Dears,
It's a Sunday time, after playing the role of cleaner and sweeper, I am moving to see my mobile whether it has any SMS/emails/Missed calls. I see nothing but an unclosed 'Angry Birds' game which I had left unfinished.
I am not really a game geek, game follower or fond of games really. To be honest, this is not what it should be. You should be playing games which has many advantages if you ignore the disadvantages. There are many, but mainly I like the most is 'Alertness'. I'll annotate the other ones in detail once I get time to wrote on those. For now, I am very much focused and impressed by one game, '
Angry Birds'! I feel I am late to like this game. This game has taken the world by storms.
Recently I have been into the 2 games, one is
Counter Strike, the credit goes to
Vishal Rajpurohit and the other is
Angry Birds, the credit of which goes to
Husen Daudi. The latter is the one which has impressed me the most and I am learning many untold lessons after analyzing this game for more than 2 weeks.
When I am back to home at late night and when I finish my dinner (This is normally midnight of next working day), I spend 15-20 minutes for this game. This does not happen daily due to massive workload on recent work I'm into. Since last 2 weeks, I have been observing this game closely and I am learning many things / lessons from this game.
Doesn't matter you are a student, an employee, an employer, a sportsperson, a politician, an engineer, a manager, an unemployed or whatsoever profession you belong to; this game is going to teach you many lessons and will make you think about your abilities, your skills, your team's abilities and its potential. Please don't tell me I am doing a marketing of this game, I am just putting my experience and thoughts on paper. (But I would really love to marketise if they pay me ;) )
I have a good habit to find meanings in trivial and unique things. As I have read somwhere '
1. Observation is the cheapest way to learn' !
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There are many lessons we can learn from this game. My observations are here:
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2. Never Giving up Attitude :
You are new to the stage, so you don't clear it on the first go! You try again, not all the stages are easy to go through and you don't give up. You are trying to kill the pigs and clear the stage min 5-10 times if the stage is little tricky. For easier stages, you might take min 2 attempts. Though, you have learnt not to give up even you failed once. Edison had failed 1000 times before finding the right approach to generate the light. Failures are the part of life. Trying again is the only alternative to quitting !
3. Being Calculative :
On the first attempt, you start the stage and start releasing your birds and try to destroy the pigs and buildings. At each upcoming attempt, you see the game closely and organize yourself to kill which pigs and section with which bird. Sometimes you have to hit the right brick with precision so it gives you maximum possibility to kill the pigs and demolish the buildings too, like hitting right into the base. This particular habit makes you very much calculative. You are now thinking twice before applying any of your steps/ideas into action. You can learn calculative risk taking too.
4. Break your own record :
Even if you've cleared the stage, if you are willing to finish as the superstar winner, you will still replay the stage until you get top score and get 3 stars on your name. This gives you a virtue of beating your own record in your performance. Doesn't matter you get success in your plans, you will still look within and say yourself that you can still do better! Don't compete with others. Compete with yourself, self-assess daily. You have the capability always to improve and do better. Comparing yourself with someone will simply be the insult of yours, your capabilities, your uniqueness.
5. Integrity :
"Real integrity is doing the right thing, knowing that nobody's going to know whether you did it or not." - Oprah Winfrey.
Doesn't this say it all? You simply do not play '2 player' here. Its only you. The battle is between your past and your presence. You always try to make the best use of your past and want to make your present better. You learn dedication here. You simply don't have any supervisor to observe your game but you still want to give your best shot in each release of bird. You become honest.
6. Be resourceful - Not everyone has the same skillsets :
You have played many stages, many versions. You very well know what a bird can do with an individual ability. The red birds are simple, stones are separated into 3 shots, Bomb birds
are best for bricks and stone, the yellow birds are speedguns, the eggdropping birds are useful too. Same way as a Leader if you think closely, each member of your team has different
skills and shortcomings. Learn how to best engage them accordingly. You cannot ask a fish to climb the tree. Utilize the skills of your members well and get them into action at the right time. Using the red bird to break the whole building is a useless dream. People succeed best when their unique talents are recognized. Always highlight the talent of an individual, rather pointing to one's mistakes repeatedly. Different problems require different specialists.
7. Be Creative and experimental and then Strategical :
It's very obvious that you will not hit the pigs right on first throw. You have to try various times, but wait...not the same patterns, approaches, but a different one each time. You try the same things differently when you face failures. Do experiments, there is no limit of no. of attempts. Each failure gives you a new dimension to learn and gives you the opportunity to rethink the strategy. A partial success will boost your moral and you will now plan your attacks well.
8. You can’t recover from a really bad start :
You know the game well now. If you don't start well, it will be hard for you to recover. This is just like the game of cricket, if your openers do no give a good start in powerplays, you seem having hard time scoring big.
9. Be Goal-Centric and have a core objective to achieve at least efforts:
Like the Arjun of Mahabharat, eye only to the target. Only see the pigs and find loopholes in the building to reach and hit the pigs hard. While you might be having a number of resources, as a manager you must always
think about achieving your target with the minimum resources. In Angry Birds when you do so you get three
stars, called an appreciation.
10. There are more than one ways to win :
You can kill the pigs in multiple ways by deciding which one to kill first out of the ones you see. You can always get the plan executed in multiple ways. You can always look for possibilities to reach to the target. If it looks hard or impossible, break down into multiple possibilities. More options you explore, you will see the light at the end of the tunnel.
11. If you enjoy, you will succeed :
Love what you do, do what you love. No doubt if you dedicate some time for your goal, no one can keep you away from success. Managers have to involve everyone in workplan and have to manage to keep the environment alive by some little fun and prank to keep the interest of everyone in the plan. If you are engaged well into your goals, you delivery the best always!
12. Celebrate each win :
When you clear a stage, isnt your confidence doubled ? You celebrate. When you complete the subtask, task, or a little assignment, its necessary that you celebrate the victory. This not only gives you a feeling that you are right on track, but also gives an insight to the team that they can surely achieve. Separating a big task into milestones and celebrating after each milestone will enhance your positivity.
Huff...how much have I written? Guys, we can still write more on this.
Lets cut this short for now.
I am sure this post will make you a more positive, a fighter and a winner in your problems. It should create a leader in you and if you are a leader, you will become better.
Hoping for the best things to happen for you.
Your feedback will surely be my food for the next post on motivation!
Thanks,
Jay Vora.
