Productivity Read: Why gamers shouldn’t press the “Restart” button. (Not a read for gamers)
Few days ago, I decided to give my shot at playing the Need for Speed; Payback game on my newly purchased Acer Nitro 5 laptop. None of the previous computers I previously had access to, had supported gaming with high quality graphics. Hence, this sudden urge to play games, and not because I am necessarily passionate about gaming.
Now one thing I am passionate about, is productivity: A topic which I have done considerable research on. So whenever I was playing, my mind automatically related the circumstances to content I have been reading/researching about.
Being a newbie to this game, I was naturally a poor driver. Despite the reckless driving, I was able to maintain a slim lead till this particular point in my first race (Let’s call this point “Junktion” here onwards). I pressed “Restart”. And next time around, my driving was still poor, but improving. I still couldn’t avoid colliding at Junktion and sending my car haywire, conceding my lead in the process. As someone who finds it incredibly hard to let go of a lead, I would press “Restart” again and again.
After coming to a point where pressing “Restart” was helpless, I realized I needed to up the performance of my car. And I needed money for that. The only way I could get money was by finishing this very same race and collecting 2000$ as a participation prize, compared to the 15000$ awarded to the winner. This meant that I had to participate in this race 50 times over to collect the 100,000$ required to upgrade my car.
Race 1 of 50 began. I began racing with the same intensity. Collided. But this time, I took my time to get the car back to stability. and started driving again. As expected, I finished last, but I was getting what I wanted: the 2000$.
I had collected around 10% percent of the required amount before I started to feel disappointed about colliding at Junktion. Now that winning the race was not necessary, I decided to apply my brakes 10 meters before Junktion, which would automatically -and inevitably- concede whatever lead I had.
The car would now slow down, which gave me more control over Junktion.
So by the time I had around 30,000$ in my account, I was able to avoid any collision at Junktion by applying brakes around 50 meters ahead. By now I had caught a few nuances (fancy word eh?) which easily helped me avoid the Junktion collision quite effortlessly.
Not that long afterwards, managing Junktion didn’t seem to be an issue. Now that I was a bit more skilled, I could manage to escape the collision even at higher speeds. I had around 36,000$ when I decided to think of winning again. And after 2 more “participations”, I managed Junktion quite easily without conceding a lead and won the race by a hefty margin. WITHOUT any performance upgrade.
Now the thing is, everyone (all 7 billion of us) want to be productive. But majority of us aren’t. Not many make an effort, and of those who make an effort, not many persist.
Now when junk is thrown at you in your journey to self improvement, you don’t press the restart button. Nor should you start doubting your abilities and think of you as “not enough”.
You persist when you collide with that junk. You slow down a bit. You gather your thoughts. Analyze where you went wrong. Try a few different things within your capability. And continue to make small improvements every single moment of your day. Its okay to have others ahead of you in the process. And of course, you will catch a few nuances (yeah, fancy word) which will help you avoid that junk next time around, quite effortlessly. Keep focusing on the 2 Ps. Process, and Progress, and I can assure you, gradually you will achieve a satisfying state of productivity. WITH ZERO UPGRADES.
And who knows, by that time, you might have saved up 36000$ for yourself. eh? ;)
