Design a Better Life

Wednesday, May 19th, 2010

Readers often ask authors, “Where do you get your ideas?” Authors vie for original and clever responses to what is entirely the wrong question. Ask instead, “How do you go from an idea to a novel (or film or game)?” and you have a more interesting topic. An idea – or a hundred ideas – does not make a game. The development is what counts.

Steps in game development include:

• Write a Game Proposal (Conceptual Design)
• Define the Tasks for Developing the Game (Technical Design)
• Create Game Assets (Code, Text, Art, Music, Sound Effects)
• Integrate the Assets to Make a Playable, Fun Game
• Track Your Progress as You Go Along
• Test the Game Play and Quality

Game development is iterative, so the developers revisit each step many times during the process of creating the game. It’s usually a messy, uncertain process – more of an art than a science – so a good road map is important to keep it from descending into pure chaos. That road map is the technical design. An idea without a plan is just a dream; with a plan, you can turn it into reality.

A Man, A Plan, A Canal – Panama

The Panama Canal was not built in a day. The French spent 13 years trying to build a sea-level canal, but they had to abandon the project after more than 22,000 workers died from malaria and accidents. The French effort failed due to insufficient planning (among other factors).

You may be able to run your life without much of a plan. That will work fine as long as you stay on level terrain, you never become sick, and no black swans crash into your windshield.

There are just three little problems with this approach – Our lives are filled with ups and downs, illness and accidents happen, and the laws of statistics decree that black swans will affect everyone’s life. If you don’t allow for them, your life project may fail.

Know Your Goals

Start by listing your goals. What do you want to accomplish with your life? Which ones do you want to happen soon, and which ones might take longer? Write them down! Goals are a lot like negotiation. You need to clearly state what you want to do, when you need it done, and what you’re willing to pay to get it.

That’s right – Nothing worthwhile is free. You will have to pay for your goals in time, money, sweat, or blood. You may have to earn some of those costs by giving up other things you enjoy doing. By writing down your goals, and what you will pay to get them, you will become clearer about what you really want.

You might find it easier (and fun) to create a story around your goals. It could be in the form of the Wikipedia entry someone might write about you ten or twenty years from now. Most successful companies and product launches start with the story of what they want to create and how customers will relate to it. Your life is a new startup venture starting today. Telling the story of what you will become will help you reach the goals that most matter to you.

Get Technical

Now that you know your goals, you can begin the technical design of your life plan. Do it in writing so that you can refer back to it later, and because writing it down forces you to focus on the details. You may get stuck at times. That’s fine – Make a note and make sure you come back to it later. A good technical design is a living document that you will revisit many times as you learn more about your goals, failures, and successes.

What goes in a technical life plan? Start with your life goals and choose your highest-priority, most urgent desires. Write each one down and think about what you need to do to accomplish it:

• When do I want this to be done?
• What resources will I need (people, money, time) to accomplish it?
• What do I need to get done before I can complete this goal?
• What are some steps I could take to make this easier?
• What are the greatest risks and obstacles? What can I do to minimize them?
• How long do I expect this project to take? How much of my time will I need to devote to it while I’m working on it?
• Once I have completed this goal, what should I work on next?

After you go through this process with several goals, go back over them and add:

• Which of my other goals are related to this one?
• How can I benefit by working on two or more of them together?

Now you can draw a time-line showing when you plan to start and complete each life project. Make sure that you are always working on at least one of your life goals, but that you don’t over-schedule yourself by trying to do too much at the same time.

No Plan Survives Contact with the Enemy

You need a plan, but you will not have enough information to plan everything until you start working on it. Keep going back to the technical design and adding details and new ideas as you discover them.

I like to keep a notebook with immediate and long-term tasks. As I complete each task, I put a check mark next to it to show that I’ve finished it. I sometimes put an X next to tasks that I decide to drop and a circle next to ones I’ve started, but not yet completed. Eventually I put a check mark in the circle.

Lori keeps a log on her computer. She lists all the tasks she wants to complete that week and each one she finishes. This lets her focus on her priorities and reminds her of what she has done. Whatever approach you use, make sure you keep track of your progress and make changes to your plan as you learn more about how to accomplish your goals.

Life Is For Learning

“I don’t know who I am, but life is for learning.” – Joni Mitchell, Woodstock

Carpenters like to say, “Measure twice; cut once.” Each time you start on one of your goals, go back to your plan and remind yourself of what you think it will take to succeed in that goal. Think about how your life has changed since you first made the goal; it may be easier or harder now.

Now is the time for detailed research. Use books, magazines, the Web, your friends, and experts to get more information about how you can accomplish the current goal. Take the time to plan your approach and how to deal with problems that may come up. Write down what you learn. Measure what you need to do, then measure it a second time to make sure.

Then get it done! If you find yourself getting stuck along the way, get your friends and family to help keep you on track. And make sure you reward yourself for every step of progress you make towards your goal. Reaching a goal is its own reward, but you may need encouragement to help you through the difficult challenges you will meet along the way. Game companies bring in pizza for the developers or have Friday night parties. They know that the rewards are cheap compared to the improvements in morale and productivity they will encourage.

Life Should Be Rewarding

In the next article in this series I will write about using game concepts to help you focus on accomplishing your goals. You will learn to design one-time and repeatable quests, award yourself (and your friends) points for achieving goals, and how to tie these into other types of rewards. Until then, keep on playing! The stakes in the game of life are as high as you choose to make them.

Tags: Goals, Life Advice, Planning for the Future
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Master the Game of Life

Wednesday, April 14th, 2010

Last week I talked about “serious games” – games with a real-world purpose. I am a bit cynical about them. While games can teach useful lessons, a good game can also be addictive. Players escape into games because their real lives suck. They get feelings of control and success in the game world that they lack in the mundane world. Jane McGonigal suggests that we channel those positive feelings into real life accomplishments.

I have a different idea – If reality sucks, and games are more fun, change the rules! Make your life into a game, and find ways to make it a game you love to play.

Who Makes the Rules?

“Who makes the rules? Someone else.” – Oingo Boingo, “No Spill Blood”

Most of us think of gaming as, “Someone else made the rules. We play by them.” That seems obvious and sensible. But that’s no longer the only type of game. Role-playing games have a “game master” (GM) who has special privileges. The GM can interpret and even modify the rules. The GM and all of the players are responsible for using their imaginations to create original stories that go beyond the rules.

And that leads to a strange truth about role-playing games: The rules don’t really matter!

I have seen similar campaigns based on wildly different role-playing game systems. And I’ve seen wildly different scenarios within a single game system. It is the imaginations of the GM and the players that make a good or a bad game, not the rules they use.

Of course, that’s just gaming, not real life. Or is it?

Life Is a Role-Playing Game

“Life is a cabaret, old chum. Come to the cabaret!” – Liza Minnelli in Cabaret

Read some personal column ads and you’ll soon find the words, “No games.” Ok, so they don’t like Monopoly. Of course, what they really mean is, “Don’t play to win in a way that makes me lose.” Most people think of games as having a winner and a loser.

Role-playing games are different. The players win or lose together. The GM sets the scene, and puts challenges in front of the players, but is not “playing against” the other players. A good GM wants the players to succeed, but for the success to be challenging, memorable, and meaningful.

A good life should also be meaningful, challenging, and memorable. Coincidence? I think not! A life lived with creativity and passion is a lot like a good role-playing game. Instead of trying to use games to make our miserable lives better, why don’t we turn our lives into games? Maybe they already are.

What is a job? That is where you earn game currency to make investments and pay your expenses.
What are taxes? They are game penalties. You need to earn more game currency to pay for them.
What is school? School is training to help you gain levels and skill points.
What are relationships? They are cooperative mode game play; you join with other players to help all of you reach your goals.
What are regular tasks such as cooking, cleaning, paying bills, and filing? They are the daily quests you perform to support your character, build your reputation, and support your friends.
What are accomplishments? They are the Achievement System of life. You work hard to achieve goals that you give yourself or get from others. Sometimes you earn Achievement Points for doing them.

Who Is To Be Master?

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – that’s all.”

Life is a game. But what kind of game is it? Is it one of those relationship “games” where someone always has to lose? Is it a game where someone else writes the rules, and we don’t like them very much, but we have to play by them? Or is it a role-playing game, where the rules don’t matter nearly as much as the creative stories we weave around them? In other words, who is to be the master?

If we treat our lives as part of a role-playing game, we can all have a lot more fun than we may have allowed ourselves in the past. We can also use some of what we know about game play to do better at playing the game of our lives. But first we have to decide who is the game master.

I’ve played in some fun role-playing campaigns where the players took turns being the game master. Each player took responsibility for a particular area. When the players moved into that area, the “owner” of that area became the game master for a few sessions. That was how Gygax, Arneson and friends played the “first fantasy campaign” that spawned Dungeons & Dragons.

Do you feel out of control in your life? Maybe you keep skipping your turn at being the game master. Or maybe you’ve put way too many “Skip a Turn” cards into your collectible life card deck. The funny thing is, most of us think that someone else decides who gets to be the game master, and who just plays. But nobody is making those decisions for us. In a role-playing game, a player gets to be the game master by saying, “I’ll be game master.” It works pretty much the same way in life.

A game master has a lot of responsibility, and it is hard work to run a game, but it is also amazingly rewarding. The GM has total freedom to create an experience for the other players. That, by the way, is the most important key to being a good GM – Your job is to help all of the players have fun. Fortunately, the GM is a player too. If you play the game right, life is better for all of you.

The rules do not make the game. They are just the context in which you define the experience of your life.

Guiding the Game

“The code is more ‘guidelines’ than what you’d call actual rules.” – Pirate Captain Barbossa in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

Lori and I have some guidelines we use for every game we design. For example:
1. The players must have fun. This is our #1 “rule” for every game.
2. Make choices clear, meaningful, and interesting.
3. Creating the game must be fun – We are playing a “game” too.
4. Don’t frustrate the player with dead-ends or stupid responses.

These all apply to a good life just as much as to good game design.

Who are your players? Remember, we aren’t “playing the game of life” right now – We’re creating it and being the game master. Your players are the people around you – your friends, family, co-workers, and fellow students. When you work out the rules for your game, make sure that the people around you will have fun and a chance to earn their own achievements. Fortunately, Rule 3 says that you get to have fun too. Just don’t do it at the expense of your other “players”.

Clear, meaningful, and interesting choices keep players involved in a game. They’re even more important in life. Invest in the quality of your life by consciously making choices. Think about your goals and how you can achieve them. Make a list of things you would like to accomplish, places you’d like to go, and experiences you would like to have. You probably make lists like this for work or school. Why not take the time to plan the things that really matter to you? You can let things just happen to you, or you can decide on what you want to do and take the time and effort to make it happen.

Dead-ends, stupid responses, and frustration are part of life. You will have times when you feel that the game is rigged and that the world is actively trying to keep you from your goals. But here’s where life has a big advantage over games – With the exception of a few laws of physics, the rules aren’t fixed. If you are frustrated in one place, go somewhere else. If one approach doesn’t work, try another. Games are limited to the imagination of the designer and the time constraints on the development team. Real life has no such restrictions; you are limited only by your own imagination.

There is one category of “dead ends and stupid responses” you should definitely design out of your “game of life.” That is the set you impose upon yourself. The stupidest dead-end response you can give yourself is, “I can’t do that.” Take the phrase “I can’t” out of your vocabulary. Practice saying instead, “That may be hard, but I’ll give it a try.” If something seems impossible, think about how you can make it possible. Break the hard problem down into smaller, less difficult, tasks. Or redefine it to something that meets the spirit of the original goal, but that you can find a way to achieve. But don’t give up on anything that you really care about.

If you try, but fail, that isn’t the time to quit; do more work and preparation, then try again. Players fail a lot in World of Warcraft, but they keep going back and trying again until they succeed. Life and games are both about conflict and resolution. If you run into an obstacle, look for the solution – You could destroy it, temporarily move it, go around it, find a way over it, dig under it, or use it to redefine the problem. If you haven’t tried at least three solutions, you’re giving up too easily.

Mmm, Chocolate!

“Life is a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.” – Forrest Gump

Being the Game Master of your life is hard work, but that just means you are overcoming challenges. Challenges are the key to making games fun and rewarding; you get a lot more achievement points for doing hard things than easy ones. And there’s more!

As both the GM and as one of the players, you get to create the tale of life’s adventure together. That collaboration means that a well-played life is always a mystery. Until you bite into each experience, you never know how it will taste. You may just find that some of those “impossible” goals will be fulfilled in ways you could never have guessed.

When you make your life into a role-playing game, and take on the responsibility of being the GM, you turn your life into a mysterious box of chocolates. Will you taste them, or settle for someone else’s empty wrappers? The choice is up to you.

Tags: Game Master, Games, Life Advice
Posted in Featured, Life Advice | 2 Comments »

Being A Warrior

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

Guest Article by Fleetwood

A few weeks ago, Private Fleetwood submitted this answer to a Rank 2 Warrior assignment, “Describe Yourself.” This was intended as one of the easier assignments – Pick five keywords that describe yourself, then discuss how they fit you and what they mean for your future. Fleetwood turned it into something much more, and we thought it deserved a wider audience. Here is the story of one Warrior Hero. We hope it will inspire others as it inspired us. – Corey and Lori

Noun – What Am I?

• I am a Leader. I am bold and brave and take action when it is needed.
• I am a Listener, seeking to understand.
• I am a Teacher and want to help others learn.
• I am a Follower if you can show me a better way.
• I am a Friend and will be there when you need me.
• I am a Free Spirit and seek my own way.
• I am a Loner and need time to myself.
• I am a Student, always ready to learn.
• I am a Lover and will Fight for what I love.
• I am a Gamer and love to play.
• I am a Writer and need to create.
• I am an Artist and want everything perfect.
• I am an Innovator, seeking new things, new ways, and new ideas.
• I am a Slacker when I’ve lost inspiration.
• I am a Provider and bring home the bacon.
• I am an Explorer and want to look around and see.
• I am all of these things.

This was by far the most difficult assignment that I’ve had. I’ve been coming back to it and pushing it off again for the better part of the year. It all boiled down to the fact that I could not describe myself using only on noun. I thought about it and finally, after much soul searching, sat down and started to choose one. But I realized that I could not pick simply one. In the past I have received praise for changing the nature of the assignment and doing what is right for me. While in school I was often penalized for such actions, the Way of the Warrior has encouraged me to follow my own path. So that is what I ultimately decided to do for this assignment.

Adjective – What Drives Me?

The Adjective that best describes me is Curious. I love learning and understanding how things work. This is the fuel for my desire for Adventure and Exploration. I am a warrior and not a wizard, however, because I like to do things with my knowledge, and because I have a broad, rather than deep and focused, range of skills and interests. This is why I decided against a Ph.D., and a career in research. I had to pick one part of one topic and spend my time doing research. I wanted to learn a wide variety of things that would be useful in everyday life.

My Greatest Skill

By far, my greatest skill is my resourcefulness. I am a problem solver by nature, and I get my greatest joy by solving problems, especially those problems that can help others. When faced with a problem, my mind, almost automatically, begins to think of ways to tackle it. I get great pleasure in figuring out and then implementing solutions. This is one of the reasons I am thinking of not pursuing a career in management consulting. Too much time spent on analysis and recommendation, and not enough time spent on implementation and execution.

My Greatest Fears

When I was younger, I never would have believed that I would sort out as a warrior. As a child, I would have thought I would have been a wizard. As a teen, definitely a paladin. But as an adult, I am not surprised that I sorted as a warrior. Leadership is very important to me, but more important than that is the struggle I face to be honest with myself and maintain my integrity. I have fears, that as a boy I would have thought would have excluded me from the ranks of the warrior class: fear of confrontation and fear of success. But as a man, I have come to realize that it is not your fears that define you; it is how you deal with your fear.

Despite being a warrior, I am afraid of confrontations and I tend to avoid them. This fear has caused me great hardship in the past, as I avoided breaking up with girls I did not like, avoided talking to my parents and avoided situations where I would have been much better served to act with boldness and integrity. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to value the importance and necessity of confrontation, but I still get nervous before a difficult conversation. And every once in a while, I put one off longer than I need to. Luckily, my internal integrity/guilt regulator comes on and pushes me to do the right thing.

Unlike many people, I am not really afraid of failure. I am not afraid of making mistakes, nor do I fear failing. I understand that we learn best through failure, and I have gained most of my life experience through doing things incorrectly. Being willing to take some risks and accepting that failing is a normal and natural part of life has pushed me and shaped my character in ways I can’t even imagine. I know that as long as you keep trying, you haven’t really failed. What I do fear, however, is success. For whatever reason, I am unwilling or unable to let myself be really successful. Time after time after time, I get to a level of success, only to self-sabotage myself and fall back down to nothing. This cycle has repeated itself over and over during the course of my lifetime. But each time it happens, I allow myself more success than I did the last time. Each time I see that I am capable of success and I am capable of achievement. Each time I learn skills on how to deal emotionally with success and how to manage the fruits of my success. This past year was quite difficult for me emotionally, but I believe I am back on the upswing. On my last cycle, I achieved more success than I ever thought possible, only to realize that I had based some of my personal philosophies on unsubstantial things. This time through, I think I am on a more solid base and I have a partner to tackle the journey (my fiancee). I am going to try again to get a career in the space industry and see how it goes. I don’t know if I have quite gotten over my fear of success, but I am definitely not as afraid as I used to be.

GREATEST WEAKNESS

My greatest weakness is procrastination. I push things off that I think are going to be uncomfortable. It is a very bad weakness, the contrary force to that great warrior trait, initiative.

I have, however, been able to overcome procrastination to a certain extent. I’ve found that motivation seems to be one of the key drivers to help me overcome procrastination, as do reminders from my fiancée about things that need to be done. However, it seems that the best way for me to overcome my procrastination, is to just do it and not think about it.

Motivation and Goals

Goals have been a great way to overcome my procrastination. Stating clear goals and them breaking them down into manageable chunks (a skill I learned in MBA) makes it easier to take care of business. Indeed, one thing I realized during this assignment is that if I turn my goals into problems, I can think of creative ways to solve them. I did this recently when I was trying to help a friend work on her resume. I really had no idea how to even begin. Then I thought about the problem as an opportunity for creative problem solving. I turned the problem into a “creative problem” and thought about what steps I had to do to solve it. I came up with a good plan and worked it until completion. Since I started this assignment, I’ve been thinking of all of my tasks, as mini-projects. I’ve been doing a fair job of getting things done, but I still see that there are tasks I’ve been avoiding. After reviewing this section, I’ll try again to think of my tasks as problems that need to be solved.

Confidence from my MBA

One of the best things that I learned during my MBA was how to work. There was always far too much to be done, but you still had to do it. During the last week of the first quarter, I had three exams and two essays due in 5 days. After that week, I realized that I can just sit and work and get things done.

That skill/feeling/knowledge has helped me out time and time again, not just during the rest of my MBA career, but every time I have a difficult project to accomplish. If it wasn’t for the discipline I learned at school, it is doubtful if I would have advanced as far in the School for Heroes as I have. I am very grateful for the pain that I suffered, because it has made me a better warrior.

Slicing and Dicing

One reason I tend to put things off, is because the job seems too hard or difficult. That’s when cutting it up helps. If I can’t do the whole thing, I slice a piece of it off and do that. I am in the middle of a project that I figure is 3 hours – calling back leads. In order to apply some motivation, I pulled out the best leads and made a mini project out of it. I still have the bulk to call, but at least the most important ones have been taken care of. I’m in the middle of another project now, also callbacks, and its really dragging. Its only an hour project, but maybe I will apply the same logic, and cut it down into two or three mini projects to help me get it done.

Reminders from My Fiancée

Nothing helps like a friendly reminder from my beloved. She helps me keep on course. I love her very much.

Just do it!

Nike said it best. Sometimes, the best thing to do is just do it. I pinch my nose, and just dive right in. I often find that just by starting a difficult or uncomfortable assignment, I become motivated to continue. I try this now when I wake up in the morning. Instead of deciding whether or not I want to wake up, I just get out of bed. Instead of spending time feeling how difficult it will be to call people on my list or deciding what to say, I just dial the number and put the phone to my ear. Once they pick up, I start talking. I just do it.

Implications

I think what this means is that I have problems and difficulties, but I have the means to overcome them. I have never taken a systematic analysis of myself in this light. In school, we would often conduct SWAT analysis of companies – Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats, but this is the first time I’ve ever done it to myself. I see now that the problems I have are actually quite common in most people. Weakness and fear usually hide in the dark places of our mind, but airing them out in the light lets us see them for what they really are.

In truth, I didn’t realize that I could use my skills to deal with my weakness. Part of my procrastination is due to the fact that I think I can’t do something because it is too hard (lack of confidence), or because it seems too painful (fear of confrontation). But through completing this assignment, I realize that I have far more personal resources and personal strenght than I ever though possible. I think that I will be okay from here on in.

I have been working on this one assignment in some form or another, for almost exactly one year. It was the first Private assignment I started, and the last one I completed. I began actively working on this assignment about a month ago, and in that short time I have experienced a personal revival. Thinking about my strengths and weaknesses together has allowed me to use my strengths to combat my weakness. In the last month I have accomplished a great deal, both at work and in my private life. I’ve turned all of my tasks into problems that needed to be solved. Instead of worrying about what a bad planner I am, I turn plans into problems to be solved, and then solve them. I had the answer all along. I just had to be willing to find my own way.

Tags: Fleetwood, Life Advice, Warriors
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Personal Best

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010

The Winter Olympics are among the few sporting events I make a point of watching. Since I don’t have a TV, I was able to catch all of the action on the internet. To me, the Olympics are about much more than gold, silver, and bronze medals. The Olympics are a chance for each of the athletes to step out on the biggest stage of their careers and try to put on the best performance of which they are capable.

So I was very happy this year listening to the commentators on various performances, because they focused on what really matters to these competitors. Time and again I heard them announce a score, then say, “That was a personal best,” or “That was her highest score this season.” Only one person or team can win an event, but all of the competitors have the chance to transcend themselves when it most matters. They have that one chance to show the world their personal best.

One Moment in Time

“Give me one moment in time, When I’m more than I thought I could be, When all of my dreams are a heartbeat away, and the answers are all up to me.”

Whitney Houston performed the theme song for the 1988 Summer Olympics, “One Moment in Time,” by Albert Hammond and John Bettis. All of the quotes in this blog are from that song; I still can’t listen to it, or even read it aloud, without tearing up with emotion. When I find myself being ordinary, or lazy, or not giving 100% to a task, I try to remind myself that I could be wasting the one moment in time where I had a chance to excel.

Much of life seems to come down to a few defining moments. We remember the truly special “bits” from feature films and from our own lives. It might be a few lines of dialogue, or the moment when you fell in love, or a few seconds when disaster struck. Those few moments are the ones where we go beyond our daily patterns and rituals to be part of something extraordinary. And those are the moments – good or bad – we most remember.

No Pain, No Gain

“I broke my heart, fought every gain, to taste the sweet, I face the pain.”

Nike sold a lot of shoes with their slogan, “Second place is the first loser,” but I think that’s a… well, loser philosophy. If you don’t win, you’ve failed. And failure is devastating. Or is it? Maybe there’s another way of looking at the notions of success and failure.

I’ve written before about Carol Dweck’s book, “Mindset: The New Psychology of Success,” in which she talks about fixed and growth mindsets. A person with a fixed mindset thinks that they are either talented or not, and that no amount of work will change that. Those with the growth mindset see each challenge as an opportunity to grow, learn and improve.

For people with the growth mindset, being the first loser is a stimulus. Those athletes will recommit themselves to the hard work, practice, and study that they need to improve. At the Vancouver Winter Olympics, I saw countless examples of athletes dedicated to the growth mindset. When Apolo Ohno was disqualified in one of his last races, he said, “I guess I just need to skate faster.” Ohno is the most decorated athlete in Winter Olympics history with eight medals, but he knows that he needs to keep working and keep improving to stay one of the best.

The Best to Be

Each day I live, I want to be
A day to give the best of me

I remember watching previous Olympic skating competitions and seeing skater after skater fall during their programs. Some of them became contests of making the fewest errors. This year was different; there were some minor errors, but few falls that I saw. The results were based on difficulty, skill, and beauty of the performances rather than on who survived.

I particularly liked the attitude of Mirai Nagasu of the U.S. In her short program, she attempted a triple lutz / triple toe loop combination, but ended up doing a triple-double instead. When asked about that after the performance, Mirai stated, “I think I made a wise choice.” She knew that she didn’t have the speed to pull off the second triple jump, so she downgraded it and went on with her performance… beautifully. Many skaters in the past would become so upset at failing one part of their skate that it affected everything else. This year, the skaters seemed immune to self-doubt; if they made a mistake, they made sure they skated everything else perfectly.

When Mirai completed her long program and moved up to fifth place, she seemed as delighted as if she had won the entire competition. Her object at this – her first Olympics – was to skate the best she could and let people know that she is the future of figure skating. She certainly did that with a personal best score. Mirai Nagasu did not need to stand on the award podium to be a winner – She was the fifth winner, not the fourth loser, in that event.

Figure skating has always been an event in which who you are matters as much as what you do. In that sense, Mirai might not have had any chance to win the gold medal. But she came to Vancouver to show what she can do, to gain some recognition in the eyes of the judges and the audience, and to experience the thrill and the pressure of top-flight competition. She succeeded in all of those.

And, by the way, the event winners all deserved their places on the podium. Their performances were fantastic – Kim Yu-Na flawless, Mao Asada successfully doing the first three triple axel jumps in women’s Olympic competition, and Joannie Rochette of Canada skating a beautiful, sultry program that was both artistic and athletic.

Speaking of pain, Joannie’s performance was all the more remarkable in that many competitors might have cancelled their entry. Her mother passed away from a sudden heart attack just two days before Joannie’s first program at Vancouver. Rochette considered dropping out, but said, “All my life, my mother wanted me to compete in the Olympics. She was a very tough woman, and taught me to be tough.” Instead of giving up, Joannie Rochette performed in her mother’s honor and did so magnificently. She found a way to channel her sadness and turn it into two strong, joyful performances.

No Time for Less

“I’ve lived to be the very best, I want it all, no time for less.”

Shaun White came into the Olympics as the favorite to win the halfpipe snowboarding competition, and he came prepared to win. In an interview, he talked about the many times he fell while practicing his tricks for the event. Snowboarding is scored on the best of two runs. Shaun fell during his second qualifying run, but it didn’t matter since he had the highest score of all competitors on his first run. In the final, his first run again beat both runs of every other competitor, so he didn’t even have to complete his second run.

So how did he react? Did he back off and do a relaxed, casual victory lap in his final run? Not at all. Shaun White came to Vancouver to show that he was the best – and the hardest worker – at his sport. In his final run, Shaun did a 3-1/2 revolution – 1260 degree – stunt that no other snowboarder has even attempted. He did it perfectly, but that’s almost beside the point. White showed what he can do under Olympic competition pressure, his fall in the preliminaries completely forgotten.

What about you? Are you willing to settle for second best? Somewhere back in the pack? Those might be realistic short-term goals as long as you treat every race as a chance to do better, to extend your personal best. The lesson I see in top competitors in every game and sport is that they keep coming back. Whether they win, place, or fail in a particular competition, they keep coming back, and they keep trying to improve. Yes, even the winners consider their victories to be just one more milestone. They want to do even better the next time and to win more often than anyone else. Winner, bronze medalist, or back in the pack – They know that there is always more to learn and more chances to grow, improve, and excel.

Winner for a Lifetime

“You’re a winner for a lifetime, If you seize that one moment in time; Make it shine.”

In the end, it is not whether you win or lose, nor whether you come home with a medal or empty-handed. Each moment in time is defined by whether you can show the world your Personal Best. Few of us have the opportunity to perform in the Olympics, but we all have many opportunities to put on the performance of our lives and to find the best within ourselves.

Are you up for the challenge? It lasts a lifetime.

“Then in that one moment in time, I will be free.”

Tags: Life Advice, Mindset, Winter Olympics
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Tearing Down Walls

Wednesday, February 24th, 2010

Last November marked the 20th anniversary of the destruction of the Berlin Wall. Coincidentally, it was also the 20th anniversary of the first Hero’s Quest (aka Quest for Glory 1) release. One was a world-changing event, and one was “just a game”, but both had personal significance to me.

You see, I was in Germany when the Wall still stood. And I cried with joy when it came down.

There are walls around cities, and the walls we build around ourselves. We spend a lot of time hiding behind walls because we think they will protect us. But we forget that the walls that keep others out also trap us inside.

Taking a Chance

Back in 1971, I had a rare opportunity. My high school (Abington High near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) had an exchange student program affiliated with AFS. Each year one or two students from Abington went to school in a foreign country. I applied and became one of the finalists, but I felt I was outclassed by some of the other candidates.

Then a funny thing happened. Abington broke off its affiliation with AFS and decided to run their own program. Abington had a “sister school” in Berlin, Germany, so chose that for their exchange program. But a wall stood in the way, and that wall was the memory of the Holocaust. Every other top candidate was from a Jewish family. They didn’t trust that their children would be safe in Germany without a major program like AFS behind the exchange. One by one, the parents of each of the other finalists withdrew their children’s applications until I was the last one standing.

I felt as though I had “won by default”, but the selection committee assured me that I was fully qualified and would be a great representative of the school. By the way, my father was also Jewish, but believed that his children should have the chance to follow their dreams. He did not let fear get in the way. Many of the opportunities in my life have worked out that way – A door opens briefly, and you either step through it quickly or watch it shut in front of you. This time I went through the door.

A City Alone

Berlin in the 1970′s was a unique city. By the armistice that ended World War II, Germany was divided among the Soviet and other Allied forces. Berlin, the former capitol, was also divided, but it was in the middle of East Germany. All trade with the West had to pass through Soviet-controlled territory. By 1961, an estimated 3.5 million people took advantage of the open border in Berlin to leave Communist East Germany.

East Germany came up with a unique solution – They began to build barriers, and eventually the actual Wall – all around the Western sectors of Berlin. We’re talking a literal wall, several yards high, with a 100-yard “killing zone” on the East Berlin side. It was like the “Escape from New York” film – a major city completely separated from the rest of its own country and all of its allies.

King Solomon supposedly solved a dispute between two women, both of whom claimed to be the mother of a baby, by proposing that the baby be cut in half, with each woman getting half a baby. In the case of Berlin, the Allies literally did “cut it up”. Fortunately, cities are more resilient than babies, and Berlin survived the surgery. I think this is unprecedented in history. West Berlin became a unique place, cosmopolitan, thriving, yet always isolated and under the shadow of The Wall.

Which Side Are You On?

The building of the Berlin Wall was not the first act to divide the German people. One of my instructors at Kant Gymnasium had been a Lieutenant in the German army during World War II. One day he stopped to talk with me on a stairwell, and he said that he sincerely regretted having supported Hitler’s government, and that many of the soldiers and officers had felt the same way.

I asked him – naively, I suppose – why they hadn’t found some way to protest or resist. He told me that they had no choice. He knew that if he did not follow orders, and ensure that his men followed orders in turn, his family in Berlin would have been hurt or killed. He could see no way to break through the wall of rules and laws that constrained him.

It is never easy to break from the norm, be different, or work to bring about change in a hostile society. Most people, most of the time, go along with the rules we are given. We live our lives according to a pattern and rarely stop to examine whether we could do better by breaking down the walls of habit.
We also create our own mental walls. Once we make up our minds, we have a lot of inertia towards continuing to do what we have been doing. We like to be “right”, and the easiest way to do that is to ignore anything that might force us to change our opinions. It’s ok to be wrong sometimes. We learn far more from our mistakes than when we get things right the first time. Minds are like parachutes; they only function when open.

Walls Between People

The destruction of the Berlin Wall was a life and world changing event. It had stood for almost 30 years, dividing friend from friend and family from family. When I visited Berlin in the early 1970′s, the Wall seemed a permanent, unalterable fact of nature. As an American, I could cross over with some slight risk, but to a Berliner, East and West Berlin were two different worlds. One was Democratic, one Communist; one Capitalist and commercial, the other Socialist and relatively impoverished. Germans could not move freely back and forth, and there seemed little common ground beyond the language.

November 1989 changed all that. The Wall began to come down, piece by piece. Families were reunited. Friends old and new found they had much more in common than they could have realized. Less than one year later, the two Germanies became one. And now it’s hard to imagine they were ever separated.

We build walls all the time. Whether the construction materials are political affiliations, gender, social or religious differences, educational background, or standards of hygiene, we make quick decisions about other people and then base our relationships on those first assumptions. Those instincts are often “right”, in that our subconscious minds use a lot of hidden details to make choices. But they aren’t flexible. When evidence comes in that contradicts our initial assumptions, we are usually poor at adapting and adjusting our beliefs. And that builds walls.

If you want to have more friends, or to be more effective in life, you need to learn to tear down some of those walls, or at least find a way to climb them. Learn to role-play, empathize, and understand what drives the people around you. Don’t assume you know what they’re thinking; start a real dialogue and ask them. You can find things in common with almost anyone if you open yourself up and work at it. And if there’s nothing in common, that just means you have an opportunity to learn and perhaps to teach.

Take Down the Walls

We can all benefit from the lessons of the Berlin Wall. Our lives are made poorer by the separation we create between ourselves and others. Our rote day-to-day patterns keep us from seeing the richness that life has to offer. Our “party line” political decisions lock us into an “Us vs. Them” mentality that benefits none of us.

The walls that keep others out also lock us in. Make some new friends, try some new things, and tear down the walls that separate you from other people. You will find a new sense of freedom and joy beyond those walls.

The Fall of the Wall
Wikipedia Creative Commons

Tags: Berlin Wall, Corey Cole, Life Advice
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Life Lessons from Evita

Thursday, February 11th, 2010

Circa 1980, I found myself working in the Big Apple, New York City, on a programming contract with the Bank of New York. While there, I managed to take in two musical plays – Evita and A Chorus Line. I was fascinated with the music and story of Evita, and saw it twice more with Lori – the stage version in San Jose, and the Madonna film version.

While Eva Perón was a unique individual, I think her story resonates with all of us in many ways. She grew up in total poverty, made herself into a success, and eventually became the recognized “Spiritual Leader of the Nation of Argentina.” We each must invent and develop ourselves to grow from our roots and become… that which we each become. We aspire to greatness, or at least success, in our adult lives.

In this article, I will use a few quotes from the original version of Evita to write, and hopefully make you think, about what we can all learn from Evita’s story.

Humble Beginnings

“Now Eva Perón had every disadvantage you need if you’re going to succeed. No money, no class, no father, no bright lights. There was nowhere she’d been at the age of fifteen…”

Eva grew up as the illegitimate daughter of a wealthy Argentinean farmer. Juan Duarte supported Evita’s family, but returned to his own when Eva was just one year old. She grew up in the poorest section of a small town, but managed to get a decent public education. She started acting in school plays at 13, and decided she wanted to become a film actress. At the age of 15, she moved to Buenos Aires, the largest and most cosmopolitan city in South America at the time.

Evita’s story about growing up in poverty and becoming wealthy and famous was echoed in a story in Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell. Some of the most powerful and successful lawyers in New York City grew up in poor immigrant Jewish families. From this background they learned a strong work ethic, the importance of a good education, and to take any jobs they could find. These jobs included doing the paperwork for corporate takeovers and proxy fights, something the established “gentleman” law firms would not touch, but which became the most profitable legal field in the 1970′s and 80′s. Their impoverished, “second class citizen” backgrounds became the core of their success. They had “every disadvantage they needed to succeed.”

Eva Duarte became Evita – Champion of women and the working class – because of her poverty. If she had been raised in a middle class family, she would have lost the drive that made her powerful and famous.

Embracing Risk

“Eva, beware of the city. It’s hungry and cold, can’t be controlled, it is mad. Those who are fools are swallowed up whole, and those who are not, become what they should not – become changed; in short, they go bad.”

Hope is a start and an inspiration, but it is not enough by itself. Eva had to embrace her hope of a better life, visualize a way to make it happen, then take a tremendous risk to leave her old life behind and try to create a new one. You could say, “It wasn’t much of a life,” but we all have an attachment to the known and familiar, no matter how poor it might seem to others. Any real change involves real risk. Many poor people who moved to Buenos Aires in the 1930′s could not find work, and lived in tenements that were probably even worse than Eva’s humble origins.

Eva accepts that risk wholeheartedly. She sings, “What’s new, Buenos Aires? I’m new; I wanna say I’m just a little stuck on you… Fill me up with your heat, with your noise, with your dirt, overdo me. Let me dance to your beat, make it loud, let it hurt, run it through me.” You can’t go into a new environment fearfully. You must accept it, embrace it, make it yours, and make yourself part of it. That’s how you turn risk into opportunity.

Adapt and Communicate

“It seems crazy, but you must believe, there’s nothing calculated, nothing planned. Please forgive me if I seem naïve, I would never try to force your hand; but please understand, I’d be surprisingly good for you.”

After Eva has established herself in the big city – she became one of the best-paid and most successful radio performers – she is invited to a charity event to raise funds for victims of an earthquake in San Juan, Argentina. It is there that she meets Colonel Juan Perón, an ambitious military officer who is starting to become known in political circles. Eva has this one chance to break through and move up to a higher level in her life’s ambitions, and she seizes it.

Her introduction to Perón is a seduction, but it is also a negotiation. She makes it clear that she can help Perón with his political ambitions as well as in the bedroom. Perón leaves the party with her, dumps his mistress, and moves Evita into his house. This was considered a scandal; while public figures often had mistresses, they visited them in their own apartments. They didn’t treat them as wives.

Evita knew what Juan Perón desired, adapted to it, and communicated her ability to help him with his political ambitions. That, as much as sex, led to their enduring relationship.

Pursue Your Passion

“Now I am a worker; I’ve suffered the way that you do. I’ve been unemployed and I’ve starved and I’ve hated it too.”

Evita’s critics believed that she was entirely out for herself. She used and discarded men. She spent lavishly on clothing, jewelry, and perfume. No doubt she was a selfish person in many ways. But she was also driven by a higher purpose.

Growing up in poverty, and seeing the very real struggle for survival that people like her own family faced, Evita resolved to do something about it. Throughout her short life, she supported labor unions, created Argentina’s first real social services and welfare system, and worked to improve the lives of her country’s poor. As a woman who saw herself and other women treated as second-class citizens, she worked tirelessly to help other women through universal suffrage, education, and equal job opportunities.

At the end of her life, Eva Perón reportedly worked 20 and 22 hour days at her government-supported charity. This does not sound to me like the portrait of a self-centered prima donna who cared about nothing but her own success. This was a woman driven to help others and to make real change in her country. And that drive is what made Evita immortal. She could have continued on as a rich and moderately famous radio actress. But because she cared about her people, she became much more.

Appearances Matter

“I came from the people, they need to adore me, so Christian Dior me from my head to my toes. I need to be dazzling, I want to be Rainbow High! They must have excitement, and so must I… I’m their product, It’s vital you sell me, so Machiavell-me; make an Argentine rose!”

You’ve heard the phrase, “Dress for success.” In my generation, many people considered that a sell-out. Many successful young programmers and entrepreneurs – especially in Silicon Valley – prided themselves on being so secure that they could wear jeans and sandals into any restaurant or business meeting. In contrast, my brother worked for IBM in New York in the mid-70′s, and they had a strict dress code – black or navy blue suit, white shirt, narrow tie. To the Californians, these people were slaves to obsolete fashion rules.

But the most successful knew how to adapt to changing environments. Bill Gates did not see any reason to wear a coat and tie while he wrote software and started up Microsoft. But when he made the famous deal to develop computer operating systems for the IBM PC, he adapted to the IBM environment. On his way to the first meeting in Florida, Gates realized he had forgotten to pack a tie. Rather than “violate the dress code,” he stopped at a department store and bought a cheap tie. He knew that the IBM executives would not take him seriously if he insisted on following the West Coast un-dress code.

Evita took this principle completely to heart. She knew that she represented the idea of the poor country girl becoming a star, so she made sure she dressed the part. When she first became Argentina’s First Lady, she wore wild, dramatic outfits to “put on a show.” Later in her career, she adopted Paris designer fashion and wore more practical, but still very elegant, outfits. She was one of the first women in Argentina to sometimes wear pants instead of a skirt. By doing so, she promoted the message that women are equal to men and can do whatever men did. This was a very radical concept in the 1930′s!

Cut Like a Diamond

“She’s a diamond in their dull grey lives – and that’s the hardest kind of stone – It usually survives.”

“She’s not a bauble you can brush aside. She’s been out doing what we just talked about – Example: Gave us back our business, got the English out. And when you think about it, well why not do one or two of the things we promised to?”

Evita didn’t just talk the talk; she walked the walk. She knew that appearances are important, but so are accomplishments. While she was dazzling the aristocracy and the proletariat alike, she used her beauty and her passion to transform Argentinean society. In her 33 years of life, Eva Perón managed to create enduring changes far greater than most of us accomplish in much longer careers.

So think about it. Why not do… a few of the things that you could do? If Evita Perón could start with so little, yet accomplish so much… maybe each of us can find time to do something worthwhile for our communities, our nations, and the world.

To read more about the real Evita, check out this detailed Wikipedia article on Eva Perón.

Tags: Evita, Life Lessons
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The Power of Uncertainty

Thursday, February 4th, 2010

“Gentlemen,” Sloan said, “I take it we are all in complete agreement on the decision here… Then I propose we postpone further discussion of this matter until our next meeting to give ourselves time to develop disagreement.” – Alfred P. Sloan, former Chairman of General Motors

If there’s one thing about which I’m absolutely certain, it’s that it doesn’t pay to be too certain. If I knew all the answers before taking on a task, it probably wouldn’t be a very interesting one. Early in my programming career, I made the decision that I would only stay with a job as long as I was learning new things. Any time I knew everything, it was time to move on.

Twisty Passages, All Different

“You can never step into the same river, for new waters are always flowing past you.” – Heraclitus of Ephesus

Life has a lot of repetition. Sometimes it feels as though you’re dropping a red vase in a “maze of twisty passages, all alike”, exploring the maze for several hours, and ending up back at the red vase. At first, it seems as though no progress has been made at all.

But there is progress. Before returning to that spot, you probably also dropped a few other objects in different sections of the maze. You may be revisiting a location, but the state of the maze – like that of Heraclitus’s river – has changed. You have more information and can make more refined decisions.

It’s All Right to Be Wrong

“The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.” – Elbert Hubbard

The key to making a tough choice is being willing to change your mind. If you reach a dead end, back up and try another path. This isn’t true only in adventure games; real life has many opportunities to rethink decisions and make better choices. Some choices – taking a particular job or having a baby, for example – of course commit you for a time. And that’s a good thing – You really need to give either of those time to do well; then decide whether your original decision was the right one.

Remember, there are no bad decisions. If it’s a meaningful choice, it’s also a difficult one. And that means that there are reasons for making a particular choice and reasons for doing something else. Don’t beat yourself up over small “mistakes”; learn from them instead. And when it’s time to make a similar decision, you’ll have more information and the chance to make a better choice.

Embrace Complexity

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald

To me, oversimplification of a complex issue is a capital mistake… and one we see all the time in news reporting, political analysis, and the corporate boardroom. It’s very understandable – When confronted with a really complex issue, we feel overwhelmed and uncomfortable. Simplifying the decision – usually by focusing on a single aspect of it – makes us feel more in control.

Politicians are often tarred with labels such as “fence-straddler” or “flip-flopper.” We want our representatives to have definite opinions and stick with them. But that isn’t a good reflection of reality. The issues debated in Congress, Parliament, and other political institutions don’t have nice simple answers. That’s because the simple questions get handled all the time by individual workers. Only the hard ones come up for voting.

Currently, the United States suffers from an excess of certainty. There is a line drawn in the sand between the Republican and Democratic representatives, and very few are willing to cross over it. Instead of carefully considering each issue, representatives blindly vote on party lines. Issues such as the bank bail-out, universal health insurance, and others are not at all straightforward. And yet, on many of them, all of the Democrats vote one way, and all of the Republicans against them. That degree of consensus tells me that our representatives are not thinking about the issues. They’re voting the way they’re told to vote. There is no individual judgment, and to me, that means there is no real intelligence being applied to our laws.

That’s an oversimplification in its own right, of course. I’m sure our representatives and their staffs do a tremendous amount of work writing bills and amending them to reflect their constituencies. That’s where the intelligence comes into the process. But the final decision is a vote, and most of the time, that vote doesn’t seem to reflect anything more than a rubber stamp of political party positions.

Analysis Paralysis

We can suffer from too much information. Our brains are designed for simple survival decisions – “If I sleep on the ground, predators may kill me, so I’d better either sleep in the trees or make myself a strong shelter.” We can cope with decisions like these. But modern life is much more complicated. We can spend hours – or hundreds of hours – researching questions on the Web and other resources. It’s very easy to get so much information on a subject that a meaningful decision is too hard to make.

Malcolm Gladwell wrote about this conflict in several of his New Yorker Magazine articles reprinted in his book, “What the Dog Saw.” For example, he talks about intelligence failures in attacks such as 9/11/2001, the 1973 Syrian and Egyptian attacks on Israel, and the 1998 terrorist attack on the US embassy in Nairobi. Each time, there were – at least in hindsight – clear indications that an attack was imminent.

The problem is that there is just too much information. Yes, there were leads suggesting each of these attacks. But in the case of the 1998 attack, for example, “the FBI’s counterterrorism division had sixty-eight thousand outstanding and unassigned leads dating back to 1995.” It isn’t in the least bit surprising that one letter – from an informant who was considered not credible – was ignored. There was just too much information, much of it contradictory, and most of it useless.

Trust Your Instincts

How do we make intelligent decisions when we have too much information, or too little? “How We Decide,” by Jonah Lehrer, studies this question. While people can’t make millions of calculations per second as does a computer, we make surprisingly accurate decisions all the time. That’s because we have a built-in memory and feedback mechanism that recognizes patterns and gives us positive feedback when the patterns look “right”.

A chess grandmaster can glance at the board and immediately pick out four or five moves that have the most potential. Then he’ll work through those possibilities and choose the move that seems most promising. This sort of decision is based on knowledge and experience, but the immediate decision is made by “feel”.

Are your palms sweating as you contemplate a decision? Ears ringing? Arms shaking? Your body and mind are trying to give you feedback that – based on your previous experience – something is wrong. Pay attention to those instincts and you’ll make much better decisions than if you try to exhaustively analyze every question. Then learn from the results so your instincts will improve each time.

The Simple Answer Is…

… that there are no simple answers. We live in a complex world full of difficult and complicated decisions. The best we can do is to try to make reasonable choices, pay attention to our instincts, and learn from our inevitable mistakes.

Life isn’t just an adventure game; you have a lot more freedom of choice. Sometimes you need to break out of the maze and make your own twisty passages. And sometimes you seem to end up right back where you started. But you never step in the same river twice; the experience from your previous decisions helps you to make better ones as you go along. In the end, it all comes down to this simple guide:

• 1. Make a decision that feels right.
• 2. Live with it, but also learn from it.
• 3. Rinse and repeat.

Don’t be afraid of uncertainty. Being uncertain just means you have meaningful choices. And that’s what makes the game (of life) fun… even when you don’t know what your next move should be.

Tags: Life Advice, Uncertainty
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What Price Success?

Friday, December 18th, 2009

We admire and envy Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Barack Obama, and other successful people. But success does not come by itself. Even for those born into the right families at the right time, it takes years of dedication and hard work to become successful. And it often entails sacrifices in relationships and other activities. What does success mean to you? Are you willing to pay the price to succeed?

Outliers

I just finished reading Outliers: The Story of Success, by Malcolm Gladwell. Gladwell is a columnist for the New Yorker who writes fascinating, contorted stories that seem to amble here and there before finally converging to his point. In one article he talks about paleontology, Microsoft, and near-simultaneous inventions and discoveries before settling in to describe a “think tank” company that patents new technology ideas.

In Outliers, Gladwell brings together a number of research studies in fields ranging from elementary education to hockey players, corporate takeover law, and others. One conclusion is that there is no such thing as a “self-made man”. Everyone who is successful gets there by having a team, a support network, and a set of fortuitous circumstances that help elevate them.

I initially found that a little depressing. For example, almost all successful hockey players are born early in the year. That could suggest that people like me (with a November birthday) might as well give up (at athletics, at least). As it was, my parents pushed to get me into school early; I certainly would have had a different school experience if I had started a year later. And yes, I sucked at sports.

But that isn’t really Gladwell’s main point. He believes that the circumstances that turn those early-birth-date players into successes can be duplicated and applied to the training of others. And we can use that to turn his research into an action plan for success.

Workers of the World… Succeed

One of Gladwell’s messages is that people don’t just “find themselves at the top”. They work their way up there, and it takes a lot of work. One study shows that to become an expert in any field, you have to put in at least 10,000 hours of practice and preparation. That means it takes at least ten years of intense study and work just to learn your craft.

Gladwell contrasts the workaholic attitude of Chinese peasant rice farmers with the more laid-back view of Russian and European serfs. Rice is a crop that requires constant attention and work, so it can’t be grown efficiently by slave labor. A Chinese proverb says, “No one who can rise before dawn 360 days a year fails to make his family rich.” How many of us can even imagine that degree of dedication to our work? It doesn’t exactly fit with the popular “something for nothing” approach to life.

Do you have to kill yourself to be successful? Or is there another way? I can think of at least three.

Hours in an Eye-Blink

Practice breeds perfection. And Passion encourages Practice. Find an activity that engrosses you and makes you forget about time, and you will have found the profession at which you can become an expert. I took up computer programming in high school because it was fascinating. I spent many after-school hours playing with the computer and getting it to follow my commands. A few years later, I began to make programming my career.

There has been a lot of press in recent years about work-life balance, especially in the video game industry. Many game companies require mandatory overtime to meet their hectic delivery schedules. The problem is that you can’t mandate passion or dedication. People who are really immersed in their professions work hard, and work long hours, because they don’t think of it as overwork.

When I worked at “regular” programming jobs, most programmers put in 45 or 50 hours a week just because they hated to leave in the middle of a task. Video game development intensifies that – 60 hour weeks are the norm during “crunch phases”. There is so much to do, and almost everything you do breaks new ground, so programmers don’t even think about going home after 8 hours. They want to get the job done, and they love to play with the code until it’s perfect.

Work-life balance? You bet! Your work will become your life. Don’t use this as an excuse for bad relationships though. You can invest a lot of passion in your work and still be a decent human being when you’re at home. But you’ll probably spend a lot of time talking about your creative and work activities, so it helps to have partners and friends who share your passion.

Work Smarter, Not Longer

The 10,000 hour rule teaches you how to become an expert. That doesn’t mean you have to spend the rest of your life working those 60 hour weeks. In the Middle Ages and Renaissance, children who wanted to learn a craft started as apprentices or indentured servants. Over the course of 7-10 years, they became expert in the craft and the best eventually became Journeymen and then Masters. A Master was known for his skill and artistry, not for working 10 and 12 hour days.

If you were managing an important and challenging project, which employee would you rather have? You can have someone who works by rote for you ten hours a day and turns out a mostly-complete job as you hit the deadline. Or you can have someone who spends a lot of her day thinking and researching, then 3 or 4 hours doing exactly what is needed to finish the task perfectly. I know who I’d choose! But surprisingly many managers prefer the “hard worker” to the expert.

In the game industry – and I think, in life – everything really worthwhile takes experimentation and the willingness to try different approaches. The approaches that don’t work have to be thrown away. If you’re lucky, they might suggest ideas that can be used for another project down the line. But if you aren’t willing to try – and often fail – you won’t accomplish anything extraordinary.

Work smarter, not harder. A few hours of effort with proper preparation is worth a lot more than a marathon for which you didn’t practice. In your career, those first years of preparation in which you work your tail off may give you the opportunity to be successful with a reasonable work schedule later.

Shared Passion is Passion Multiplied

Outliers teaches us that nobody succeeds alone. Spend your time with people who share your passion. Work with people you respect and admire, and try to adopt their best practices. Join a great team or try to create one. You will get a lot farther that way than by hiding in a corner and trying to do everything yourself.

My most productive periods have been when I worked closely with a peer – someone who could look over my shoulder when I got stuck, or with whom I could discuss ideas. Two heads are better than one when it comes to creative approaches to solving problems. And that helps you work smarter.

Lori and I have always had a collaborative relationship. That isn’t always easy – another word for collaboration is “arguing”. But each of us pushes the other to try new things and to do them as well as we can. Many of the puzzles and story elements in our games started with a “half-baked idea” that we kicked back and forth until it really worked.

Each week, when I start writing this blog, I seem to get to 400 words and stall. Lori pushes me to get the rest done. Then she usually makes me reread what I wrote and make it better. Even though I do almost all of the writing, these blogs would be much lower quality without the intervention.

Two or three people working together will accomplish much more than the same people working on their own. Individual work adds up; collaboration multiplies.

Going out of your way to try new experiences and meet interesting people can also be a way to find your passion. If your work doesn’t immerse and fascinate you, maybe you just haven’t tried enough kinds of work yet. Some very successful people started out trying out a little of everything. Go on – Give something new a try!

Success = Worth

I don’t consider anyone truly “successful” if they don’t love and care about their life and their work. You need to know that your contributions really matter to stay passionate about your work.

If you don’t feel that passion, maybe you need to reinvent yourself. Take on new tasks. Try new types of work. Volunteer your services for a few weeks at a time. If you have a creative idea and don’t see a clear way to capitalize on it, work on it for fun, then give it away. Worth is not measured by how much money you make, but by what you create and the value you add through your work and your ideas.

In the long run, it doesn’t really matter whether anyone else calls you an “expert”. All that matters is that you can look back and say, “I’ve accomplished a lot with my life.” Find small ways to make the world – and the lives of people around you – a little better. There is no greater success than that in life or in work.

Tags: Book Review, Life Advice, Outliers
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You Decide

Friday, December 4th, 2009

”Did you ever have to make up your mind?” – The Lovin’ Spoonful

What is the Meaning of Life?

Through the ages, philosophers (and everyone else) have pondered the ultimate question of life, the Universe, and everything. According to Douglas Adams, the answer is “42”. Lew Brown wrote in 1931 that, “Life is just a bowl of cherries.” Erma Bombeck came back with, “Then what am I doing in the pits?” Pity, that.

Maybe they’re all asking the wrong question. Try this variation: “How can I give meaning to my life?” That’s a question you can answer, especially if you think of Life as a Game. In a game, you only have a few controls, and your contribution to the game comes from the decisions you make and how you use the controls. Life is the same; it’s all about the decisions you make.

The Way to Give Meaning to Your Life is by setting goals and making decisions that support your goals. Such choices are the only thing over which we have any control. We don’t decide our parents, our birthplace, or the time in which we live. But we are constantly confronted by choices, and how we handle each one has a profound impact on the rest of our lives. Indirectly, the ripple effects of each decision affect many other people in sometimes obvious, but often subtle ways.

Choice. Life is all about choosing.

For Better or For Worse, You Must Choose

If the Meaning of Life is about making meaningful choices, then what happens when you refuse to choose? Whether you call it procrastination or aversion to risk, failing to choose is making a choice. And it’s rarely a good one.

Now it’s ok to take your time and make sure your decisions are informed. After all, every decision matters. Just don’t let yourself get paralyzed to the point where you are afraid to decide at all. Every time you have a choice and fail to make it, you lose out on some of the “game play” of your life. You turn an interactive experience into a movie. And where’s the fun in that?

I’m writing this partially as therapy, because I have a long history of procrastination. And yet I know that most of the best moments I’ve had in life have been when I took a stand and made a decision. I took big risks in dropping a project to go to Sierra, in starting my own company to develop Shannara, and in many other life decisions. Not all of my choices have been wise, but choosing has almost always been better than waiting on the sidelines.

The Bridge to Success

Rose Meltzer, a five-time World Champion at bridge, said, “The thing about bridge is that you lose more than you win. You have to pick up the pieces and go on. I keep trying every day.” What a great attitude in gaming and in life!

How liberating is it to know that even the best decision makers often get it wrong… or get it right and fail anyway to the roll of the dice? The key is to make your choice and accept that you made it. As we learn from playing games, you can often recover from a bad decision. Maybe I shouldn’t even use the word “bad”; very few life choices really have clear-cut right or wrong answers. All you can do is make a reasonable choice each time. Each one gently nudges your life in a new direction, and the sum of all your choices adds up to the life you live.

Last week, a friend pointed out that the way to win a war is to have a clear objective and only do things that move you towards that objective. The catch phrase for Vietnam was, “Win the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese people.” Every action we took that caused us to lose respect from the Vietnamese worked against that goal, and we took a lot of such actions.

So what’s your objective in life? Are you going through life without a battle plan? If it’s just to “stay alive,” I can tell you the odds are stacked against you. Not many people have managed to live forever so far. So maybe you should make some plans that you can accomplish in a normal lifetime. That might be to contribute to the world in getting us into space, or creating worthwhile entertainment, or in any of a number of other ways. It could be to enjoy yourself, to find time to spend with friends and family, or to explore the world. But make yourself a goal – or several goals – and use them to help you make choices that further your goals.

The Game of Life

Think about your favorite games and why you like them. It probably isn’t the great graphics or the license, or even the wonderful text. It’s the choices you make and how they affect the story. When Lori and I designed each of the Quest for Glory games, we often asked, “What meaningful choices can we give the player? What problems do our characters have that the player might be able to help them solve?” These questions became the heart of the game play and story lines.

All great games have decision-making at their heart. In poker, do you raise or fold? In bridge, do you take the finesse or try to find a squeeze or endplay? In billiards, do you try to sink the target ball or snooker your opponent by hiding the cue ball behind other balls? Without choices like these, a game stops being a game and turns into just an activity.

If making choices is essential to making games fun, then how much more important must it be for life? Our personal story lines and our “life play” are directed by the choices we make.

A Winning Team

Life isn’t a solitaire game. We play it with other people, and our choice of partners and teammates makes a big difference in our life experience… and theirs. Certainly a good part of my life has been shaped by whom I married and by friends I met along the way.

How we choose to act, work, and play with others has a huge impact on how our lives play out. Work on developing empathy – knowing how to deal with people based on their needs as much as on your own. If you want to play on a winning team, learn how to convince others that they should play with you. Consider their needs and desires and find ways to help people while they are helping you. Pick a win-win scenario any time you can, and you will soon have many friends and teammates working with you to achieve your goals.

Another important factor is self-confidence. That comes from knowing what you want and being able to visualize how to enroll others into helping you accomplish your goals. If you have trouble being assertive, try role-playing in front of a mirror. Remind yourself that you are a capable, competent person. Practice your communication and negotiation skills.

This isn’t about arrogance. You aren’t demanding special treatment just because you want it. It’s entitlement by competence. You’re entitled because you are doing the work and earning the respect and assistance of others. An attitude of “quiet competence” will be recognized by the people you work with. They will respect it and want to work with you.

It’s Your Choice

If you want to be a success, and to create meaning in your life, recognize that you have the power to do amazing things. All it takes is commitment, willingness to treat other people’s goals as almost as important as your own, and a lot of work to build up your practical knowledge and communication skills. Treat life as an exciting, engrossing game and choose the decisions that will help you win at it.

Find your dream and follow it!

The next time someone tries to confound you by asking, “What is the meaning of life?” you can look them straight in the eye and say, “I know the meaning of my life. Maybe it’s time for you look for your own.” We all have as much meaning as we allow ourselves to have.

Tags: Decisions, Life Advice, Meaning of Life
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Life After Death

Sunday, November 8th, 2009

”No matter what you’ve lost, be it a home, a love, a friend,
Like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again!”
– Stan Rogers

Death. ALCOR claims notwithstanding, it comes to us all. And that means it comes in time to everyone we love. We don’t know what – if anything – happens “beyond the veil”, but we do know the pain of watching a friend, relative, or favorite pet weaken, suffer, and finally leave us behind.

That can be a very helpless feeling. We may feel guilty and think that maybe we could have done more to prevent the situation. Maybe we should have spent more time with our friends and family while they were still active and healthy. At the same time, we know that they are responsible for their own lives. We can’t force someone to exercise more or eat better if that isn’t what they want to do. All we can change is what we do with our own lives.

If life is a game, it’s the Kobayashi Maru scenario; there is no way to win. But how you play it makes all the difference.

All We Can Do…

It is our character that determines how we handle a friend’s illness or death. We have a lot of choices. We can hide from death, afraid of our own mortality or just avoiding the work and pain of trying to help them when they don’t even know we’re there. We can try to take control of their lives, treating a sick – and perhaps mentally “not all there” – adult as a helpless child. We can become analytical and mechanical, shutting down our feelings while we make sure we handle each problem that arises step by step. We can be so loving and caring that we put aside other things in our life to make sure that we are always available. That might entail sacrifices – time away from work, from our children, from our friends and favorite activities.

All of these approaches are “coping strategies” in stressful and difficult situations. None of them is “right”, and none is “wrong”. It is easy to feel guilty that we are not saints and paragons of virtue, but there is no single right way to deal with trauma. Is it truly saintly to ignore our commitments and responsibilities to others for the sake of spending time with – or mourning for – one person? Are we really paragons when we give everything to, and do everything for, someone who might make a better and faster recovery if he had to do things for himself?

Guilt is a funny emotion. It can be a useful thing in small amounts, a reminder that there are things we need to do and priorities we should assign. But, taken too far, guilt is one of the most destructive emotions. It can cloud our judgment and dull our minds so that we fail to accomplish things we need to do. And that can lead to even more guilt. It’s terribly inefficient, as well as harmful to our own health and well-being.

At the same time, feeling guilty about feeling guilty isn’t the answer either. It’s better to accept the guilt, recognize that it has a purpose, and move on. Let your guilt remind you that you care and have feelings, but don’t let it control you. You are in charge of your own life, and if you give that up, how will you be useful to your friend, yourself, or anyone else? Accept how you feel and what you are, then go on living your life.

What Do You Do Next?

But how do you do that? If life is a game, maybe we can take some lessons from gaming. Dungeons & Dragons game masters would often set up a scenario like this: “Two Orcs come around the corner, see you, and start yelling. What do you do next?” The idea was to wake up the players and get them to act quickly.

So we had to laugh when we found a t-shirt that simply said, “You’re dead. What do you do next?” That later became the theme of a game in which the players had to help one of their team escape from the Underworld.

But it’s also a pretty relevant question for life. What do you do when someone close to you has died? How do you continue when your own life seems to be in rags? Maybe you lost your job and are having no luck finding another. Maybe you’ve lost a love that you thought would be with you forever. How do you pick up the pieces and find a way to go on?

It might take a conscious act of re-invention. It’s definitely worth some self-examination. I don’t think there is a single “right way” to turn your life around, but there are many resources for strategies that might work for you. Skim a few “coping” and self-help books and articles. If you see something you like, study the rest of the book and decide which parts you can apply to your own life. A classic book on job hunting, ”What Color Is Your Parachute”, by Richard N. Bolles, has a lot of good advice on Knowing Thyself.

The Game of Life

Is life really a game? Maybe a better way to think of it is, “Life is a role-playing campaign.” You are living a long series of “games” and interlocking stories. There are a lot of ways you can approach a game. You can play it for fun and laughs. Or you can see each game as a challenge, and rise to overcome the challenge and excel at the game.

Has your life become dull and predictable? That can be ok. Lots of people enjoy simple, repetitive games like solitaire and Farmville. But when you play, ask yourself, “Is this what I want? Or is it time to find some new challenges?” Even if you’re pretty satisfied with your life, I encourage you to try some variations. Set a few goals for yourself; try some new things. Just remember that they’re all just games. If you try something new and fail, that’s fine. ’Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. – Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

Have you been thrust into games you didn’t sign up for? Did that make you resentful? I suggest you mentally “step back” and see yourself “in the game”. Instead of being angry, accept that you are a player, and play to win! So what if you’re doing something you didn’t choose to do? Treat it as a game, and play the game well. If it still isn’t fun, think about ways you can choose your own game the next time.

For now, live the life you have. Don’t waste energy resenting that it isn’t some other way. Winning poker players learn to play the cards they’re dealt; they don’t get angry because they don’t win every pot. They find ways to survive the bad beats and maximize their gain on the good ones.

Live and Let Die

That strategy applies all the more when you are playing a game you can’t win. And, in the long run, that’s life. We can’t prevent death; all we can do is hold it off for a while. But life isn’t just one game; it’s a series of games. That one called “life and death” is fixed, but the other ones aren’t. Play each game to win – and to have fun – and when you finally stare Death in the face, you’ll be able to look into his eyes and know that you have won far more than you lost.

How do you “win” when your best friend is dying or her life is falling apart? Remind yourself that it’s just one more game, one more session in the campaign. As with any game, you can try to maximize your win or minimize your loss. Try to spend a little more time with them. Before and after they’re gone, remember the good times you’ve shared and remind them. Be with them. If this game has to be lost, don’t forget the many victories that came before.

Then you have to move on. Take inspiration from the one you’ve lost and find a way to turn that inspiration into new goals, new ideas, new ways to play the games in your own life. Death is a transition, and might signal time for a transition in how you live your life. Take up a new hobby or start a new project. Finish something you’ve been putting off for a long time. Reincarnate your passion!

Death. It comes to us all. But it doesn’t have to be an ending. Treat death as just one more roll of the dice, one more turn of the wheel, and it loses its sting. Even after death or disaster, “Your heart must go on.” There is life after death for the survivors, and it is worth living well.

In memoriam – Byron M. Cole, 1923-2009, father, friend, inventor, mentor.

Our Flying Aardvark Ranch Studio Gallery has art from the recent “Dia de los Muertos” we attended. It is a celebration of life and a memorial for those loved ones who have died.

Tags: choices, Death, Life Advice
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