Games to play at work

I mean it can be a long day. Time is passing and what to do?

Is it about looking good in the office? Well, that’s a fail. Is it planning for lunch? I’m seriously down for that. Is it The Chat?? “Today, I will mostly be practising being socially awkward?” I guess not. At last at the end of the day I get to go home. I've made it through another day. And that is a prize in itself. Achievement unlocked!

But I know that a life spent in petty distraction, watching the clock, and planning my escape, is a life wasted. So no, not that then.?

So, what to do? What to do? All those hours? All those seconds? The clock, clunk, clunk, clunking along?

Do you face this challenge?

Well here are three games you can play while you are at work.

Three should be more than enough. After all, how much fun can you pack into the working day? It’s 8 hours, and that's with a lunch break. Any more and it gets to be too much fun.

They're not hard to play. Allegedly. And I play them all, I mean if it's that sort of day.

Game one. Moral High Ground.

Now this is a great game. Let me try to explain the goal or objective.? To claim and hold the moral high ground in any engagement. Now, I know what you might be thinking but, no not that. It's to be a better person. And if you play this game properly then all too often things turn out right. Better outcomes, others feeling good about themselves and sometimes you might even end up feeling better about yourself. It’s tricky though, since should your ego triumph then you lose by default. That’s one way to play the game, but that is what can only be described as the Kingdom sacrifice. Perhaps not quite the same as throwing God for a stone but it’s the same principle.

To sacrifice doing the right thing for your own ego, to score petty points, to manoeuvre, to take a position of obvious moral superiority and then really rub it in. That's how to lose.

The real win in this game is to ensure the right outcome for the engagement despite the demands of your own ego. Ultimately it’s a further extension of being fair and playing fair. At work though there is the drive to get things done rather than just play a good game. That adds an element of direction that sometimes just being fair doesn't have.? So, it’s harder. Getting things done but done right. This and the third game together can ensure a very entertaining day and one that ensures objectives are achieved.?

There is no doubt that I can and do play this game for much lower stakes, sometimes to purely score points. I lose of course. Getting down in the gutter only gets me as mucky as everyone else working that elevation. So yes, it’s another one of those games best played against yourself rather than in competition with others. Any public claim of victory undermines your position so it's really the secret satisfaction of better outcomes

Game 2, Through the Mirror

Well, this is a harder one. Honestly, this is one of those games I just don’t play well at all. Even though the win, the payoff, is so fantastic.

It’s one of those games that has the power to transform the world around me. It’s a type of magic, a way to make things better. But let’s start way back at the beginning.

Way back before Carl Jung or Anais Nin or Chuck Palahniuk or Steven Covey. Yes, they all said this.

?“We see the world as we are. Not as it is''

The first time I read that quote I was like “Aha! Of course” It was revelatory at the time. Up until then my perspective was more of an “I am me, the world is the world and life happens.”??

So the world as a mirror? Isn't it rather that we focus on those aspects of the world that validate and reflect back our own beliefs and values? Going further and being even more extreme isn’t it that we project our beliefs, values and prejudices onto the world? Beyond that projection is a world both very real and very different to whatever we choose to see it as. And because of that sometimes surprising and shocking things happen. Things that we just don’t expect and cannot anticipate.?

Further to that logic, if that’s how I view the world then others must be doing the same thing? All of us proceeding within our own self constructed illusion interspersed with occasional bouts of realism?

Sure I knew all this but nothing changed. It was just knowledge.

Then a few years ago I read a truly fantastic book, “Surely you're joking Mr. Feynman” By Richard Feynman. the Nobel Prize winning Physicist who worked on the Manhattan project. This book is a recording of conversations he had with his friend and drumming partner, Ralph Leighton.?

One of the stories he told was when he was lecturing in Brazil he realised that he understood his students' broken English better than he understood their fluent Portuguese. So even though he could speak only intermediate Portuguese he began to give his lectures in Portuguese rather than in English. That is the basic premise of this game.

We know that others project? their hopes, dreams, perceptions, prejudices, and fears onto us and that they seek reflection as validation.? I think being able to respond in a way that enhances the positive traits being projected is one of the keys to getting things done. To find and appeal to the value inherent within each person. Each and everyone contains within us our own multiverse of existences and possibilities. We can either merely reflect back what? others are projecting or we can go further and choose to project back what is positive and life affirming.

There are people who are almost entirely negative and people that are also almost entirely positive. It’s popular to say discard the former and seek closer association with the latter. But these are a minority. Most of us are composite. Seeking out and projecting back the positive puts both the responsibility and the power into my control. That’s by being a little more than empathic, by being selective in response, by seeking out and reflecting back what’s good. And it’s affirming in itself.

To understand that is to realise the opportunity to reach through the mirror. To recognise that in the same way we are, others are seeking validation, and to take that opportunity to provide something deliberately positive instead of merely reflective.

Am I any good at this game? It’s challenging. To maintain awareness of others. To reach through my own projection. And all too often my focus is on the target instead of the process..

Although a focus on the prize can be a good thing, that's the end state. This is a means for achieving that.

Which brings us to;

Game 3. Eye on the Prize

Ask yourself what is it that we are supposed to be achieving? Beside the competition of ego? Besides office politics? Beside hacking through the troubles of today? What am I supposed to be getting done? What are we all supposed to be focused on? What's the target we're all working towards?

So here’s that other game I play, Eye On the Prize. And what a great game it is.

It’s basic but satisfying in the way it provides focus and meaning..?

Knowing what the prize is and frequently revisiting that helps me keep things on track. It quickly highlights where and when things might be going wrong.

I know, often the love we set out for is not the love we arrive at. Things change. We change. What we thought we could see clearly from a distance is not the same thing close up. Keeping the direction and clarity of the payoff constant makes it so much easier to discern what is dross and what is essential.

So the questions, What’s our objective? What are we trying to achieve? These are critical in helping work out whether what I’m doing right now is moving us in the right direction. If I don’t know, if no one knows, then that needs to be called out and found out. It’s either that or Chaos. A paddle here, a paddle there, the canoe goes nowhere.

Sure you can relate this back to the business aim and vision. You know, that statement written large and in plain English on the wall behind reception as you walk into the office? Sometimes it’s difficult to relate everyday activities back to that but the very least I can do is ensure I know why we are doing what we are doing.?

If I consider the eye on the prize as my main game at work it pretty much annihilates all my other petty motivations. Its purpose. In a box. A purpose that is always there even if obscured by confusing messages, my ego and my own special brand of dullness.

So I try to ask myself what are we about right now? How does this all fit together to bring us to the place we want to be?? And if I can keep everyone, mainly myself, focused on that objective, that prize, then I can even stop my mind from wandering off. (Well no, that’s impossible. For me it’s mainly drive-by focus.)

It's also a really useful way of dealing with my tendency to regard every question as a personal challenge. It helps me acknowledge that weakness and avoid it. Otherwise whole meetings can and do descend into attrition. The game is lost.

Sometimes if I get really bored I’ll even try playing these games in real life.