: $500
• Level 3: $1,000 (Reward)
• Level 4: $2,500
• Level 5: $5,000 (Reward)
• Level 6: $7,500
• Level 7: $10,000 (Reward)
• Level 8: $15,000
• Level 9: $20,000
• Level 10: $25,000 (Reward)

What could those rewards be? Anything that makes you want to keep working towards your final goal. It could be an accessory for the car you’re going to own, permission to invest a few bucks in that penny stock you’ve wanted to gamble with, or even a nice night out to relax and unwind. Bonus points if the reward doesn’t detract from you achieving your goal!

Create fun ways to track progress through your levels.

Come up with a visual way to represent progress against your goals that you look forward to reviewing. Maybe it’s an old-school progress bar on a whiteboard in your bedroom. Maybe it’s a series of fancy charts and graphs in Excel. Whatever your thing, it has to be easy; otherwise, you’ll struggle to stick with it over the long run.

Updating your progress dashboard can add to the fun and motivation of making progress against your goals. Colouring in that progress bar feels good, doesn’t it? It makes you want to colour it in even more! That’s why we do this. That, and also the old adage of “What gets measured gets managed.” In other words, the simple act of paying attention to something actually makes you more likely to take the right efforts to achieve it!

Wrapping it Up

Remember that, while gamifying your investing efforts can make investing more engaging, you’re still investing your hard-earned money. It’s important not to let your efforts to gamify get in the way of making smart investment choices. You should always be creating a sound investment strategy ahead of your efforts to gamify, and then stick to that all the way through. If you do, you’ll probably find that, not only are you more likely to hit your goals, but you’ll hit them sooner than if you didn’t take any of these steps!