Skillorum has finally been fully released.

Skillorum was developed for one simple reason: I felt I wasn't doing enough. I put in over two thousand hours into Runescape as a teenager. For a long time I couldn't get over what a waste of time it was and if I had put it into something real, I'd be further in life or happier somehow.

But, as we all know, real life isn't as easy — or fun — to grind out as a videogame. So why not? Let's be honest, as fun as the games can be (and often they are quite the opposite), real life beats it in every way. I would much rather be amazing at something in real life than have some level 99.

That is why I made Skillorum. To use the same tricks that hooked my brain into levelling up a videogame character for 10 hours a day, and use them to improve my actual life instead.

If you've poured thousands of hours into videogames, you have exhibited the persistence to do something amazing outside of a game.

What Exactly Is Skillorum?

Skillorum turns your life into an RPG. You create your own real-life skills and quests, then simply work on them and gain XP in your skills for how much time you put in. You can create tasks that link to these, and see exactly how you've been spending your time.

The Hook

I researched what it was that made people put in so much time into games like OSRS, WoW, Stardew Valley, etc...

What I came up with were six hooks:

1. Visual progress — often and in as many places as you can.
2. Measurable progress — you know exactly how much you have improved.
3. Reward for effort — whatever you do, you are always progressing in some way.
4. Long-term measurable goals with clear paths — it may be hard and difficult, but you can do it.
5. Multiple things to progress — if you get bored, you can always do something else and still progress.
6. Intermittent unpredictable rewards — think of a boss with a one in 500 chance to drop a rare item.

The last one leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Currently that is the only one that hasn't been utilised. One day I hope to be able to use it for good, but today is not that day.

Hooks 1 through 5, however, have been baked into the very design of Skillorum. Made specifically to help keep you motivated and engaged with your own life.

The Benefits

As the first tester of the app, I can say that it has helped me in the ways I had hoped:

• Motivation — I'm motivated to keep pushing myself a little longer just to get to the next level.
• Less wasted time — using my old time-wasting procrastination crutches now just feels like an XP-waste and I do them far less.
• Time tracking — I can see where I've been putting my time.

I even got into a daily guitar playing habit. I've got up to level 6 already. Simply tracking myself and levelling up my guitar skill has been vital in keeping me playing every day.

I also used it to track my reading, so I could see exactly how long it took me to read each book. I managed to read as many books in one month as I did in six last year.

What It Taught Me

Firstly, and perhaps most importantly: I'm not lazy. I suppose it's been clear all this time. While there's many things you can call someone putting in an extraordinary amount of time into a videogame, you certainly can't call them lazy. The real problem is that my focus was misplaced.

Videogames give you the feedback loop, real life does not. The most important thing about a feedback loop is seeing your progress.

Progress is hard to see when you're in the middle of it. You don't notice yourself improving day-to-day because you're too close to the work. The gap between where you started and where you are now is rarely visible. So having that evidence of your work shows you how you've improved. Not only can you literally see how many hours you've put in, you can concretely say that you've got to level 23.

What's Next

Skillorum is out, but it's nowhere near finished. It works, I use it every day, and it's already done the thing I built it for — but there's a long list of features I want to add and plenty I want to fix. Nicer animations, more polish, all the bits that make an app feel properly alive. That will come.

For now it's completely free. No ads, no subscription — a genuinely terrible financial decision, but the right one for getting it into people's hands.

So if you've ever looked back at thousands of hours in a game and felt that quiet "what if I'd aimed that at something real" — this was built for you. You're not lazy. Your focus was just pointed at the wrong skill tree.

Give it a go. And if you've got feedback, I really do want it — I'm using this thing every day, so a good idea from you helps me as much as it helps you.