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What a game teaches you ?
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A post about what a game teaches you ?
What is coming up ?
It will be a short post today, so lets get going.
What a game teaches you ?
Over the weekend, me and a few friends went out for an indoor game of “Axe Throwing“.
If you don’t know what it is - see picture below. It is a nice and fun game to spend some time. There is a target board which every player will aim to hit with the axe. You get maximum points if you either hit the bullseye or the 2 little circles on the top left and right.
You can only throw the axe from a distance. You should generate enough power for the axe to hit the target and stick. A little more power and the axe bounces after hitting the board and a little less power, it does not stick to the board.
In summary, along with the right aiming angle, you should apply the right amount of power to land the axe at the desired target.
How did it go ?
It was super fun as I mentioned earlier, but what made it more fun was the competition.
Today’s post is about that bit, “Competition” and what I learned.
It was a 2 player game where each player throws the axe. There were about 5 rounds and each round had different rules. Points were given for each player’s throw. In the end, the winner was declared based on the total number of points gained over all the rounds.
So how did I fare ?
I started pretty much fine, most of my throws landed pretty well.
As the rounds progressed, my throws lacked enough power (sometimes high, sometimes low), which means most of the throws did not land on the target. At one point, I missed the technique completely and the axe landed horribly out of the target board.
It was not a professional game but I said to myself, I should improve.
So I did some adjustments to the technique, listened to the advice of the trainer. I bettered the speed and the angle of the throw. I watched a few guys doing it well and tried to learn from their technique.
At the end of it, I ended up at position 4 (just short of podium finish) out of 12 people who played the game.
That’s pretty amazing for a guy who was playing it the first time and did screw up a number of throws.
What did the game teach ?
I have listed down 3 learnings that you should find useful in your lives as well.
Learning 1 - Life is like a game
The biggest learning of them all - Life is like a game. You start with no knowledge/skill and you grow with every experience (throw in this case). Each experience has something to teach you. The key is, are you listening to it and paying attention to it ?
You can learn from your friends, your peers, your parents or any other random person, who you learn from is not important, what you learn is !
Also, just like you lose a few rounds in a game, you have bad experiences in life. Bad parts are part of your life like the good ones.
What is important is to learn from them and come back stronger. Mourning and sulking back on the bad parts does no good, look ahead in life and apply the learnings.
What do you think ?
Learning 2 - Overconfidence kills you
When you hit a flow in your game and you are at the top of the game - the eventual happens, you fall into the trap of over confidence. How you tackle this and fight it is key to your growth.
When my throws started landing right on the target, I put myself at the top of the game, I thought this is so simple and I am a master. It was not so.
I started floundering the moment I became over confident.
If you consider yourself an expert at any skill and see no need to improve, my friend, you need to reflect.
Life is about growth, the moment you think you have reached the pinnacle, your growth stagnates and you don’t move. The is over confidence.
Over confidence kills your growth, kills your ability to listen to others and learn from others. Being humble opens numerous doors of learning and growth.
I was no expert at the game but I felt that way, I had to kill this illusion and look at what others are doing good. I had to learn from them to come back stronger.
It is the same with life - bouts of overconfidence, bring you down. Fight this menace and you are sure to grow once again.
Learning 3 - Focus on process and not on outcomes
I believe that focussing on the outcomes reduces your productivity.
Instead focus on the process to get to the outcome. Continuously improve it with feedback and reflection, the outcomes will then follow.
In the game, if I had focussed on the bad outcomes, I wouldn’t have improved. Instead I would have sulked at the bad outcomes.
When I started focusing on my process, I bettered my speed, I adjusted my throwing angle and the results starting coming my way.
It is the same with life - your outcomes are not the culprit, your process is.
If your outcomes are not favourable - look at your routines and process, adjust them, improve them with feedback and reflection, outcomes will follow.
These have been 3 learnings for me from the game, what did you think about them? I hope you found them useful.
Don’t hesitate to let me know your views.
I end this section here.
What is coming up ?
In the next weeks, I will write about the in-demand tech skills. I will be starting with the below 3 topics
Cloud
DevOps
Agile
Somehow these 3 have similar inception and are largely interconnected, so it makes sense to go at them.
I hope you find them useful.
Do you have a different topic in mind ? No worries, Just drop it in the comments or reply over email.
Hope you had insightful time reading the post, if you would like me to write about any other topic, don’t hesitate to hit reply to this email and send me the name of the topic.
If you would like to give me any other feedback about the content, don’t hesitate to reply either.
Warm Regards,
Mohammed Sameer
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