Aliens at a Chess Tournament
Imagine, if you will, aliens exploring Earth. They visit a chess tournament. They see rows upon rows of players, hunched over chess boards, facing each other. Silence prevails, but it is an intense silence. The players’ expressions are focused, and they often scowl or sweat. They rarely speak.
Sometimes a player will sit in deep concentration for minutes at a time, fidgeting in some neurotic manner while his or her eyes fervently scour the board. Then he or she scribbles on the piece of paper that accompanies each person; sometimes before and sometimes after a move is made on the board. At other times, usually near the end of the game, the players will move pieces explosively; alternating turns that may last mere seconds or even fractions of a second. During these rapid climaxes, the body language becomes animated and players may groan and slap the time clock. They often cease to record their moves on the scoresheet.
It is easy to imagine the aliens’ point of view that this is a curious kind of work, in which patterns of expression emerge in real time and are recorded. Certainly, the workers are struggling with their creations–grandmasters have been known to lose pounds of body weight in the course of a long match!
It might be hard to convince the aliens that this was mere entertainment, especially were they to learn that successful performers are paid for their services in cash prizes. Yet we ourselves regard other activities as different, even when close inspection reveals them to be games.
Few would think of a billionaire businessperson as someone playing a game. After all, making that kind of money is a serious business, isn’t it? Yet consider: few such persons actually spend a large percentage of their wealth on personal pursuits. While most do enjoy significant perks, they could stop making money far earlier and yet enjoy the full spectrum of pleasures.
Why did Ray Dalio say, “Treat your life like a game”? Why does someone such as Bill Gates amass a fortune exceeding $50 billion, then spend the rest of his life giving it away? Why does Warren Buffet continue to live in the same home he occupied long before becoming an investment magnate? Could it be that possessions per se are not what motivates them?
As I argue in the book, superstars in fields ranging from business, to sport, to science, are not really working at all. They are playing games of their own design. Because they love their games, they have an enormous advantage over those who “work” at the same thing.