Life as a Game

I recently took my eight-year-old son to a birthday party. The proctor asked the kids to raise their hands if they like to play games. In an instant, every single hand went up, with full extension and each shaking with eagerness. 

This gave me pause—it’s infrequent that consensus is achieved so quickly with a diverse group of people, children or adults. I suspect if we asked a large group of adults the same question about going to work in the morning, there would be far fewer hands in the air, each raised a bit more slowly, and likely with less enthusiasm. 

What is it about games that creates such universal and immediate attraction?

When you think about it, games are not that different from work, or even life in general. Sometimes things work out, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes we do our best, other times we don’t. There is a learning curve, and we generally get better over time. Sometimes people cheat. We often fail in front of friends or colleagues. Some games are hard to master. And, of course, there are always some people who are better than we are. Yet, despite all these characteristics, we love games.

But if we transfer these same characteristics to life or work, our perception changes dramatically. Perhaps we should think about more facets of our lives as a game rather than as an ordeal. How much more productive and motivated would we be if we brought the same enthusiasm to our professional lives as kids do to a game at a birthday party?

I think part of the challenge as it relates to life or work is the fear of falling short or failing. We think the stakes are too high in real life, that failures are acceptable in games but not in the professional world. The reality is that falling short of our objectives, or even flat-out failing, is how we grow in life. Like muscles that get built through micro tears caused by exercise, our ability to endure, persevere, learn, and grow is a function of embracing the essence of games in our lives.

How many events or tasks in our lives would be improved if we embraced them as a game? Our fitness routine? Check! Kids’ schoolwork? Check! Getting a promotion at work? Check!

We have an amazing ability to enjoy games for their own sake, often independent of the outcome. I can’t count how many times as a child I played basketball with friends, and when asked by my parents how it went, I would always reply, “It was fun.” I didn't always win. I didn’t make all my shots. I sometimes got worked over by better players. But I always enjoyed it. So much so, that I couldn’t wait to get up the next morning and play another game of basketball. I believe, in a sense, this was true because the game was much more about the journey—about being in the present moment and being in the flow—than the outcome. 

My point is this: there is nothing preventing us from finding the same youthful joy we had in playing games in all the underlying journeys in our lives. Put another way, if we choose engagements and challenges that we like—in the same way we choose games that we enjoy—the journey itself becomes a game.

There are many benefits to this gamification of life’s journey. With games, we generally enjoy the unpredictability. If we knew what would happen at every turn, we probably wouldn’t play—the game would fail to engage us. Yet in our careers or relationships, we often recoil in the face of challenges or unpredictable circumstances. It’s remarkable that one of the core elements that makes us cherish games is so unattractive to us in nearly every other facet of life. 

Games also lend themselves to creativity and experimentation. When playing chess, I’ll try new moves just to see how they work out—and mostly they don’t. But I always learn something new. And on many occasions, I discover a technique that improves my game. This is because games offer a level of psychological safety that facilitates experimentation. Psychological safety is the belief that you can experiment, create, innovate, and make mistakes without fear of punishment. Games offer us a space where we experience this sense of safety. But what if we could translate this sense of safety—this environment that fosters creativity and discovery—to our workplace, our relationships, and our broader lives?

This suggests a remarkable opportunity for reframing. What do I mean by reframing? We often interpret situations through tacit cognitive frames that we develop through experience. These frames feel natural but can limit our ability to learn and grow. For example, during a disagreement, most people have a tacit goal of “winning.” This is a frame that sees a disagreement as a competition rather than as an opportunity to learn something new from another person. Reframing is the process of changing these tacit frames.

Professor Amy Edmondson has written extensively about both psychological safety and reframing in her books Teaming: How Organizations Learn, Innovate and Compete in a Knowledge Economy and The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth. To learn more about both concepts, I encourage you to take a look at Edmondson’s work. But in the meantime, consider that we can reframe many of our experiences and difficulties as a game. If we do so, just like those kids with trembling hands thrust in the air, we can confront challenges with greater enthusiasm and face problems with new levels of creativity.

I recognize there are meaningful differences between playing a game and experiencing relationship problems and career challenges. Yet I do believe there is an opportunity for all of us to bring the spirit of games into our lives and realize that the differences are perhaps less real than perceived.