The game of life's secret win condition

The better lifestyle sales pitch

Today’s agenda is designed to:

✔ Reframe the mechanics for The Game of Life

✔ Define the win condition for The Game of Life

✔ Get you started. Now.

Is life actually a game?

That, I think, is the first question that needs to be addressed before continuing. I can’t convince you to live life like a specific game unless you agree with me that life really is a game.

I won’t get into it further than this, but game theory is essentially the study of determining the best actions to take to get the desired outcome. In other words, it is the study of strategy. The entire field hinges on a mathematical and logical answer to a goal.

Does that sound familiar?

Games are just the representation of the entire system. The winning conditions represent the goal you are chasing. The rules represent your personal restrictions and limitations. The obstacles represent the external restriction and limitations.

And the strategy is your battle plan, made of multiple different little tactics, that you use to get to the end goal.

If you still don’t see life as a game, then perhaps skip until the next newsletter. Otherwise, keep on reading.

The most effective tactic available

Gamers have a term called the META, otherwise known as the “most effective tactic available”. It essentially means that there is a particular tactic that is objectively, mathematically, logically, the best tactic to use. There is a META in every game. There is always some combination of tactics, skills, and abilities that is the best for victory, in every game.

Gamers are famously split into META players and non-META players. META players go straight for the best tactic available, or the closest to it that they can get. As soon as the newest best strategy is released to them, they’ll head straight toward it.

Non-META players, as implied by the name, prefer other tactics for various reasons, where it be the comfort, the fun, the challenge, etc.

Still, both types of players aim to complete the game’s win condition.

What type of player is best?

I think, in general, people would say that logically, META players are better. After all, META players are by definition using the most effective tactic available. They should be reaching their win condition, their goal, as quickly and as efficiently as they can.

But actually… I disagree.

For the game of life, I think non-META players are better.

Why? There are a lot of reasons. For one thing, objectively, the fastest and most efficient way is often the riskiest and/or realistically unviable. One extreme example of this is that technically, the fastest and most efficient way to get rich is to rob the bank. It doesn’t mean you’ll actually go out and rob the bank, even if it is the theoretical most effective tactic available to you.

But even more than that, the biggest reason is that I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding about the win conditions inside the Game of Life.

How to win the Game of Life

The game of life… is not one of those games with a standard win condition.

You shouldn’t view the game of life as something you have to win.

You’re not playing Player versus Player modes, where you need to defeat the other party and achieve the ultimate victory over your opponents. If you view life this way, then you’ll forever be unsatisfied, because there will always be another opponent to beat, another person to compare yourself to.

Instead, you need to realize you’re actually playing Survival Mode, where the goal is to last as long as you can. You go as far as you can with what you got, and after you fall down, you get right back up and try to go further than you got last time.

The reason why META tactics might not be the best compared to non-META tactics lies inside the perspective you take while playing the Game of Life. META players want to be done with their goal. Non-META players want to play for longer.

META players understandably do better in more competitive modes where your goal is to defeat others. But when the goal is to play the game for longer, other factors like your personal preferences and your comfort start to matter. Just looking at that attitude, META players are inherently more limited than non-META players.

That is the importance of realizing that the game of life is a survival game. The best tactics change when you realize that important fact.

If your goal is to keep playing, you’ll need to try different things and personalize them. You need things to work for you, specifically. It needs to work with your goal, your attitude towards life, and your personal situation. The playstyle that matches being this specific and personal is the non-META playstyle.

The item on this week’s agenda

We’re finally at the agenda, and this week, we’ll try to think about our goals in a different way. Instead of the typical goal and win conditions, we’ll try to reframe them as ‘Survival Mode’ win conditions. We’ll change 3 goals this week into Survival Mode goals.

Survival Mode goals are focused completely on longevity. It should be a specific, persistent action that you must keep doing or else, you would lose. Keeping the habit is a win, not following is a loss.

I recommend including the most important action or deliverable that, if completed, would be the biggest step toward the goal. This step must be more than any other step towards the goal, in consideration of the 80/20 principle.

Very simple agenda, this time, but still very important. If it’s hard to do, pretend that I’m staring over your shoulder. You can do it.

Buckle up and ready your fingers to type into the reply box of this email. You’ll benefit a lot from typing down your response and doing the work, it’ll be great.

The magic of “survival mode” goals

After rewriting your goals, you must be wondering “Why do these types of goals work?”. Either that, or maybe you’re asking yourself “Why did I waste my time on this useless garbage?”.

Before you spiral into a cycle of negativity, let’s quickly get to it, because there are a lot of concepts that go into this type of goal.

Survival Mode goals fit into the legendary “SMART” goals. The rewritten version requires you to be specific on the definition. Victory (or defeat) is easily measurable with a simple yes or no question. They’re meant to be repetitive, so they are much more attainable than simply stating a big goal that can only be done a few times in a lifetime. Not to mention, by being specific and repetitive, it sounds much more reasonable than the overarching goal.

And as for time-bound, the last part of the SMART combo, the big goal is separated into a repeatable chunk that is identified as the most important part of reaching the goal. These smaller chunks are much more manageable to deal with than the gigantic chunk, which, combined with the concept of Tiny Habits, explains how the psychological burden is lessened.

More importantly, this repeatable chunk is the primary deliverable, the most important part of the plan to reach the goal in accordance with the 80/20 principle. By focusing on the primary deliverable first, you make sure that your actions are the most efficient because you focus on what is most important.

Lastly, one of the most important benefits is that you separate success and failure from the outcome. This cannot be understated, because now, success is only tied to the performance of the action and not the outcome.

The outcome can come about in multiple ways. So many factors can weigh in on the final outcome, whether it be fortune, fame, chance, timing, situation, location, whatever. There are so many reasons an outcome is achieved or not achieved, and by tying success to action instead, you can lessen the load on yourself. This is definitely a topic that I’d like to explore further in future newsletters.

So what now?

If you were convinced, get on that mission right now. Let’s improve our lives together.

I rewrote my goals this time, so all there is to do is to do better.

If you can, let me know how it went for you, and let’s check if it actually worked.

Upstart tangents…

🧠 HealthyGamerGG and Chris Williamson discuss the importance separating success and failure from the outcome.

👀 I’m typing this at 2am, which means I cheated on my resolution to sleep early. Sorry! I’ll try again next time.

🤞 I’m testing a new method to increase my productivity and decrease my procrastination. Fingers crossed that I can find something that works for me, and then I can share it to all of you, too.

^{You’re an upstart with an agenda…}

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