What kind of game do you want to play?
That’s the question I usually start with when I have a personal or professional decision looming. Life is effectively a series of games stacked on top of each other. The two main types are finite and infinite games, as philosopher James P. Carse wrote about this in his titular 1986 book.
Finite games, he explained, are games that end when someone wins. Think board games or sports. Players — usually positioned in opposition to one another — compete until a specific outcome is achieved.
These games can also look like attending college to acquire a degree, or picking a job with the intent of securing a particular payout. Maybe it’s running a business that’s focused solely on, say, quarterly sales rather than long-term innovation.
Finite games aren’t inherently good or bad. They can be worthwhile, productive, and fun.
But they do typically force players to focus on a relatively brief stretch of time.
When trees take precedence over the forest, a game is bound to collapse.
Infinite games, meanwhile, are those that you play with the aim of continuing to play. “Winning” here means keeping the game going as long as possible. This demands regular reinvention, innovation, and change for the sake of pushing the game forward.
Here’s how Carse put it:
“Infinite players cannot say when their game began, nor do they care. They do not care for the reason that their game in not bounded by time. Indeed, the only purpose of the game is to prevent it from coming to an end, to keep everyone in play.”
When you play a game that everyone actually wants to play, it allows for candor and creativity, as well as a degree of vulnerability that is difficult to find in a finite game.
When there’s no exit plan, failure, iteration, and pivoting become part of the process. Boundaries are self-imposed rather than mandated, and there’s an implicit goal of making things better.
When the point of the game is prolonging the game, it’s in everyone’s best interest to explore, produce, and invest.
I like this analogy from Carse:
Gardening is not outcome-oriented. A successful harvest is not the end of a gardener’s existence, but only a phase of it.
As any gardener knows, the vitality of a garden does not end with a harvest. It simply takes another form. Gardens do not ‘die’ in the winter but quietly prepare for another season.
Generally, you want to align yourself with as many infinite games as possible.
Winning a game you hate isn’t winning
There are plenty of people I know who studied what they loved in college only to ditch their passions at the first high-paying job offer.
(Talking to you, pre-med students who went into tech consulting.)
According to Carse, finite games often require you to veil yourself in a mask, as if you’re performing a role or playing a part.
You know it’s temporary, and you know you have to play a certain way. Failure to do so means the game is over. A mask helps you stomach certain requirements, but it also means you’re not being who you want to be.
To be sure, making money is important and necessary. But if money is the only thing keeping you somewhere, it’s unlikely a sustainable game. The odds of burnout or boredom are high, and the game itself might fizzle.
It’s easier to make money playing a game you actually want to play, because that usually means money isn’t the only motivator.
Plus, the longer you do something you don’t like, the better you get at doing that thing — and it’s very hard to stop doing what you’re excellent at.
It’s also worth noting that most people end up playing similar games to the people you surround yourself with.
Once I recognized this, I became more intentional about the people I shared my life with, and also more careful about whether I was participating in games I actually wanted to play, or simply doing what everyone else was doing.
Define your own infinite game
Fulfilling careers are built around infinite games. You won’t get there overnight, but orienting yourself in the right direction starts with defining what you love to do most.
To figure out your ideal infinite game, ask yourself what you love to do already, and would do whether or not someone paid you.
For me, that’s writing. I published hundreds of blogs on this site before anyone ever paid me to write. When you’re obsessed, you find a way forward, regardless of obstacles, naysayers, or doubt.
Next, think about how you can make your game sustainable so you can play long enough to make it worthwhile.
Think big, act small: What daily action can you take to build momentum without wearing yourself down? Your skills and knowledge will need to match the increasing challenge of an infinite game.
Pretend like you’re a character in a video game: How can you level-up that character so they are strong and savvy enough to dominate the game? (Figuring this out is also how you make a game as enjoyable as possible.)
Finally, package these ideas into a set of rules.
Rules, in practice, are values — the beliefs you deem most important. They are pillars that, if you aligned yourself with them, make you feel best.
If your game allows for your actions to match your values, you’re probably in an infinite game that you love.
And that means all you have to do is keep playing.
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