This blog has a bit of a reputation: As soon as we announce we are going to do something, the odd of it happening drop almost to zero. I never finished watching Transformers 3; Matt never watched that movie he promised he would after getting yelled at. So recently, I undertook something awesome, but didn’t want to announce my intentions here until I finished: I earned an achievement on Xbox 360 every day for 180 consecutive days. And, to celebrate, I’m going to interview myself.
Why would you do that?
Well, I started out completely accidentally. I got a lot of new xbox games for Christmas and spent a healthy chunk of time over the holidays playing them. I was earning achievements left and right, and as an avid Achievement Hunter, this was great. At one point, I realized I had gotten achievements for something like ten consecutive days. At this point I thought “I wonder how long I can keep this streak going” and the challenge was born. It was born of curiosity but grew into determination. It grew from “can I do this” to “I can do this.”
How hard was it?
It wasn’t easy. First of all, achievements have a variable rate of effort to reward. Some are as easy as putting in a disc and pressing start, others can take months or even years of effort to pull off. So the challenge wasn’t as simple as “play xbox for 15 minutes every day”, it was “play xbox for an indeterminate amount of time every day.”
Secondly, people assume that you’re just playing video games, but this isn’t the case. You need to plan out how you’re going to get your achievements and play in a very analytical way. There were many days where I would play a game I had little interest in to grind out an achievement before I could switch to playing a game I wanted for fun. Trying something like this really changes the way you play video games.
Thirdly, every day means every day. It means you need to load up Games For Windows LIVE games on your girlfriend’s laptop when you go on a trip. It means you need to bring an xbox with you to Las Vegas on your honeymoon. There’s an inherent sacrifice to “every day”, and not everyone would or could do it. You have to really want it.
Okay, we covered why, now lets cover how. How did you pull that off?
My wife was a huge support. She knew I was bringing an xbox with me on our honeymoon, and still decided to marry me, so that was obviously huge. I’m not sure she ever understood why I was doing it, but she recognized that it was important to me and supported me 100%. That was huge. Doing this would be impossible without the support of everyone you live with.
Also, achievementhunter.com and trueachievements.com were indispensable throughout the journey. Their guides helped me plan how to earn the achievements, and the statistics helped me plan which achievements to get.
And of course, me being a giant nerd, I made a spreadsheet to track my progress.
This is the nature of my insanity.
Were there any close calls?
Oh, definitely. There was one day when I literally got the achievement at 11:59 PM. Another time there was a huge snowstorm that had everyone for miles in every direction without power for days. By some miracle however, my house was in a tiny pocket that still had electricity. I still don’t know how that happened.
Why did you stop? Did you miss a day?
I didn’t miss a day, I stopped of my own choosing. Originally I had intended to do it for a year to prove that I could. However, I got to a point where I got really good at it – I had it down to a formula. I knew that I COULD go a year of it, and suddenly I didn’t need to do the whole year. I decided six months was as good a figure as any, and 180 seemed like a nice round number.
Would you recommend people do this?
Yes and no. It depends on what your motivation would be.
It’s not a particularly fun way to play xbox – you play in a very analytical way, and you don’t get to just relax and turn off your brain for a bit. You often don’t get to play particular games – for example, I’d been meaning to replay Grand Theft Auto IV but since I had gotten almost all the achievements the first time I played it years ago, I couldn’t dedicate 30+ hours to a game I wouldn’t earn achievements in.
Also, if you’re just trying to boost your gamerscore, I wouldn’t recommend this either. I wound up saving specific easy achievements for when I needed them – vacations and such. Rather than earning as many achievements as I could, I earned them in a very measured way which probably resulted in fewer overall achievements.
That said, I would totally recommend the experience of doing something for 180 days. Whether it’s playing video games, writing your novel, drawing or something else. I would absolutely recommend finding something you enjoy and forcing yourself to make time for it every day. When you realize you can it’s an incredibly rewarding experience.
What did you learn?
In short: if you can do something for 180 consecutive days, you can do anything for 180 consecutive days. If you can do it with video games, you can do it with exercise, starting a business – anything. Learning that you have that determination is incredibly useful.
What’s next?
Well, I’m going to finish playing GTA IV again and spend some time watching Breaking Bad to get caught up to the live episodes as soon as possible. I’ve got a few other irons in the fire, but don’t want to announce them right now, just in case the curse of the blog causes them not to happen.
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