Why you should start treating real life like a video game.
A cascading jet of fire sprang out from in front of me and engulfed those foolish enough to cross my path. The burning stench of their melting flesh assaulted my nostrils but this did not hinder me as I continued my journey into the void.
As I crossed through into a dark room adorn with ancient ornaments and a river flowing bright red with blood, several hideous creatures sprang forwards towards me. I brought my greatsword up and crashed it down onto the first monstrosity, but as I recovered the blade from the creature's skull, a black, obsidian blade ripped through my gut. I fell suddenly onto the ground and the world began to go cold and as I lay outstretched on the scorched floor I felt my life essence draining away and escaping into the nether.
You may have guessed but that was not an account from my real life, as I am here writing to you today. That was an excerpt from the video game Hades. Recently, I have plowed many hours of my life into battling through the pits of Greek hell. I am not being sponsored by Supergiant games, I genuinely do love this game.
I digress, as I played this game I had an epiphany ‘What if I treat my life like a video game?’
Think about it. In a game, what are you trying to accomplish?
In this particular example, you battle through hell and level up your character to make them stronger and better. When you are leveled up you can accomplish more and can fight better. You have very clear set objectives of what you need to do to acquire a skill or ability and the clairvoyance of the path you need to take to obtain these skills.
Now let’s flip the script and look at real life. What are you trying to accomplish?
You battle through life trying to level yourself up to become stronger and better. When you are leveled up you can accomplish more and can fight through life better. You have a set of objectives that can be clear or not so clear and sometimes you may know what you need to do and other times you don’t know and the path can be muddy. So, what can you learn from a video game?
Focus on leveling yourself up.
Much like a video game character, you have a set of skills that will have an arbitrary number attached to them. For example, let’s look at the wonderful world of EA sports’ FIFA. In FIFA, all of the players have skills that are associated with football (Soccer, for my American readers.) These include things such as heading, striking, tackling, passing, etc… A player like Cristiano Ronaldo has incredible numbers for these skills, the skills are out of 99 and most of his football skills are in the high 80’s or low 90’s.
Ronaldo didn’t start off being an overall rating of 91, he had to work for it. This meant he always attended his training and worked on developing his skills to make him better at the game. Over time his football rating increased and his skill set let him play in better leagues and tournaments that has made him the mega-successful superstar that he is today.
You can apply this rationale to any skill, it doesn’t matter if it’s programming, crocheting, cooking, graphic design, farming, or anything else. Every skill can be improved with the right dedication and practice. Find some skills that you would like to improve, access the resources and tools to make these improvements. In the case of programming, this could mean attending a Bootcamp or watching video tutorials, buying a course on Udemy or Skillshare, or purchasing books off of Amazon, eBay, or another book retailer.
You may be at a rating of 50 out of 99 for a particular skill now, but with enough practice you can push that number higher and unlock your own unique opportunities.
Set clear goals for yourself.
Another thing that games do really well is give you clear goals. For example, you may be given a quest to go and slay a dragon or to go and collect 10 blue flowers. Furthermore, these quests are broken down into subsections. For instance, your main quest may be to go and slay the dragon but to do this you will need to reach the black mountains, find the dragon shield and speak to the monk called Angar. This makes the overall goal seem easier to achieve as you can break it down into manageable chunks.
You may be thinking, ‘But Keanu, I don’t go around slaying dragons. How do I pick a goal and break this into smaller chunks?’ Well, let me tell you.
Let’s look at a practical example. Let’s say your goal is to get better at writing. well, this is a huge task and is not conquerable in one go, we have to break it down into smaller chunks. Firstly, you would look to find a place to write (perhaps Medium), next you need to think about what you want to write about. Afterward, you need to get practicing, so set a goal to write so many articles a month, then aim to get your work published.
I have provided some examples of how you would break down a huge goal like ‘getting better at writing’ into smaller components, but you can apply this to any goal.
Set out a path to achieve these goals.
This section was partially covered under the previous subheading but will need some elucidation. When trying to achieve a goal you need to find yourself a path to completing that goal. This path won't be fixed and over time it will change, especially as you gain more knowledge and experience in your subject area.
This is where we will deviate slightly from our ‘treat your life like a video game’ because the paths in video games are very static. But, that doesn’t mean for this section we can’t treat our life as a game of Dungeons and Dragons! In DnD you and your group of friends play as a band adventuring through some imaginary land. Your dungeon master (the person who manages the game) will guide you towards certain quests and goals and will begin to carve out a path for you to get to them. But this path can change and vary depending on the actions you take within the game, this analogy can mimic real life.
In life, circumstances change and therefore our paths towards our goals can deviate from how we originally envisioned them. The main thing to remember here is that you are always heading towards your goal.
Don’t be scared about failure.
Failure, what a cruel, cold mistress you are.
You should never be scared to fail, failing gives us a chance to improve and to become stronger. As you try to achieve ambitious goals you are bound to be met by failure. It can come in many forms and strengths, sometimes this failure can knock you back and wind you for many days, other times it can be quite minor and easily fixed. In whichever form it comes to you, you should not be scared of it. Instead, you should embrace it and use it as leverage to push you forward.
Let’s look at an example in a video game. In some games, such as, Hades and Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order at the start of these games you will suffer a setback (I won't say anymore as I don’t want to spoil these games.) The failures you experience don’t kill off your character but it gives them a unique perspective to allow them to better themselves, making themselves stronger and more prepared for the next fight.
You should follow their example. When going for a goal, you may encounter a significant setback. Don’t let this setback stop you from pushing forward and conquering that challenge. Remember, what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.
Give yourself rewards when you hit certain milestones.
My final point and arguably the most important. You have to reward yourself when you achieve your goals and when you hit milestones towards those goals. All animals have evolved very effective reward mechanisms, we are trained to go after ‘good things’ because they give us rewards, whether that’s food, warmth, entertainment, or anything else really.
This is very easy to see in games, and every game does this. When you complete challenges, progress in the game, or generally just ‘play the game’ you will get rewarded. Whether you are killing orcs or completing quests, you may get loot or other goodies that keep you wanting to complete these things. The game will push you to harder challenges and harder enemies and will subsequently reward you with better goodies for completing those challenges.
We can import this into our lives. For example, let’s say you’re learning to program, first we have to learn the syntax of our language of choice. This can take a long time, especially if it’s your first language, as you may have to learn a lot of technical jargon and develop the type of skillset a developer has (i.e. Debugging, thinking about code efficiency, good code habits, etc…) At each little milestone, like figuring out your first bug or making your program more efficient you can reward yourself. These rewards can be nice little breaks, food-based treats, or whatever you want really, as long as it inspires you to keep progressing.
To wrap up this article, I hope I’ve convinced you as to why you should start treating your life more like a video game. We can draw a lot of benefits from how video games are designed and import them into our own lives. This should make you more ambitious and more successful as you begin to set ambitious goals for yourself and achieve them.
Thank you for reading!
