Real Life "Achievement" Badges

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This idea is inspired by this strip from SMBC.

I'm somewhat embarrassed to admit it, but like the rest of humanity, some happy little bell rings in the back of my mind whenever there's some sort of public rewards system involved in an activity. I enjoy many of the games on Kongregate, for example, but I would probably not play very many of them if it weren't for those little badges that go on your profile when you accomplish certain things.

So why not use it for real life? Well, there's one problem. I've tried rewards systems before, tallying up points and crossing off items on lists, but it just doesn't motivate me unless it's public. Unless there are other people also doing the same thing, and we are all sharing our results.

So then I thought... why not?

My suggestion is that each of us makes a list of "badges" that we can win each day. They can be unique to the individual, based on our personal goals, but we'll each have the same number of daily badges, so the results will have *some* meaning, even if it's subjective. Say, five daily badges. Then, we'll each choose two or three weekly badges - bigger tasks that we don't do all the time, sort of medium-range goals. They can be recycled each week or changed as appropriate. Then there would be one or two monthly badges, big goals that we strive for over a longer period of time. Earning one of these would be cause for a round of applause.

Then, the most important part - we share our results each day. A forum thread might be too cluttered, but this site has a blog feature for each of us. I don't know about the rest of you, but I don't use it. Why not use it for this? We could just keep a list here of who's participating, and keep tabs on each other and drop an encouraging word now and then.

Is anyone interested in this? It could be used for anything, from social skills to heath issues to household chores, work responsibilities, and hobbies. The more creative people could even draw themselves actual little badges to show off.