What we can learn about defining progression in life and business from computer games.
How to win.
I have spent a long time playing computer games; quite how long is probably not worth documenting here, largely because my significant other might finally have an answer to the question of why a large number of home improvement projects remain un-started.
It seems obvious, but it’s worth mentioning that at the heart of computer games are systems. Players begin with little knowledge of the system. Equally, players are ill-equipped to beat the system, and hence progression is required.
Progression in games can be defined in a few simple buckets.
Inventory / Equipment: the right tools of the right quality and functionality.
Player experience: the number of tasks completed to indicate an increase in experience.
Skill: how much the human playing the game has understood the mechanics and the systems.
It should come as no surprise that games parody life. There is, of course, a wide gamut of different types of computer games. Still, thankfully, at least for this blog post, these three factors are generally present in all, from Candycrush (casual mobile) to Elven Ring (hardcore open world).
The desire to play games comes from two deep-seated aspects of our personal makeup. Our genetically programmed behaviour of trying to apply order and meaning to chaos and disorder. And secondly, to feed dopamine to our noodles through achievement and reward (marking us out as special).
Computer games are a simplification of our daily lives and chores because otherwise, our life would be a game (one to think about there), or the game would be our life.
This level of simplification lays bare parts of our psychology that we can apply to different aspects of what we do, personally and at work. Perhaps less so on the home front, but I continue to hold out some hope for the process of accumulating brownie points and my ability to spend them on hapless ventures down the pub.
Our first takeaway should be that we need to apply some definition or measurability in order to be able to frame up progress, reward and achievement. In business, these are handily referred to as Key Performance Indicators or KPIs.
Setting your KPIs is more important than you might initially give credit to. More famously, setting the right question is more important than the answer. Questions seek to understand, clarify, frame and evaluate, whereas answers are temporary responses which can change over time. KPIs are the same; setting the right one doesn’t seek to define the approach to achieve them, as this may change, but seeks to drive the right behaviour, or put another way, outlines the achievement system.
Nailing down your achievement system for business and personal life is going to be very different. I feel like I might have bitten off slightly more than I can chew by going broad and suggesting this post how this might work for both, so I’m going to operate a sleight of hand and just move on, with a view to returning to this topic more expansively in another one of my frequently infrequent outings.
Let’s assume, then, that you’ve got one or more achievements defined, for example, make more healthy dinners or, in a business sense, increase the number of people visiting my website. Or, in the world of computer games, kill 10 giant spiders.
Let’s go back to the three things that games use to drive progression and reimagine them in our life, work or home environment;
Inventory and Equipment
Having the right tools for the job in hand is crucial to timely success. Think, cutting down a tree with a butter knife versus a chainsaw. Both will work, but the right one will decrease markedly the time required.
What do you ideally need and can practically lay your hands on? Games tell us you might not hit the nail on the head with the first strike of your hammer, so be prepared to try, fail and improve on your tools.
By way of example, a whisk might be a starting point because it’s nearby and ready to help make our healthy meal, but we may find it takes way too long to get all the lumps out of the cake mixture, so we need a food mixer. Better to try the tool you have in your inventory and then work out what needs to be upgraded.
Player Experience
This one fits nicely next on the list because finding the right tools, as an example, will only be shaken out by increasing your experience in the task at hand. But also because our experience of using the tools will increase as we repeat the exercise, making us more effective. There are lots to go at in terms of player experience because the task may require several skills…
Skill
Repeating something should make us better at it; we’re learning animals, after all. We should internalise this to avoid early disappointment in doing anything. On day one, we might not have the skill; we will need to evolve, so don’t expect to win the game, complete the KPI or harvest the reward straight away. Patience, practice and perseverance are going to be the watchwords which drive us forward here. We may have the right tools but not the skill to control them to reach the desired outcome.
FUN!
This has been strangely omitted until this point, but it’s probably the most operative and important word. The reason we play games and become better at them is not just the reward; it’s because they’re (hopefully!) genuinely fun to play.
Whatever we do in life and business, we should look to embrace our own personal sense of fun or try to find ways to make things fun and enjoyable.
Apart from anything doing something which is fun and enjoyable is a surefire way to make sure you become good at it; you won’t ditch the whole plan when you hit the first boss encounter in the game or the first disappointment in turning out a healthy dinner (I’ve burned a few vegetables in my time), or the dire result of your master plan to entice more people to your website (I’ve also failed at this more than once!).
IN SUMMARY
I was trying to work out if this post made sense and had enough insight in it to make you read all the way down here. I couldn’t call it honestly, so I thought I’d do a summary to see if that helped.
Understanding the why of doing something, the how and the what, is critical, but equally being thoughtful of the process of mastery and building the physiology of yourself into the process.
You will not succeed on your first try, but if you set out with a good measurable understanding, then you’ll know what needs to be tweaked on the next attempt.
On a day-to-day basis, it can be hard to think in this way, so taking a different perspective and imagining how it might play out if it were a computer game might be a neato way of inciting some additional thought to your personal and business progression.
And that is all I’ve got to say about that, at least for now. Thank you, as always, for allowing me the privilege of your time; it’s nice to have you here. See you next time.