What I've learned from playing Solitaire

Sometimes you find a life lesson in an unusual place or person. My recent mini-obsession with playing Solitaire has either taught or reminded me of the following:

• You have to be prepared to lose. There’s always another game.
• Don’t get fixated on one particular next step or you’ll miss other opportunities.
• There is no strategy that works all the time
• Sometimes it’s best to stop planning, and just pay attention.
• It’s not always useful to grab every opportunity as soon as it come up, if you can expect it to come up again, take the time to consider your options.
• Sometimes luck feels like strategy, strategy feels like luck
• Success may lie more in your circumstances than in striving.
• When things are going well, it feels like it will be that way forever.
• You’re usually moving fast and travelling well when you’re heading down a cul de sac.
• You don’t control your circumstances, but you can make the best of them.

Playing games

I surprised myself recently by spending about 20 minutes doing 2-octave scales with a 10c coin on my hand, to see if I could do it without the coin falling off. I didn't learn the piano as a child, so this exercise had not previously come my way.

A colleague suggested I turn it into a game, saying that if you can keep a coin on your hand, you can replace it with a square of chocolate: if the chocolate stays on (and not because it melted on your hand in the heat) for the whole 2 octaves, you get to eat it!

My diet is under no immediate threat, but just making scales into a game is fun. I enjoy the challenge of it. I enjoyed getting better at the task, without being too precious about it. I laughed aloud when I noticed that after a while, your skill gets worse because you get tired. My rule is that when you start to fail again after doing it right, it's time to stop. With 12 major scales to play, and the same number of minor scales, I have indefinite entertainment available.

What task in your life can you turn into game? Considering how many of us spend countless hours trying to best the computer chip in our Playstation/Wii/Nintendo/iPhone, it's safe to say that human beings like playing games. What is a game? According to brainyquote.com it is:

A contest, physical or mental, according to certain rules, for amusement, recreation, or for winning a stake.

So you the next time you're bored by your task, see if you can apply some rules (and maybe a stake) and have some fun.

This is post 14 of 100 posts in 100 days