How Gaming Affects Your Productivity and Why Is It Awesome Anyway
by Alex Yumashev ·
Sep 22 2010
A friend of mine, who's also a geek and "digital entrepreneur", has described himself as a "PC-gaming junkie" and asked me to write a post on the "how gaming affects productivity in a negative way" topic.
Well. Actually, that post title has been lying in my drafts for a loh-ong time... Until I realized that gaming is actually good for your business.
I love games. I'm an addict, actually. I almost got expelled from the university because all I was doing was playing Quake-2 online. And not just on my free time - all the time.
I still play PC-games, action-shooters and rally-sims mostly and... well it does affect my productivity in a negative way.
But.
Well. Actually, that post title has been lying in my drafts for a loh-ong time... Until I realized that gaming is actually good for your business.
I love games. I'm an addict, actually. I almost got expelled from the university because all I was doing was playing Quake-2 online. And not just on my free time - all the time.
I still play PC-games, action-shooters and rally-sims mostly and... well it does affect my productivity in a negative way.
But.
- Games make you smarter. Games improve decision-making, especially fast decision-making. This is a scientific fact now. Games train your brain to react fast.
- Running a business is just like a game, especially running an online business. Geeks, have finally found a dream job for the - we do spend all of our time in front of a computer, improving our "pet's" characteristics here and there (RPG). We build new "facilities", sometimes with the help of external "units" (RTS), we even buy "magical items" and services and join "clans". We make tactic and strategic decisions all the time, we learn tips-and-tricks from "gaming gurus". We react fast in case of emergencies and trying to solve the puzzle as fast as possible. And I can't tell how many times I heard this phrase from a startup founder - "hell yeah, let's conquer the universe!"
- Fun is great. After all, isn't "having fun" - the thing we make money for? I mean, after saving money for our kids' education and paying our rents we all still have that little kid inside, worth spending some money on. That little Barney Stinson who loves playing laser tag.
Trying some off-piste snowboarding on Chilean glaciers. Playing your favorite PC-game on a XXXX-inch monitor. Taking a motorcycle ride across the continent. Then another continent.