Life is a game of resource optimization

But you need to know what phase of the game you are in

Games and resources

I enjoy playing games. Board games, video games, tabletop strategy games, role-playing games.

Today it occurred to me that life is basically a resource optimization game.

In resource optimization games, players need to decide how to use their scarce resources to achieve objectives and win the game.

In life, we also have scarce resources.

The main ones are time, money, and attention. We can decide how we want to use our time, our money, our attention in order to achieve objectives and ‘win’ the game.

(just how you ‘win’ life is not quite clear, but enjoying it seems to be a good place to start)

Phases of the game

When playing a game, the optimal way to use resources is different at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end.

Similarly in life, you will want to use your resources differently in different stages of life.

But it’s hard to tell where you are. What got you here will not get you to the next stage.

It is quite common to see people continue to use the same strategies even though they are in a different phase of life.

What are you optimising for?

You can optimise for money, for relationships, for health, for development.

You can also optimise for things that are harmful to yourself or others, if you have addictions or antisocial tendencies.

I don’t remember consciously optimising for things when I was younger. My impression is that I was kind of flailing around trying to get more of various things (experiences, fun, attention, learning, development, money) without really thinking about it or having a plan.

It kind of worked, in that I am still alive, had a reasonably fun and successful life, and learned a lot.

Age 0-10 I was just trying to enjoy things and learn things.
Age 11-20 was the toughest time of my life by far. I learned a lot, built skills, was profoundly unhappy, attempted suicide twice, and became more resilient.
Age 21-30 still didn’t know what I really wanted but ended up with a family and a career.
Age 31-44 I optimised for money, learning and investing as much as possible.
Age 44-present has been a bit of a transition but I feel I am still stuck in the previous phase in terms of my habits and my thinking.

Stop buying markets

There is a card game I like called Dominion. In the game you buy various cards in order to do things. One stragety I like is to buy market cards, which give you more money and actions so you can buy more markets and get an ‘engine’ going.

The thing is, at some point you have to stop buying markets and start buying victory points, otherwise you are going to lose.

But the timing is important. Change too soon and your opponents will outproduce you. Change too late and you’ll still be buying markets as your opponent acquires the victory points they need to defeat you.

What to optimise for now?

It is quite likely that my wife and I have enough money (savings, investments, future pension income) to last us the rest of our lives.

So it makes little sense to optimize for income going forward.

And yet the siren call of ‘one more year’ is compelling. One more year would give us more of a cushion, and would be one less year we have to pay for.

Makes all sorts of sense, until it doesn’t any more.

Stockpiling more money we don’t need while not doing things we want to do doesn’t make much sense any more.

It’s the same with health. You can neglect your health to focus on your career, or to enjoy yourself, but in the long-term it is a bad idea.

Optimising for health while neglecting work or relationships is also likely to be a bad idea in the long-term.

So it’s really hard to get this right. We don’t know how long we have left to play the game of life, so it impossible to plan optimally.

All we can do is to maintain a baseline of health, wealth, relationships, and growth while focusing on whatever we want to optimize at the moment.

What are you optimizing at the moment? Are you maintaining everything else at baseline or are you neglecting something important?