Finite Games Vs Infinite Games

Are you ready for lifelong wins? 💪🏾

This week I’m breaking down Finite Games vs Infinite Games and the 3 “rules” to make sure you dominate the one designed for lifelong student-athletes.

Connect with me on LinkedIn so we can keep the conversation going.

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Finite Games Vs Infinite Games

The philosopher James Carse uses terms “finite games” and “infinite games” to describe the main ways we live and play on Earth.

A finite game is just that—finite. It has a finite number of options and players, clearly defined winners and losers, and an established set of rules. This is chess or checkers, for sure. But it’s also politics, sports, and war.

Infinite games are the opposite. They have no clear winners or losers, no established time frame for play, and no fixed rules.

In infinite games, the field of play is mutable, the number of participants keeps changing, and the only goal is to keep playing. Art, science, and love are infinite games.

Most important: so is peak performance. Peak performance isn’t something we win. there are no fixed rules, no established time frame for the contest, and the field of play is as big or as small as you choose to live your life. Instead, peak performance is an infinite game—but not quite.

Peak performance is an unusual kind of infinite game because it may be unwinnable, but you can definitely lose. (we’ll dive into why this is the case in a future lifeletter edition 😉).

“Life is a game, play it.” - Mother Teresa

The Ultimate Question 🤔

I spent the majority of my 20s obsessed with business. I still have physical issues of Forbes Magazine I received with my subscription in 2013. And I have notebooks full of notes that I took down from conferences, online lectures, educational podcasts, etc.

I’ve noticed a few intersections between sports and business over the years.

Professional athletes were becoming more cautious of the business side of their sports: building their personal brand, negotiations affecting play, and even affecting the team “they chose”’ to be traded to.

“The game of business” has always interested me. There are so many sports phrases used in business like “negotiating for sport” which means someone is attempting to get a better deal on something not because they can’t afford the current price, they’re just doing it for the sport of it.

And even in sports, more business jargon and lingo have been used. Whether it’s the “ROI” of a player, creating “buy-in”, or the overly used phrase “do your job.”

Based on what I experienced during my life after sports transition and the entrepreneurship experience I gained in my 20s, a question kept popping up in my head.

The question was: If business is a game, shouldn’t student-athletes have the ultimate advantage?

Once I started studying peak performance in 2018, the question immediately evolved to being: If life is a game, shouldn’t student-athletes have the ultimate advantage?

And the ultimate question that led me to write “Triggered 2 Triumph”, share my message from stages, and coach student-athletes 1:1 is…

Who said there had to be a transition anyway?

Student-Athletes don’t have to transition into being a more complete person and experience an identity crisis. What needs to happen is the transition from playing the finite game of a specific sport to playing the infinite game of life.

So if you’re truly committed to being an elite performer in life, well, congratulations! You’re a lifelong student-athlete now.

Embrace it and wear it like a badge of honor. Doing so saved my life and took my results beyond all rational standards and reasonable expectations.

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3 Rules To Dominating The Infinite Game Of Life 😤

Rule #1: Keep It Stupid Simple

Or as I like to say sometimes, keep it simple…stupid haha. 😂

Life is extremely simple, we’re the ones that make it overly complicated and complex. Is it easy or smooth?…heavens no! But the right answers are usually the most obvious ones. We just allow our emotions to intervene with logic.

Take Elon Musk for example. A big reason he’s the billionaire he is today is due to the simple fact he solved a simple problem. While NASA has to build new rockets every time one is launched, Elon figured out a way to use reusable materials for SpaceX rockets.

Now, was this easy to do? In this case, it’s literally rocket science so you know the answer to that. But the concept is brilliantly simple.

Rule #2: Focus On Strengths, Delegate Weaknesses

In my darkest and most depressing times, while navigating through my life after sports transition, I made sure I did two things: I wrote and worked out.

And today, being a writer and powerlifter are two careers of mine.

I can’t tell you how many times I facepalmed myself thinking about all of the time, energy, and money I wasted, in my 20s attempting to master certain things.

From launching a couple of podcasts I did all of the production for, launching an apparel line I did all the startup operation tasks for (even though I had a full team), to running an event/networking business where I ran the day-to-day tasks.

Some of the things I’ve mentioned may be exactly what you’re great at and should be doing with your brand, business, or dream job. But they were things I was good at (and average at best) and shouldn’t have been my focus.

There’s no nobility in doing everything and getting 100% credit on something that’s average.

It’s better to get 10% credit on something that’s historic by having the right people, in their right seats, on your bus. Then you can proudly say no to what you’re bad at and say yes to what you’re great at.

Rule #3: Keep Playing

This is essentially how you win infinite games. Remember, the goal is to continue to play.

If you’re an artist like an actor or a painter or dancer; your ultimate goal is to continue to do what you love for as long as possible. Same which marriage which is an infinite game.

Have you ever met a couple that’s been married so long that it’s hard for your brain to process? It’s a beautiful thing because you’re watching them dominate a game by still being able to play it.

To quote my mentor, Steven Kotler:

Motivation is what gets you into this game; learning is what helps you continue to play; creativity is how you steer; and flow is how you turbo-boost the results beyond all rational standards and reasonable expectations.

When it comes to learning, Gary Klein states in his classic book on decision-making, Sources of Power, that there are eight types of knowledge that are visible to experts yet invisible to everyone else:

• Patterns that novice don’t notice.

• Anomalies or events that didn’t happen or events that violate expectations.

• The big picture.

• The way things work.

• Opportunities and improvisations.

• Events that already happened (the past) or will happen (the future).

• Differences that are too small for novices to detect.

• Their own limitations.

These are basically the ingredients to being a lifelong learner. But of course, they apply to being a lifelong student-athlete also. Heavy on the “lifelong” part!

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Last Words…

Although I provided some rules to dominate the infinite game of life, the plot twist is: there are no rules!

For lack of better terms, do what works best for you.

If you “step over any lines” along the way; you’ll then know the limits and boundaries to stay in. But until then, make sure you’re a big stepper!

"Be bold and mighty forces will come to your aid" - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Hope this added the fuel to ferociously launch your week! ♾️🔥🚀

See you next Monday! 😎

And when it comes to the infinite game of life…

Choose Flow.

Be Brilliant.

Ball Out.

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