I gained my life wisdom in various ways. One of them, unfortunately and fortunately, were computer games, especially Counter-Strike.
Games are definitely not the best side of my life. But a few years ago I realized that I spent (I wanted to say wasted, but it's not true) more than 5 thousand hours on it.
As they say, 10000 hours is enough and you can be successful at anything. However, nobody mentions how much you have to purely work. I have a feeling that we should also count how much we just thought about it, that is, mental effort too. Therefore in my case it's much more than 5 thousand. It seems I'm continuing with it even now when I'm writing this article.
So what did I take away from it, or am taking away? I'll tell you a short story.
When I was about ten, we had neither internet nor computer. The only suitable entertainment for children was TV. I didn't watch it much, after all I'm a Millennial. But once it happened that I didn't want to go to sleep and started watching a football match Bayern against Real.
Football didn't interest me much at that time either, I was your classic fat classmate. But maybe because I started with football from such big people as Figo or Kahn, I really liked this whole process.
After the first 45 minutes Real was leading 1-0. I was really interested in what the Bayern coach would do about it. I won't drag it out, Bayern won 2-1. But what was interesting was how Bayern started playing in the second half. I think that first goal by Real helped Bayern a lot.
From this I somehow took away this: everyone was motivated by the fact that they were losing. So if they started the match and knew from the beginning that they were already losing, they would play better right from the start. Want to motivate people? Say from the beginning that we're screwed.
Try it. This really works. But, as they say, learning from mistakes is an art. And I made these mistakes when I played games.
I played the role of the so-called "in-game leader", that is, a person who should say where we all go. Of course when we're losing the game - I'm the biggest asshole. I often used this tactic and said right from the start that we're already losing and that we have to work harder right away.
But once something happened that I didn't expect much. It started working in reverse.
So when I said we're already losing, people started to believe it. And suddenly this couldn't be used at all anymore.
The lesson? Use this trick only exceptionally. We all have only a small quantity of will in us and that quantity is very limited. When we cross this limit, a person starts to believe they're a loser. That's exactly why I'm almost sure that the Bayern coach would in no case motivate his players this way when losing to some Sparta after the first half.