Mar 26, 2014

Playing Candy Crush Taught Me All This


Do you know what Candy Crush Saga is? Yes? Good.

For those who have been living under a rock, it is an addictive game, where you join three/four/five shapes of similar colors and complete certain objectives in the game. 

Right now there are some 400 levels of the game, and the game is huge in terms of the money it is earning and also in terms of its reach. 





Every time I am in Delhi metro, I see people leaning against doors or sitting with their phones or tablets in their hands, playing Candy Crush, going through the levels again and again. 

It is a brilliant time killer, and if not checked, it can be an equally brilliant time waster, too. There is a lot that creative individuals like you can learn from the game, and apply those principles to maybe become better at what you are doing and what you want to do. So, what are these principles?






Patterns
Success in Candy Crush largely depends on seeing and recognizing the repeating patterns on the screen, predicting them, and creating situations so that the patterns are in your favor. 

And this, is easily applicable to anything in life. From business to relationships, if you look around, human behavior is pretty predictable. Some people will never listen to you, others will latch on to every word you say. Knowing how people behave in patterns, is the key. This is how people predict the future.




Connections 

Connections are the currency to success in Candy Crush and in real life too. And it's a very give and take kind of relationship. You send lives to your Facebook friends and they'll send lives to you. 

Heck, they'll even help you out when you're stuck at intermediate levels. Similarly, help enough people in real world, and sooner or later, help will come back to you when you need it the most.






Habits 

What is the one thing that you want to do every day? If there is no luck factor involved (lot of luck factor in Candy Crush, though) in it, you cannot help but get better at that activity. 


Example: your mom can definitely cook better food than anyone else in your house. Why? Cuz she has cooked for almost every day of her life, probably three times a day and she can't help but be awesome at it. So, decide what you want to do, and then do it. On repeat. Even if you suck at it at first, if you do it every day, you'll get better. 



Giving Up is NOT an option:
Yup, the Level 65 of Candy Crush is a bitch. I spent almost a month at that level when I was playing that and through that time, all I could think of was, when can I get back to my tab and play that level again. 

So, whatever you're doing in life, don't give up before you've tried absolutely to the point of failure. And the only real failure is giving up, which, is not an option. Because, whatever it is, people before you have done and people after you will do it again. And, as I said in point A, it's all about patterns.


These are just some of the things that I can think of right now about the game and life, I am sure you can think of more comparisons.

The gist here is that you can find life lessons and inspirations from even shitty, irritating, potentially useless things like mobile games that are just time killers.

How you view the world is up to you.