A game with many games
In a fast-paced world, the "all or nothing" mindset is both common and incredibly distracting. To many, life is a single game where a flawless performance in each moment determines success or failure.
But there isn’t one single human on the planet that lives that reality… From sport to entertainment, the highest achievers treat their craft as a complex series of interconnected games, each with its own rhythms and rules.
A series of games
Life comprises multiple, parallel games: career, fitness, relationships, etc. Within each, there are smaller, sequential games: your performance today, this week, this month. Some are cooperative games, while others are solitary. Information is always incomplete.
Playing requires, first and foremost, knowing what games you want to play and which ones you're good at. If you don't know, find out.
Success requires adopting a long-term mindset, thinking in years and decades to break these games down and execute. Imagine you aspire to publish a novel… How many people have done that? It must be hard.
Well, writing just one page a day for a year gets you a 365-page book.
The journey is measured by consistent effort over time. The things we perceive as difficult simply require dedication and a bit of luck.
It’s not perfection
I often fall into the trap of glorifying one-off performances. Sport and entertainment reward perfection, but that perfection is an unlikely outcome, fostered by years of dedicated practice.
And that’s what work is. That’s what being a professional is.
Take the book analogy: statistically, half of your pages will be below average relative to your norm. Does this mean you should quit? That you should hide those and never share them?
You could say the same about your job, workouts, or first dates. Half of them will be below average relative to your norm. For a perfectionist, that can be hard to swallow.
Consistent practice and the willingness to share your work, even when it’s not perfect, elevate your overall quality over time. If you’re chasing perfection, it makes sense to quit when you realize you missed the mark. In the name of in the name of consistency and progress, that’s not true.
You might have biffed today, but putting in the work over years will make you successful. Your writing may have been terrible today, but it might strike a chord tomorrow.
Never has this been more apparent than today. It takes one hit song, one hit book, one Tweet, for someone to go viral. If you want to sell a product, run a business, become a musician, your best path is to create and ship as often as possible. Because every piece of “art” is an opportunity.
What does this mean?
Life is a sequential, cooperative game played with highly imperfect information. The only effective strategy is:
- Generate ideas about what might work.
- Test those ideas in the real world.
- If successful, keep going. If not, pivot and try something different.
We can use the internet, books, AI, and our networks as shortcuts to what works. I call this "hypothesis-driven personal development."
The downside? It takes time. The upside? It works.