How to manage personal resources (video games and life) June 28, 2021 – Posted in: Personal potential – Tags: manage, managing, personal resources, resources, video games
In today’s world it can be difficult to make progress. Even with a master plan, progress in the real world is tough. Making progress in life takes time. That new career, house, or car can sometimes seem decades away. That’s why learning how to manage personal resources (video games and life is so important if you want to be successful.
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This is exactly why people often waste time, energy, and money on a daily basis. Because sometimes the value of being resourceful is ”lost in time” so to speak.
This is and I think most people end up wasting thousands of dollars per year on things that could be better used to invest in their future.
Managing personal resources in life
Many of us just don’t understand that our lives can be greatly improved if we just become more careful and strategic with our personal resources. Just a few small changes to our daily lifestyle can greatly improve what is possible over the years of our lives.
So what does the topic of resource management have to do with video games you might ask?
Well, there have been multiple studies that disprove the common misperception of parents that ”video games make you dumb”. In fact, there are more scientific studies that show that certain types of gaming can actually increase intelligence our intelligence rather than hurt it( Michigan State University, University of Glasgow, Green and Bavalier, fMRI study by Granex).
I’m not really here to try to convince you one way or the other. Just keep your mind open to the idea that some video games may actually be benefiting you more than you might realize.
The main reason I like video games is because they are fun. But I rarely do things that are only fun. Fun is a bonus but not the only benefit of video games and that’s why I play them.
When I’m not on a serious project I try to find something to give me a break but also that challenges me and puts my brain to creative use. Kids play every day and their brains develop faster than any other age group. As adults, we can also play and expand our brain power as well.
So how do video games help give us an edge in life while also entertaining us? Well for one, they involve our input and interaction while other pleasure focused activities like watching TV are simply spectator activities.
That’s right, video games require our personal involvement as well as input. The actions that we perform have real results on the game. All this input and output allows use to learn as we go and get better at a specific skill set.
It’s in this way that video games simulate life by providing us with feedback loops and natural consequences stemming from our actions.
The consequences of our actions allow us to better predict our performance in life. Just like in life, everything you do and don’t do has real repercussions. These types of games are incredible for learning how to manage personal resources.
One of the types of games I enjoy most are base defense strategy games like King Rungi Tower Conquest video games
Games like these mimic real life in the best sense in that they allow us to be able to visualize how all our small efforts can contribute to something great in the future through cumulative effort.
This idea doesn’t just come from playing video games. To the contrary, entrepreneurs, investors, and professors have known about this concept for years.
In the investing world we have the formula of compounding interest which demonstrates that by reinvesting the interest of the initial investment, profits are gained and accumulated at a faster rate than when simply cashed out.
Similarly, in economics, we have the law of diminishing returns that says that increasing any factor of production beyond it’s optimum, results in declining marginal returns and output until returns become negative.
To put it simply, it pays to save reinvest and if you put too much time, effort, or resources into something you will eventually lose.
I covered the topic more thoroughly here on compounding interest if you are interested.
When we play games like base defense strategy, we can see the value of these concepts put into light-speed. This helps us to not only see the value of setting daily habits but also to improve upon these essential skills.
Resources in video games
You see, these tyes of games usually have common elements. Example:
- You have limited resources starting off and have to build to eliminate opponents
- As you learn to manage your resources, you build bigger and are able to advance further in the game.
Sound familiar? It should, because in many ways this is exactly how life works. We all start with limited amounts of time, energy, money, and abilities with which to build. The better we manage, the more opportunities and options we have.
Of course, some of us are born with more resources or abilities and our starting point can not be changed but we can make progress. Our starting point can not be changed, but our ability to manage and build can always be improved. This is the best news for us.
Of course, life is much more chaotic then any game and any number of problems can set us back in huge ways. We have to manage real life and death situations sometimes and we can’t approach life in a casual way that we would in a game. But a game can give us strategic advantages in how we approach different problems and can help us wrap our heads around the idea that small changes repeated over time can make all the difference.
If you have never tried video games or tower defense type games than I suggest you try and find one you like. There are so many great games to chose from. Some are better than others but consider that our brains adapt to strategy very quickly and often unconsciously. Putting hours into a strategy game could give you years of experience that would be too costly in real life but could teach you great lessons on how to manage personal resources in video games and in life.