Why is strength so much more unimportant than memorizing 250 words?
It's not more unimportant. The third rule was added because several people felt that the physical requirements were excessive enough to discourage them from leveling entirely, and I didn't feel comfortable scaling them back to something like "walk 30 minutes without stopping".
That does not seem right. If you, arbitrarily, decide that some skills are optional, others not, you devalue those that are optional. The whole point of the leveling system is to encourage people to fill their gaps, in this case physical, handicaps aside. And the first thing of a journey of 1000 miles is the first step: Make the L1 requirement for sports easier, though "strength" is pretty easy already.
It would be maybe better to know how many levels you plan to make. If it is, say, 100, it may be better to start with the smallest step possible. If it is 10, then you are right in setting the requirements higher.
"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." -- Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love
This post is a followup to Leveling IRL. Thanks to SarahC, taryneast, Benquo, AdeleneDawner and MixedNuts, we have an outline of level 1. At this point I feel it's more productive to post it as-is than discuss it further:
The list has some glaring omissions, like math or chess, because I don't yet know of a crisp enough way to test those skills. Ideas are welcome! Also it seems very likely that some items on the list are wildly miscalibrated, some of them will turn out to be too hard for a beginner, and others will be too easy for anyone with a pulse. I'll be happy to hear about such miscalibrated requirements from the people who achieved them or at least tried :-)
And here's what I think the rules should look like:
Personally, I'm going to try to make the level, but already know that some tasks will be difficult. I hope it's the same way for you.