MinMaxMe Mission statement

I've created and abandoned more blogs than I probably should have. This new one, in particular, comes hot on the heels of another one that has only managed to make it to 6 posts. Not that any of the others were much more successful. So what makes this one different? Not a great deal, to be honest. But I feel like at least this one has a neat title that sums up what I want to achieve with it, and the type of posts and topics I'll be writing here. So. MinMaxMe. What does that mean? Min Maxing is a practice I first heard of around a Dungeons and Dragons game table. As I understand it, it essentially refers to squeezing out the most you can from the dice rolls that the fates have blessed or cursed you with. In that particular context, it meant pushing one stat higher than the rest so that my character would be incredibly capable at a specific task. In that case, punching things in the face. More broadly, it refers to generally minimising losses or weaknesses and maximising gains or strengths. It's mostly applied to games, but with this whole gamification craze happening, why can't it apply to other decisions in life? Take weight loss, for example. To me (and to Weight Watchers and other programs) it's a simple equation. In human body terms, food is energy. It can be stored as fat or expended during exercise. Food coming in is energy input, exercise is energy output. When output exceeds input, energy comes from storage. Net result: weight loss! But there are other factors. Different foods fill you up at different rates, and convert to body fat in different ways. Different exercises work the body differently. Finding the right combination of pleasing yet filling foods and pleasing yet energy burning activities will make weight loss a lot easier than eating rubbish healthy foods while trudging on a treadmill. So essentially this blog will be a chronicle of my attempts to gamify my life and maximise my potential. I'm not even a fan of gamification so I'm not going to take it incredibly far in terms of enumerating everything I do, but I will take note of particular activities and habits I change and try to present a reasonable estimation of how the changes impact my life for good or bad. So let's do this, giant invisible dice roller in the sky. Let's Min Max Me.