Comment by rcconf | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rcconf | Hacker News Reader

I watched a YouTube video and this person explained a really neat concept.

Your life is like a game. In this game, you have different stats and you must increase each stat. For example, in a typical game you may have:

- Health - Attack Level - Money - Magic Level

In games, you try to increase each of these stats to create the best and strongest character. Life is very similar, but the stats are:

- Work - Social Life - Money - Fun - Relationship - Family - Sleep - Exercise - Relaxation

If all you do is spent all your time on Work, all the other stats will be lacking and ultimately you will have a weak character. Your work may be at 99/100, but your Sleep may be 20/100, or your relationship/family may be 40/100. So, the way I switch off work is that at 1:00PM I take 1 hour off of work (no matter what.) and I do not feel bad about it because it is ultimately increasing my Relaxation/Fun stat. At 5:30PM, I stop work entirely to focus on everything else in life such as Fun, Relationships, Family, Exercise, Social Life.

I find it very strange how well this model works for me. I literally separate work entirely at 5:30PM because I know life is more than just about the Work stat, it's about all the stats combined and you must work on each one to beat the game or be a strong character at the game of life.

Actually in games usually poorly balanced characters do the best, i.e. adding all your points to strength. Might be true in life as well, especially with hyper-specialization being the only way to stand out in a super competitive landscape.

ok, so then hyper-specialize then reproduce at age 85.

That's a weird way of spelling sugar daddy

and what is the strategy for women? :)

In a computer simulation or with a bad DM, you can get away with CHA=1 / INT=1 / CON=1 etc due to the limits of the simulation, but life tends to have rather harsh consequences for the MIN aspect of MIN/MAX.

If you like this "Life as a RPG" concept, I can't recommend Habitica [0] enough. Completely helped me structure everything I wanted to do in my life, and it's even open-source.

[0] https://habitica.com/

The funny thing is that you strive as hard as possible to minmax and break the game when you're playing an RPG - that's part of the joy of playing a game.

Sure you need some STR but if you're playing a mage, keep maxing out that Mana pool at the expense of everything else!

The reason minmaxing works in RPGs is because of the limitations of the simulation, which real-life doesn't have.

A mage with 1 STR and 18 INT may work when trying to beat a game, but in real life he or she would live a miserable existence: https://www.dmingwithcharisma.com/2011/10/dd-stats-in-simple...

(Good dungeon masters keep the above rubric in mind when running their games, btw, so as to discourage "gaming" the system.)

But a good party is often one with specialized characters, so each can shine.

Which is teamwork, thus requiring good social...

Not every character needs to be charismatic.

But every character needs to be "social enough" to work as a team. IE by definition, to participate in a team you can't min all stats but Strength for example.

Because you need enough "social" to be part of a team in the first place.

Otherwise they are a bunch of dissociated loners not playing the same game. Which could be an interesting novel to read if done well, but not your usual D&D session.

Not to get too far into the weeds of D&D rules, but personality is independent of Charisma score.

The RPG metaphor is beautiful and fertile and has already helped me to give a different perspective over my life. You soon realize also that _you_ are the programmer of the game: within some constraints, lot of rules can change and make life more fun.

I don't think this would work for me — tracking time spent relaxing feels counterintuitive!

I have some hobbies with intrinsic goals outside work (sport / music) where I want to improve over time but I actively avoid trying to quantise too much & make it a different kind of work.

I found time tracking works VERY WELL going into the relaxation phase. It's just ending the relaxation phase where it's gets more challenging.

I think your model holds but a key point that needs to be pointed out is that in a game, the game tells you how to win -kill a monster, find a item, etc. In life, there is no higher power to assign you an ultimate objective (unless you are religious).

Without this directive, your model holds, but there aren't principles for how one should distribute his/her stats. Why is it that one should strive to be ~uniformly distributed? As others have pointed out, in video games, often beating the game involves a min/max strategy. Even in real life, we see some people who do very well by going all in on 1 category (maybe work, or social) while forgoing others.

Do you happen to have the link? This sounds really cool.

I worked on something similar for fun as a side project, didn’t get far. It was sort of based on how the Sims game has these stats, but not a video game, more of self improvement tool.

I think this is what he's talking about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snAhsXyO3Ck

Even if it isn't - this is a must watch video!

Thanks for sharing, that's a great video, really found it helpful.

Sounds like "Jones in the Fast Lane" (1990) from Sierra. Here's a review and gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJQ8LyOMl3E

Jones in the Fast Lane is one the most late 80s early 90s aesthetic games ever. The color palette, especially.

Choosing relaxation/sleep/etc. as character stats is a great way to re-frame them as features, not bugs.

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