“Playing the infinite game of business requires an infinite mindset in order to succeed.”
– Simon Sinek | The Infinite Mindset
“How is this even possible?!”, exclaimed my mother as she looked frustrated towering over her phone. Taking into consideration her tech-challenged generation and the usual complexities of the cellphones, I answered her question with one of my own, “What happened? I have told you so many times to just press the home button in case you are lost.” “I am not lost, it’s just this game that is getting on my nerves”, she quipped. With a groan, I headed over to see what was bothering my mom enough to bother me. She was playing one of her favorite pastime phone games, the bubble shooter.
Bubble shooter is a game where a person has to aim and shoot at similar colored bubbles in order to drop all of them and win through the levels. My mother was stuck on a particular level which required a tenacious skillset to pull through the game with limited bubbles to throw but multiple entangled bubbles formations to clear. “How can anyone win with such less resources and such complex targets? It was way easier in the lower levels!”, huffed my mother in exasperation. “But that’s the game!”, I chimed, “It gets tougher as you go up but you also have the advantage of better skills now and such higher rewards.” And as I said those words, something clicked in me. A sense of déjà vu, or serendipity, or an instant connection that I had made to a real life scenario akin to that of this random gaming theory so to say.
Just like in the game of bubble shooter, in real life too, as we go up the grades, the stakes get higher, resources and the information may get limited, ambiguity is abound, but the challenges do not cease. More complexity but less safety, more rewards but less resources. It gets really hard to navigate such mazes but that is what truly defines the individuals who are up for the tasks, the one who can look ahead, aim higher and shoot for the stars. While it may get difficult at times, we just probably need to remember that other piece of advice – always go to the home button when stuck. Just pause and restart to get that fresh perspective. Much like climbing the mountains, climbing the ranks is not going to get easier but the view at every level is that much more rewarding. But when you finally get to the top, you know that you have levelled up in life. And that is the game of business.
