Game in the Brain

My first purchase was Game Theory by Professor Steven Stephens and I got kinda hooked. I’ve listened to a lot since. When it comes to Biz Studies, I realized these lectures are Skill Maps. By Skill Maps these are Instructions of Building for myself the set of skills I desire for life and work.

I’ve listened to A LOT buying from Audible for up to 7usd on sale and 40-50usd at The Great Courses when its on sale. The Audible having no Guide Book which is crucial when I write reports for myself and for my own articles, and eventually processes for the company that needs to be rooted in some research and principle.

Each concept talked about is a connection in my brain. A connection that is further strengthened and made complex by giving it more examples and experience. This connection thrives in more and more connections that run the signal round and round to make sure I can maintain all these concepts I’m learning.

These Lectures: Effective Communication, Critical Decision Making, Game Theory, Leadership, and Negotiations have Skill Maps of the key concepts and how they are used together. Many of the sub skills overlap but it is in their Gestalt do they achieve the nuanced purpose.

CDM (critical decision making) allows me to sort data for a decision. Game Theory gives me a set of tools that allow me to develop my Empathy and Strategies. Effective Communication is an undervalued skill map: maximizing understanding and reducing misunderstanding in the most common activities one does. How we Learn lecture helps me strategize learning, habit forming, and teaching. Leadership and Negotiation are one of the most common activities as well, second after communication.

The skillsets are amazing and my Gamer brain has been given the framework to see these all as small achievable gains I can accumulate like XP or Character Points or Feats or Perks or Edges….

I’ve had a bad experience with philippine post grad education. There are many strong and systemic criticisms I can use my expertise on to attack and present the data in a meaningful argument… but what’s the point of punching that wall and bloodying my knuckles when I can just use this to change myself and adapt to the reality: That I need to be a leader and thinker maker – that I need to create skilled leadership in the people I work with so that the organisation – my family business – can grow.

There are certain trade offs in being a Filipino in the succession of a Family Business trying to incorporate best practices from these sources. Trade offs that is far from the Ideal scenario – but much better than most. Like Random Character Generation – I like my challenges Imperfect and non-ideal. I like my adventures to be in an environment filled with Limitations (in a non-railroady way) and Hard Decisions. I game the way I solve problems, and solve problems in the way I game.