works of wanderlust

Productivity is a sonofabitch.

I’ve been through all sorts of methods to try and get myself to get things done, and many of them have been modestly successful. Whether or not gamification works is still up in the air, but the concept of it has been something of an idle fascination for me for years.

Gamification? That’s a method of turning a chore or a job or anything you need a bit of motivation to get done and turning it into a game. Like Mary Poppins said, “snap, the job’s a game!” In the technology era, that usually means almost literally turning it into a game: making an app, creating a character, collecting XP and trophies, unlocking achievements… which is almost where that “Achievement Unlocked” meme comes from.

Which brings me to AI. For most everything AI has been a creativity suck. I’ve been wary about using it for most things, and completely adamant that I won’t use it to write or do anything artistic.

I’ve done some security passes on some code and AI has been very helpful in identifying vulnerabilities, and helping me tweak some of my handwritten code to make sure I don’t get hacked because another AI found a hole.

But creativity? Well… I think I finally found a way to use AI to make me more productive creatively: See, I vibe coded an app.

I call it the codex, and it gamifies creative efforts.

It’s baked through with a cyberpunk aesthetic and builds a grid-like city map that grows and expands as you unlock skills. You acquire XP by doing tasks, completing missions, working towards progress on tracked projects, and general by just doing the creative work that you’re tracking in the system.

For example, I have in mine: writing, music, photography and art.

I have added a few projects to work on: short stories, collecting black and white photos for my blog, learning my repertoire for orchestra, and drawing pictures while on vacation, just to start. I can add more, expand and extend and connect things together, too.

The system also gives me daily challenges from my listed disciplines, and creates randomized narratives around a group of characters (fixers) who live in the city and push you to do “jobs” for them… all of which are just more motivation to spend time doing the forms of creative practice I want to grow for myself. The value of work shifts based on an internal stock market, too, so if I neglect something it pulls me that way.

I’ve been using it for a couple days, testing a tweaking the algorithm, and it is so much fun.

The system was mostly built by AI, but it does not use AI to operate. In other words, it’s now just a complex piece of stand-alone software that I own that I can use perpetually to motivate myself to do more creative work.

And that’s the kick: motivation.

I’ve gamified my creative journey. And if you find it easier to break that demotivation cycle than I do, congrats, but sometimes having that extra nudge to get off the couch and go take some pictures or work on a story, hey, it’s a make or break thing. This kind of tool motivates me.

Yes, AI does a lot of shitty things; it crushes creativity in many ways and produces garbage that people try to pass off as their own work. I’m not looking to launder the reputation of the algorithm here, but when the world hands you lemons sometimes you need to make some lemonade.

Welcome to my codex.