I have always wanted to draw a parallel between a computer game and life/entrepreneurship. Here comes it:
I have been playing the awesomest game – Portal (trailer here) for some time – it’s a mind-bending first-person action-puzzle game. The challenge levels require some serious thought and flawless execution. The game kept reminding me of two very important things:
I. PUSHING LIMITS – as you complete any benchmark the bar is raised usually twice as high. This forces the following pattern of thinking:
(1) “This is impossible!” – after you just did your best to barely finish the level within 40 steps, you are now required to do same in 20! Hell it’s impossible!
(2) “This game has been tested this must be possible…”
(3) “What can be done?” – now starts the real thinking! Can you skip some parts of he whole puzzle? If not, can you execute them in a more efficient way? etc..
Every time you think you have reached the top this game reminds you, “No way buddy, not even half way!” stThen you keep climbing until you solve it. We don’t do this in real life. Most of the times we don’t push at all…
II. GIVING UP — in portal it is considerably easy to complete a challenge for one particular reason: every time you get to (1) , you immediately realize that (2) therefore you really don’t have problem (1). However in real life, when get stuck somewhere no one comes to tell you that what you think is actually impossible. It’s actually very unfortunate because as soon as people come against a problem that looks like impossible, they give up. It seems to me that the solution is to ask yourself, “Is there a chance that anyone can ever solve this problem in any way?” If the answer to this is NO then move on quickly to the next thing, but if the answer is yes, then you might want to consider if it’s worth trying to find the solution…