Online gaming and e-commerce are some areas where people continuously develop new habits. Through online gaming, people improve their habit of analysing tough situations, and some make tough choices in difficult situations. Such habits help them achieve goals in their lives.
You can say that competitive online environments are the hub for developing healthy habits among people. Not only in gaming, but they also become more skilled in bringing changes to their life.
In this blog, we will discuss how people form habits in online environments. The psychology of forming habits, and how the online competitive environment is responsible for habit formation – we will discuss them all.
The Psychology of Habit Formation
Human beings form habits with repeated behaviour. At the initial stage, you might like doing it, and as time goes you do that without even thinking about it. In most cases, there is a reward waiting for you after you achieve your targets, which motivates you to do it again.
For example, if you practice rummy against a non-playable character (NPC), that opponent adjusts its difficulty level similarly to yours. The intention is to make it easier for you to win and give you a dopamine hit (the feel-good hormone to alleviate your mood). Once you experience a good feeling, your brain wants to do it more.
You can apply a similar strategy in your daily life to achieve your goals. Once you start a new course or study a new subject, set easier, achievable targets. When you manage to achieve the target, you feel motivated to do even more difficult tasks.
Now, this becomes a conscious decision to change your behaviour, different from habit forming.
What Makes Online Environments Competitive?
People and business organisations have understood how habit works in an online competitive environment. This is why the concept of gamification has started to be popular in education and professional areas.
Gaming elements like a leaderboard, point system, and badges are becoming a part of the modern education system. These same key elements from online games that help form gaming habits are now carefully used in the online study. Consequently, the online environment for study becomes competitive and engaging.
Students motivate themselves to do better and go to the top of the leaderboard. Besides bringing competitiveness in the field, it also helps them form a habit of improving their performance.
In professional areas, the habit-forming elements are used to make a healthy habit of performing well. Professionals motivate themselves to achieve certain points to be the best-performing employees.
How Competition Accelerates Habit Formation
Compared to playing offline games or performing in the local office, in an online environment, you compare your performance with a wide range of peers. For example, when you play card games with your friends in your room, you only know who is the best player among you. As soon as you play on a rummy app, you get to compare your performance with a wide range of players.
You feel the competition to top the leaderboard, so you focus more on your performance. Unknowingly, you form the habit of playing regularly.
Similarly, when your performance in the local office of your company goes online, you compare yourself with the top-performing professionals from other offices. Even if you are on top, you can see someone catching up with your score, so you push yourself to outperform yourself. In doing so, you are also habituated to the competition and become the best performer among all employees.
Design Strategies That Reinforce Habits
Modern technologies are also helping form healthy habits. Artificial intelligence, in this regard, has revolutionised how players involve themselves in the game. AI analyses your total time spent in the game and sends you a notification periodically.
If you have been playing for a long time, the in-game AI might even log you off the app. You are only allowed to log in after a certain period. So, players can now form healthy habits, maintaining a balance between gaming and promoting good health.
How Users Can Regain Control
As technologies are helping users to form new habits, it is also helping to break out of them. Personalised reminders of how long they have been using the app help them regain control over their habits.
Besides, if you are using mobile-based apps, you get the option of turning off app notifications that encourage you to play. In the case of professional areas, organizations can focus on maintaining a work-life balance for their employees. After all, work-life balance is so important that it motivates approximately 78% of employees to change jobs.
Strategies to recognize and break negative digital habits.
Conclusion
Online competitiveness significantly motivates employees, gamers to form specific habits. While it helps them improve skills to excel in their respective fields, it is important to have control over their habits. Modern technologies play a key role in this context. These technologies help them build new habits and also help regain control over their habits
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