Life is game! Join me?
Almost six years ago I wrote an article called “Real-Life Role Playing: What is your Profession?” and then turned my life into a game, tracking my life quests with pen and paper (and text). I had so much fun, but I knew it was just the start. I had a dream that one day, you’d be able to log in to Nerd Fitness, create your character and your own Epic Quest list, check off those quests as you complete them, earn XP, level up, and share this profile with your friends.
We’ve been quietly (and furiously) working behind the scenes for the past year on this feature. You can now create a full Nerd Fitness Avatar and actually turn your life into an RPG! Now that my book Level Up Your Life is officially out nationwide, I’m so pumped that we can make this a big part of Nerd Fitness moving forward! This character is also going to tie into a big portion of the Nerd Fitness ecosystem over the next number of years.
Speaking of Level Up Your Life, if you’ve read the book, can you please go leave an honest review over on Amazon? More than ever these reviews can be the difference for somebody who isn’t familiar with Nerd Fitness or my writing! THANK YOU!
Note: This is a crazy, awesome, evolving platform; consider this current launch a version 1.0.
How it Works
If you visit the following link: NerdFitness.com/Level-Up, you can sign up with your email address and create your Nerd Fitness character. Note: if you have already purchased Nerd Fitness Academy or Nerd Fitness Yoga, it will link this character to that account!
Everybody will start as a Rebel, but if you are interested in nerding out a bit more, you can pick which Class most lines up with your training goals:
- Warrior: strength training, powerlifting, olympic lifting, weights
- Scout: running, swimming, biking, endurance
- Adventurer: exploration, hiking, camping, climbing, travel excursions
- Ranger: cross training, metabolic conditioning, jack of all trades
- Assassin: parkour, gymnastics, bodyweight training, movement
- Monk: martial arts
- Druid: yoga, tai chi, meditation, nature
Note: This is just a fun way to classify your avatar a bit more, and you can change classes as often as you’d like depending on how you’re feeling! And there’s no reason you can’t add quests that might belong to another Class.
Next, you can pick which hand-drawn character art (Courtesy of NF artist Darryl Jones) best describes you, write your origin story, and then create your list of quests and missions determining what kind of game you want to play!
To clarify: you’ll have TWO leveling systems tied to your NF Character:
- Your Epic Quest (EQ) level, displayed in the badge icon on the right side on your character page. This is created and maintained by you, creating your own quests and assigning point values.
- Your Nerd Fitness (NF) level, displayed to the left of the experience bar on your character page. If you have the NF Academy, the quests completed there will fill up that XP bar. If you do NOT have the NF Academy, that XP bar and your NF Level will be greyed out for the time being.
Later this year, we’ll be bringing the Nerd Fitness questing system to other NF products (like Yoga) and all free accounts, but for now that portion will remain with just the Academy as we make sure the Epic Quest system functions properly and is scalable for tens of thousands of Rebels! Thanks for your patience!
So what are you waiting for? Let’s get started! To create your character, go here.
Have some fun and mess around with it, create categories, assign experience point values, and start tracking your missions. Again, this all ties closely to my book Level Up Your Life, and should get you started down the path towards a more adventurous life!
We have a full help and FAQ page here. PLEASE READ THIS! If you’re still lost after checking that out, email us at [email protected].
To answer your next question: We already have a ton of features and tweaks we want to make on this system, and we’ve already begun development on that too! We’ll reach out soon to hear how things are going and what things you’d like to us to add to the system.
If you happen to find any bugs or cracks that cause a problem with your character, please email us at [email protected].
Some Example Character Pages!
Now, one of my favorite parts about this whole thing is seeing just how differently everybody is playing the game of life. I wanted to share with you some examples of the characters we have created at Team Nerd Fitness. Feel free to get as creative and weird as you want!
- Steve (Assassin), Rebel Leader: Steve has an alter ego, a superhero version of himself who is capable of far greater things than anybody ever expected of him. His name? Rebel One. Steve and his alter ego are like a modern day Indiana Jones: making discoveries, helping those in need, and creating a lifetime of stories and adventures. He dutifully splits time between the two lives, cycling and transforming with each completed quest or mission.
- Staci (Warrior) heads up Rebel Operations at Nerd Fitness. Staci’s main focus fitness wise is powerlifting – so the majority of her quests are lifting related. Although recently she has been enjoying gymnastics and yoga, and has been focusing on meditation and being more mindful. Staci’s epic quest list focuses around her love for learning and trying out new things.
- Darryl (Warrior with some Monkish tendencies) is the Nerd Fitness Design Wizard. In between deadlifts he’s usually thinking of ways to make the website look cooler or a new shirt design. If he’s not designing, drawing or lifting, he’s training to reach his next TaeKwonDo belt or making something out of wood in his garage.
- Alek (Scout) is a developer with Nerd Fitness. He spends most of his time building out features and products. If something isn’t working right on the website, it’s definitely his fault. He’s a scout because he plays competitive Ultimate Frisbee, but also begrudgingly performs strength training for more explosive power.
- Noel (Adventurer) is Nerd Fitness’s Rebel Chef and Support Wizard. Noel’s priorities include exploring the world, getting Nerd Fitness’s inboxes to zero, and enjoying a good cup of tea. Training-wise, she focuses on activities that will help her complete adventurous quests such as hiking long distances, training in kung fu, and occasionally lifting heavy things.
- Taylor (Druid) is the Chief Wordsmith at Nerd Fitness, and plans to focus his goals in 2016 around meditation and mindfulness. As part warrior and part ranger, he’ll also include some diverse fitness goals to keep him on his toes.
- Lauren (Rebel) brings Nerd Fitness events to life, like Camp NF and the Level Up Your Life book tour. As a Rebel, she is still trying to find the right path for her fitness journey, but currently focuses on body weight strength training, yoga, and meditation.
- Baker (Monk) is in charge of Product Development and Strategy at Nerd Fitness. He trains Brazilian Jiu Jitsu actively with his oldest of three daughters. His quests for 2016 include learning archery, piano, cooking, and ramping up his strength training.
Again, these are just examples. Use this platform however you want!
What’s Next For Nerd Fitness
This is a big step for the Nerd Fitness Rebellion!
I’ve seriously been dreaming about us being able to do something like this for YEARS and YEARS, and now we finally can visualize our alter egos right here on Nerd Fitness. I’m excited to see what kind of game you decide to play, and how I can help you along the way.
This is only the beginning of what we’ve got coming, and I’m so psyched you’ve decided to be a part of the journey as a member of the Rebellion! We’re currently on a book tour (3 more stops – come out and say hi!), and we have a series of updates planned for your NF Character.
After we add quests to NF Yoga and to free NF accounts, we’ll be working on our next premium program: Hint: it’ll help turn you into a real superhero that gets sh** done.
We’re going to continue creating new (and FREE!) features, articles, and content here on Nerd Fitness to help you live a better life. For those looking for their own walk-through, we’ll launch the occasional paid course and hosting live events. Basically, we’ll keep doing what we always do: help each other get healthier and happier in a supportive and fun way.
This community has been my entire life, and it’s been so much fun to watch it grow and evolve over the past seven years (!). I’ve learned a lot about how to best serve the Rebellion, and how to practice what I preach on Nerd Fitness: happiness, health, balance, and fun.
I’m excited to see what kind of character you create, what your origin story becomes, and how your Epic Quest takes shape.
My request to you: Leave a comment with a link to your (PUBLIC) character page so I can see what kind of character you’re creating!
If you’re on our message boards, we recommend you add your character profile link to your signature too, until we can get the message board account linked with your NF character.
-Steve and Team Nerd Fitness
PS: Speaking of leveling up your life, I wanted to give a quick shout out to my friend Ramit Sethi – he’s putting on a free mini course (registration ends tomorrow) on growing yourself in fitness, business, psychology, and relationships. I’ve learned a lot from him over the years and his free content is better than most people’s paid stuff!
PPS: One more request, just in case you forgot due to creating an awesome character above! Can you please leave an honest book review on Amazon for me? This will help others determine if this crazy idea of looking at life like a game is for them. Thanks!
