Numerous peer-reviewed studies have shown the benefits of gaming - whether it’s better spatial awareness, faster cognitive processing, or improved mental health, social skills, and decision-making capabilities. There’s increasingly compelling evidence that video games are actually good for our brains. Now, when my own kids play video games, I encourage them. But at the time, they couldn’t know the way gaming would help sculpt my brain, life, and future career. My parents would occasionally notice or comment on the amount of time I spent playing Galaga, Space Invaders, and Pac-Man, first at the arcade, then on my Commodore 64. Then, there was my parallel world - a world whose bounds were larger and more porous. There was the everyday world of 1980s America – for me, that was life as a teenager, newly immigrated from Belarus to Wichita, Kansas with my music teacher parents. Growing up in the golden age of video games, it was hard not to feel like you were living two lives at once. If you’re struggling to come up with new ideas or find yourself making the same errors when addressing a task, try thinking about how other, adjacent disciplines might approach a similar problem. One way to cultivate transformational creativity in your work life is to embrace adjacency. This is when designers, often drawing on leaps forward in technology, drive revolutionary changes in the entire video game ecosystem. Game developers often employ transformational creativity. In your career, the work you put in now will pay off long-term, too. The patience and hard work are what make the glorious cut scenes, rare achievements, and final fights worth it. The same can be said for work, and our lives in general. But just like in video games, we can test hypotheses, experiment, process variables, and establish new ways of understanding our world. In some ways, that’s true - there are no extra lives here. We’re often too afraid to fail in real life because we believe we won’t get a second chance. Instead, take the time to speak to people on the inside. Just like you shouldn’t judge a game by its popular presentation, you shouldn’t with jobs either. The same is true for our careers - you likely have personal beliefs about certain companies, industries, and job titles. How often have you written off a video game before even playing it? We all have internal biases that can alter our perception of the world. Aim to find an organization that will value you and your skills. But not every company you encounter will be as solutions-oriented, innovative, or collaborative as you might desire. Every job requires some combination of problem-solving, strategy, and teamwork - just like every video game. Video games are fast-moving, dynamic, and anything but static. Here are some ways you can harness the unique skills and lessons gaming has taught you to shape your future working life. Studies have shown the benefits of gaming - whether it’s better spatial awareness, faster cognitive processing, or improved mental health, social skills, and decision-making capabilities.
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