How to Use Board Games to Improve Your Real Life

If you are playing a board game, your goal is not necessarily to win, but to have fun. However, the game can be tricky to play if you never had a chance of winning. Here’s how you can get better at board games, and how these same techniques can improve your workplace, relationships, friendships, and other areas of real life.

Conduct a showdown after the game is over

If you just lost or won the game, do a quick showdown. For those unfamiliar, a showdown is just a quick exercise in which you evaluate your actions and which ones helped you achieve your goal and which didn’t.

When it comes to board games, a showdown isn’t always the first thing on your mind. These are best practices in some professional areas such as project management and business administration, but in reality they are not so obvious in other areas. If you are unsure where to start, ask yourself the following questions:

• What good have you done (ie, brought you closer to your goal)?
• What should you stop doing?
• What should you do and improve?
• What should you try next?

By asking yourself these questions, you are forcing yourself to think about ways to improve and to think which of your efforts are not paying off the way they should. You can identify your sticking points and flaws in strategies that interfere with your game.

It also works in other aspects of your life, such as your work and hobbies. This is especially useful for physical activities such as sports. Do a quick showdown every few months to get an idea of ​​how you can improve your real life.

Play with others for a wider range of experiences

A few months ago I started playing Settlers of Catan. My friends had an advantage of several months. However, I really got into the game and started playing online. Now I win a decent chunk of games with my friends, even though they’ve been playing for longer.

Admittedly, I’m not a tactical or strategy genius. I think I got better because I played online so much – I didn’t have to wait for setup, draw cards, and so on – and I could play more rounds in a given hour than if I were playing in the real world. These faster cycles paid off and I got more practice in the game.

In addition, other players in the online community were more experienced than me. They used a variety of strategies and tactics that I hadn’t seen before. Having a wider range of experiences contributes to a better overall understanding of the game and will throw your opponents off when they first see them. When you play with the same people all the time, you usually see the same strategies.

In the real world, this is twofold: find ways to practice and have a wide range of experiences. For example, if you work in a corporate job, try a side project to stay on top. If you’re an accountant, offer to pay taxes to your family and friend (not necessarily free, depending on your relationship). This may seem like unnecessary work, but it can improve your skills. Freelancing or volunteering can be a great way to explore and try different types of work . You can also learn by meeting other people and learning about their stories and experiences .

Look for patterns, principles, and anti-patterns

When you play a board game, you cannot control everything that people do, and you cannot think too much about each individual tactic of your strategy. Instead of micromanaging, look for patterns that usually lead to better results (like winning). For example, the seizure of Australia or South America usually determines the winners at risk . In Settlers, I noticed that I won without bricks and wood, but never won without ore. It helps me make decisions, and now I rarely play without a starting point on the ore. As I do this, I make sure I am near the ore resource and make expanding there my priority.

You should also notice anti-patterns to avoid, which usually lead to poor results. For example, I have never exchanged people before (my thought: “Why give them the resource they want ?!”), but I noticed that because of this I was lagging all the time. My opponents had a much more diverse set of resources than I did. Plus, as a rule, they got what they wanted, with or without my participation. If I traded, at least I could get something out of it.

This applies equally to the real world. What models lead to the desired results – in terms of work, relationships, friends, and other goals? Your family and friends have probably already warned you about anti-patterns that lead to unwanted outcomes (like drugs, bad friends, alcoholism, etc.), but which other ones you might be thinking about in your field or at this stage life? what did they not share? List and review both options on a quarterly or monthly basis.

Connect with the community to learn about strategies

In fact, reading the forums is probably the most effective advice for dramatically improving the performance of board games, especially for newbies. Unfortunately, in many cases, forums can also take a break from learning or developing these strategies and tactics on their own. For this reason, I minimize it as much as possible. However, if your opponents or colleagues use these strategies, you are putting yourself at a disadvantage if you don’t understand them.

More…