If you’re eager to motivate yourself, your coworkers, and improve your career it may be time to implement a little more fun competition into your workplace. Why? Here are three ways fun competition can help you succeed.

1. Strengthen Bonds and Professional Network:

Implementing a little more fun into your workdays is great and, when it’s a fun competition, it will help strengthen your bonds with your coworkers. You can also create fun competitions with your professional network and strengthen those important bonds too!

2. Accountability is Key:

A lot of people struggle to achieve the goals they set for themselves but always meet the expectations that others put on them. If you or your coworkers fall into this category, the accountability that comes with a fun competition will keep you on track and help you succeed.

3. Push Yourself and Others to Rise to Top Performance:

The best thing that fun competitions do is inspire everyone to rise to their top level of performance. You’re less likely to push yourself to learn and grow at such a rapid rate if there aren’t any stakes. And fun competitions are a way to create stakes without putting too much on the line.

Now that you fully understand the benefits of fun competition at work, you can reap the benefits of it ASAP. Here are a few ways to implement more fun competition in your workplace or with your professional network.

1. The Track and Prize System:

If you share some measurable metric with your coworkers or people in your professional network, the track and prize system works well. It’s basically this: everyone puts a little money into the pot and decides on agreed-upon prizes like gift cards, event tickets, or food. Then, you all track this performance metric and whoever gets to agreed-upon targets first wins a prize!

2. Big Goals and Big Bets:

When it comes to big goals, there can be a spirit of fun competition along the way. Whether it’s New Years Resolutions that are related to work or even important stepping-stones in your 5-year plans, share these with your coworkers or people in your professional network. Then, it’s time to place your bets. Although a reward system can work well here, the most effective method for accountability in long-term goals is saying “if I don’t do this then I have to…” From shaving your head to taking everyone else out to an expensive steak dinner, the stakes can soar as high as you need them to in order to keep everyone motivated and on track.

3. Competitive Code Sprints:

Whether you’re learning a new programming language or just want to sharpen your existing skills, competitive code sprints are a great way for technical professionals to tap into the benefits of fun competition. Enlist your coworkers or people in your professional network for a bit of competition and see who can finish their code sprint in the first place!

4. Productivity Races:

Start your day by making a to-do list and sorting each item into sizes-small, medium, and large. Have your coworkers do the same and compare lists, making sure they’re similar in size and tasks are similar in scope. Assign a point value to each size of each task and then it’s off to the races! See who can get the most points by the end of the day, loser has to buy drinks at happy hour or buy lunch the next day.

Use the same spirit of fun competition you feel when watching your favorite sport to improve your motivation, your skills, and your career as a whole. Plus, when you implement fun competition, you’re not just reaping these rewards by yourself, you’re sharing them with your coworkers and strengthening your professional network bonds for years to come.

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