THE HIDDEN LESSONS FROM THE CANDY CRUSH GAME
If you’ve ever played the Candy Crush game on any device, I’m sure you can testify to how addictive it can be. It’s like there’s a voice in your head that keeps telling you “just one more level then you can stop”.
So, two days ago, while I was on my 1-hour break at work, I decided to send some emails to my prospects and then play Candy Crush for like 20 minutes, just to cool off. After spending almost 38 minutes on my personal work, I started playing candy crush from where I stopped last night — yeah, I play it anytime I get the chance to.
In my mind, I was going to play for just 20 minutes but as time went on, with other staff members gone, for lunch, in which in most cases they spend 2–3 hours doing God knows what, I wasn’t conscious of time.
It was like cocaine at that moment. Lol. With nobody to remind me about office work, I played Candy Crush Saga continuously without realizing time was running against me. It was when my colleague stepped in that I snapped out of it and remembered I had to prepare a sales report for the day and then I felt bad and remorse and wished I could go back in time.
WHAT 2 PLAYFUL HOURS OF CANDY CRUSH TAUGHT ME
After realizing how much time I wasted on it, I decided to make up for it by settling down to justify the time spent playing the game — at least you gotta learn from mistakes especially if they’re yours. So, after pondering on it for a while, I started relating the game to real life situations and how elements, instances and actions in the game can be applied in real life. To my surprise I was able to coin out life lessons from the game.
5 LIFE LESSONS FROM CANDY CRUSH
This may seem far-fetched or ridiculous to you but trust me it’s what you can relate to if you ever spend time playing it. Open your mind.
1. LIFE IS IN STAGES
I’m sure you’ll agree with me that when you started playing this game, it was easy at the beginning, the hints from the game were very accurate and helpful in helping you get to the next stage and it seemed as if the game was too easy until you started advancing and it became harder to achieve the goal set for further stages. Sometimes you’d have to wait for an hour before you play again cuz you’ve exhausted all your chances of playing. One minute you’re getting three stars easily, then bang, you start struggling to get two stars.
“DANIEL, WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU SAYING? THIS DOESN’T MAKE SENSE”
The same thing applies to our lives in real life. Remember how you were still very little, at the beginning of your life, I’m talking about the STAGE when you were like 3/5 years old, when you didn’t have to pay bills or calculate the angle of depression of an inclined plane, you didn’t have to wash your dirty clothes, all you did was play with your friends and eat? That stage of your life was the easy stage and I’m sure you wish it didn’t end.
Now from that stage, you move to a stage when you now have to do the dishes, do the laundry, submit that science project before the deadline, to the stage of getting your driver’s license, dealing with traffic, trying to pay for the light bill, to another stage of having your own family, making sure you give your kids the best education, plan for your retirement and then finally retire.
As you can see, each stage in life, as you advance, whether you like it or not, becomes tougher and prepares you for the next stage just like candy crush.
2. FOCUS ON THE MAIN GOALS FOR YOUR LIFE
When playing the game, even after you’ve gone past the easy stages, you’d still be given hints on the moves to make, like moves to create color bombs or stripped candies, but this time, in fact, most times, the hints actually distract you from the main goal for that stage.
“OK? SO, WHAT’S THE MORAL LESSON?”
Apart from social media and other platforms that may serve as time wasters, energy drainers and distractions to your goals, there is also what I like to call the SHINY OBJECT SYNDROME. This, just like the hints given in candy crush to get a color bomb or wrapped candy, describes a situation whereby different schemes, professions or multiple activities take your focus and energy away.
For example, you’ve decided to be an actor or a writer but because you see your friend, who’s a programmer and is making six figures every month, or that friend of yours that’s a graphics designer that gets huge gigs all the time and makes nothing less than $10k a month, you start trying to learn how to code, do graphics design and any other things your friends are doing.
Another example is when you buy different courses online on how to make more money from some gurus without focusing on any specific one. This drains you of your time and energy. Imagine taking a course on how to code in JavaScript and at the same time take courses on dropshipping and architecture. You’d end up losing focus on your main goals and purpose. Pick a skill, set your goals, and focus squarely on it.
What worked for you may not work for someone else and vice versa.
3. CONSISTENCY IS A GAME CHANGER
At some stage, in candy crush, you begin to lose interest because you’re not able to win a particular stage on several trials. It can be frustrating that even after waiting an hour for your energy (in the game) to be full again, you still end up not passing that stage and then you wanna give up. While this may be frustrating and can be a time waster, it also describes how the real world is.
I have failed at things that mattered and things that didn’t matter. But most times I didn’t give up on the things that mattered to me. In the real world, you may encounter failure multiple times, on different levels especially when you are starting out on something new.
If you ask the most successful men you know today, how they were able to attain success, they’d always talk about how they failed on different occasions but never gave up till they achieved their goals.
There was a particular stage I had to play for a week, severally, just to get to the next stage. It felt like I sucked and wasn’t good at it. I was always angry at myself and at some point, I wanted to delete the game from my device. But then I remembered how I wrote an exam 4 times to get into the university and four years later, I’m a graduate.
4. TAKE BREAKS TO REST, RE-ENERGIZE AND ENGAGE
If you ask programmers what they want, they would most likely wish they could write 10,000 lines of code in one try without having bugs or errors. Just like when I played a particular stage of candy crush for a week and I dropped it, later went back to it and was able to crush that stage at last.
Sometimes you need to take a break from that thing you are consistently chasing or goal you are trying to achieve. This doesn’t make you lazy, it’s natural for humans to rest and re-energize when they are exhausted.
While relaxing, you may figure out how to debug that code, develop that Ad, automate that process, minimize cost and get more profits, edit that video, defeat Sirgun in God of war .
You don’t have to go at a stretch. You can take breaks, re-energize and then attack again.
Even soldiers retreat when they are out of ammo. So, who am I not to rest?
5. USE YOUR TIME WISELY
Lastly, time doesn’t give a hoot about how you spend it so you have to be wise. If you have a project to submit, a date, a program to finish,bills to pay, a website to launch but you sit and play Fortnite or Candy Crush for hours, you will most likely regret it just like I did.
I’m not saying playing your favorite game or partying with friends is bad for you, in fact you should blow off some steam once in a while, just don’t get lost in it and lose track of time.
CONCLUSION
Finally, if you have never played Candy Crush, you should download it from play store or app store, though it can be addictive. If you’ve played this game before, go back and look through these points and relate them to real life.
Also, I forgot to tell you not to listen to everyone or just anyone. Yes, at first, as a little child, your parents and older people will most likely know what’s best for you and tell you what to do. But as you grow you begin to realize your path and what you want to be.
“The only people you should listen to are people who have succeeded in the path you want to follow and those who have failed, in order to learn from their mistakes. Never listen to people who have never tried walking the path you have set for yourself — Akin Alabi”
Finally, Finally, always try to learn something from anything no matter how ridiculous it may look.
And if you don’t agree with these lessons, or think it’s BS, let me know in the comments.
Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed this article, You can also check my other articles.
say hi to me @ coltcopy@gmail.com, tweet me @leinadcolt
