Knowing how to navigate the complexities and intricacies of internal office politics and individual personality can be an invaluable gift in real life. Not only does it keep us switched on and aware of the challenges and headaches that other people can cause, but it can also cause us to look internally and figure out ways to leverage our skills or expertise into areas where we feel more valued and appreciated and gain more satisfaction out of our daily routine.
Although the workplace is the most obvious example that showcases how working smarter, rather than harder, can advance you past your peers, understanding the interconnectivity of close friendships and family dynamics is another area where smarter choices can make our lives easier.
So, where do games and strategy come into it, and how can they help us make better, smarter choices as part of our usual routine? Let’s take a look.
Art by Chris Alfeus.
Wrapping strategy inside knowledge
Effective decision making and strategy are byproducts of knowledge. There are numerous examples of gaming strategies that transcend their respective titles and can be applied to daily life. In casino gaming, for instance, there is a range of games that rely on strategy, and for those who can leverage their skills in this field, it can lead to smarter choices in daily life.
It’s essential to make the distinction here. Some casino games do not require any strategy, and all casino games are games of chance. Poker and blackjack are two games that hone in on the strategy and complexities of reading human body language. And it’s within this nuance that we can harness this strategy to help us make smarter choices in daily life.
Understanding the nuances of card-based casino games is advantageous. Blackjack is a game that features quicker fire rounds than poker, but the concept remains the same. Splitting 10s in blackjack isn’t something that anyone who understands the game would recommend. While making mistakes is often the best way of learning the ropes, this is a statement that carries a bit more weight in the world of blackjack, given that your money is often at stake.
Since card-based casino games such as blackjack combine strategy and monetary loss, this added edge can help inspire smarter choices. However, first, and most crucially, learning how the game works before putting down any of your own funds is strongly recommended.
Keeping the brain focused
Modern life is hectic, and despite the plethora of gaming options available, there are plenty of games that can help keep your brain focused, resulting in a calmer thought process and, hopefully, inspiring smarter choices in your daily routine.Smarter choices can act as a catalyst to help us clear up our calendars, generate more free time, and allow ourselves more time to unwind. Cluttered thinking can lead to chaotic decision-making, which can ensnare us in a spiral of poor decisions, compounding further issues and making it a real struggle to escape.
On the contrary, flipping this mindset on its head can open up doors that we didn’t even know were there to begin with. Some people spend a lot of money on holidays, without leaving their continent. However, they don’t explore luxury options in some of the world’s most popular travel destinations that are further afield.
While people may prefer what they know and become creatures of habit, adopting a more strategic mindset, and freeing up time, can give us the opportunity to expand our horizons on multiple levels. Strategic, smart thinking can help us avoid these issues, even before they arise.
Unpacking the clutter
Rather than focusing on the mundane elements of decision-making, by fusing gaming and strategy, we can unplug from daily stresses and think of ways to navigate our problems. Gaming is a broad spectrum; there are gambling games, such as poker and blackjack, which we mentioned earlier, as well as other gambling games like Mahjong, which combine strategy with the possibility of financial gain.
Even if we just dip our toe into examples of other titles, there’s the universal and consistent appeal of Monopoly, strategic games like Catan, and chess—which is a game that continues to produce new generations of grandmasters and has one of the strongest ties whenever we think of the bridges that have been built between gaming and strategy.
Chess opens up the door to many skills that can complement the positives of strategic thinking. While it is reductive to conclude that chess skills and conquering strategy automatically equate to better choices in daily life, these games help slow down our thought process and allow us to make more rational choices in the heat of a tense game.
Once we look at it from this perspective, it becomes clearer to see why an effective strategy in gaming can inspire smarter choices in daily life.
Final thoughts
We don’t want to diminish the challenges and struggles that many of us face in our daily lives, nor are we in the business of speaking reductively about choices that can have a profoundly damaging impact on our daily lives.
However, there is plenty of evidence and science that showcase how unpacking clutter, structuring our thought patterns, and adopting a pragmatic and practical approach to dealing with our issues can have a positive, compound impact when demonstrated over several weeks or months.
As with many other aspects of our lives, it ultimately comes down to balance. Nobody is saying you should sit around and play chess on your phone all day, neglecting your duties, nor are we saying that you should adopt an approach whereby you overanalyze every situation.
Decision-making can be as much of an art as it is a science. As long as you adopt a pragmatic and strategic approach to each situation, you stand the best chance of making smarter choices in your daily life and can approach each situation as level-headed as possible.
Nobody is going to sail through life and get all their decisions right, but having a constant sense of self-awareness, working on strategy, and aiming to improve as we move forward are the things we should all strive for.
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