Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose
Two tools for clearer thinking, both about games
My poetry is a game. My life is a game. But I am not a game. — Frederico Garcia Lorca
Hello lovely humans,
Growing up with really strict parents, I hardly played board or card games. Listen to a long list of rules and comply, in my free time? My eyes would glaze over faster than KFC gravy gone cold.
But I’ve changed my tune about games since. Our lives can be and arguably are gamified, so choosing the right ones to play is critical.
My enthusiastic recommendations for playing a good game of life + what’s coming up:
why you are not, never were, never will be a “loser”
one of the few podcast episodes that has changed how I see the world
a peek at my Wednesday essay: “How I structure my work week”
💡 Idea of the Week: “infinite games”
As you know, many people on the internet like naming stuff and making them A Thing. A few people have deemed tomorrow (third Monday of January) “Blue Monday”, the most depressed day of the year. I hope you’ll go counter-culture with me and let this idea fall flat.
Feeling down doesn’t need its own day. Especially when we have human thoughts like this: “I’m losing at [fill in the blank].”
Feels awful, doesn’t it? Especially when you’re creative. Highly imaginative, emotionally intelligent people can experience painful feelings really vividly thanks to their honed skillset. Here’s an idea:
Nothing is wrong with you and you aren’t losing. For a moment though, you did forget you’re playing an infinite game.
James P. Carse’s book Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility is a sleeper hit that was published in 1986. Over about three decades, it grew a small but mighty cult following. Today, his ideas have influenced high-profile thinkers like Stewart Brand, Seth Godin, The Long Now Foundation, and Simon Sinek. In 2019, bestselling author Sinek wrote The Infinite Game based on Carse’s ideas, placing it more in the mainstream.
Here Carse defines two types of games:
“Finite games are the familiar contests of everyday life; they are played in order to be won, which is when they end. But infinite games are more mysterious. Their object is not winning, but ensuring the continuation of play. The rules may change, the boundaries may change, even the participants may change—as long as the game is never allowed to come to an end.”
Finite games are zero-sum contests: basketball games, chess, go, litigation.
Infinite games are boundless and collaborative with no fixed rules, fixed teams, winners or losers — everyone is trying to keep playing. Examples are communities, paradigms, markets, businesses, love, and yes — your career.
Near the end of the book, he writes:
“Infinite players are not serious actors in any story, but the joyful poets of a story that continues to originate what they cannot finish.”
It’s painful to believe the game is over when you’ve simply entered another part of the plot.
Think of an area in your life that feels disappointing right now. Is it possible you’re mistaking it as a finite game? What happens when you re-frame it as an infinite game?
Where in your life are you trying to win when it’s not possible / not the point?
🎧 Listen of the Week: Are we playing or getting played?
What I love about this podcast episode:
Learning from a delightfully thoughtful person I didn’t know of, on an impactful topic I don’t normally seek out. Feels like finding treasure
I can’t unsee what philosopher C. Thi Nguyen shows us
The host, Ezra Klein, interviews for a living. You can tell he’s loving every minute of this one
I’m made more aware of what is at stake about my lifestyle
What if we added “recognizing when you’re playing a game or getting played” to the growing list of critical 21st-Century skills?
📝 Upcoming Wednesday Essay: How I structure my work week
You likely have strong thoughts and feelings about time, especially if:
you manage your own schedule
are trying to find time outside work for your creative projects or hobbies
This Wednesday, I’ll show-and-tell my own work week: the philosophy the keeps the system going, trials and errors over the years, what’s working right now and still in progress.
It will be detailed, so you can experiment with what you like and leave the rest.
…more coming midweek!
Play on, playa,
Kat
Thank you to
for a series of insightful conversations about games that inspired this edition, and for sharing Ezra Klein’s interview with C. Thi Nguyen with me, so we could geek out together.