You too?

Yes, yes, I know. “Gamification” is the new cool kid on the block. Or is it already so “January 2012″? Points, badges, ribbons, medals and whatnot is being given away by pretty much every consumer app under the sun.

The scary part is that “Gamification” is very often part of an answer to the question “How will you guys grow from 100 to 100 million users?”. The most important part is to have a killer product, i.e. create actual value for the user, before you slap any sort of points or badges on to your app. Lately a few services have popped up that got their game mechanics right from the get-go: Codecademy and Turntable.fm being two of my favorite.

Boost your productivity with beer!

Now, it’s relatively easy to gamify your app. But how do you gamify your inbox? I didn’t know that I already knew until Andrew from Brainscape made me realize it. In a typical Friday afternoon banter-session in our shared office space, I was explaining Andrew how I get through my inbox, which is my worst enemy, on Friday afternoons. It’s pretty simple: For every mail I reply, I get to take one sip of an ice-cold Corona. Not the best Mexican beer in the world, I know, but today it was the one that was available. And so when you hit that “Send” button and immediately take a sip, it refreshes your mind and motivates you to dive right into that next mail.

Try it out! It’s a cool feature! It costs a little money, but is very easy to install on your desk and to use!

So here it is. And if only a single person’s productivity on a Friday afternoon goes up because of this post, I accomplished my mission.