I am a procrastinator. Or, what do you call someone who waits and waits and waits until it is too late to do it and never does it in the end? Like a super procrastinator? Procrastinator+? Maybe just lazy… In any case, I am that, or at least I was until I played Persona 5.

People who may not have played Persona 5 or its predecessors might think, in this context and by the title of this article, that it is a house cleaning, chore doing simulator like the Sims but more boring. No, well at least Persona 5 is not that. I can’t speak on the 4 others, as this is my first foray into the Persona series, but I can make a pretty solid assumption that any of the others are not that.

For those who have not played the game, it has a story that is inline with a lot of anime, full of crazy costume changes ala sailor moon, and a cat car (just a few seats short to be in a Miyazaki movie). The story centers on a young highschool student who gets the powers to go into the palaces created by the deep darkness in deplorable people’s hearts and, by changing into a flashy outfit and conjuring your inner rebellion (your Persona), you fight monsters and ultimately the evil person and make them change.

Well at least that is half of the game.

The other half of the game is being a normal highschool student. You take the train to school, you attend classes, and then after work you have many choices most of which progress the time forward until it is the next day and then you do it all over again. While this might sound boring, or like a simulator, it is not either of those.

Your character has 5 stats: guts, knowledge, kindness, proficiency, and charm. All of these can be increased during your time before, during, and after school and on the weekend day. (In Japan apparently they only Sunday off. Yikes!) There is an emphasis to use your time wisely as the calendar seems to always be counting down. On some days when you take the train to work you get a seat on the crowded car and you can read a book you might have bought previously which makes one stat go up. Or after school you can study at a Diner in Shibuya and have a steak that reminds you of home, which boosts your knowledge for studying and your kindness due to the steak. There is this sense that you should not waste your time. I don’t think there are even many options for you to waste your time (a very Japanese game, indeed).

These stats are not useless either. It is explained that the better and more well-rounded of a person you are, the stronger you are in the palaces of the bad people. It pays off to be productive, who knew.

So that brings me to the last few weeks. I haven’t beaten the game yet; it is long and I am busy (and not just scrolling through instagram busy), but it has already had a intrinsic effect on me. The last few weeks I have been whipping my book out on my 10 minute train ride instead of just listening to music. I have been doing dishes immediately and sitting down to write and writing. I have been going to work out inside of spending that time coming up with reasons why I shouldn’t. Somewhere in the close to 20 hours of playing the game I came to a silent realization: “Why am I more worried to waste time as a fictional character than in my own life?”

This focus on making all of your days count, struck a chord in me that no feel goody quote on Instagram or TED talk about procrastination could or has done. It was through doing things over and over, day after day between fighting monsters, and seeing the progress and benefits slowly accrue, that I realized I needed to live my own life this way if I wanted to get anywhere and fight my own monsters. And that is what I have been doing and I feel much better for it. If he could go to school all day and then talk to people important in his life and then study in the late hours of the night then I could too, and I am not even fighting any monsters!

I’ll say it once and I’ll say it a million times. Games are like no other form of art or media, because it is with games by which you do. Instead of watching or listening or reading, I was doing. I was being a productive persona and bettering myself and feeling grateful for that time and effort. I felt these feelings (although perhaps a bit more distant) and because of that I knew I could do these things in my own life. It is only by doing in the virtual world that I knew I could do in the physical world, and be a better person because of it.

Thank you Persona 5!