Low stress = high score
As many of you already know, I play computer games. This Christmas, my mother turned me on to a new one, called Bookworm, which involves making words out of a grid of random letters. Although I tend to sit down and play one game all the way through, (which can take a couple of hours, depending upon how good you are at it), you can also save your game at any time.
My goal was to break 1,000,000 points. And I finally did it! My new high score is 1,386,471!
But here’s the thing: I did it by taking breaks and playing the game over several days, which is how my mother gets her amazing scores. (She’s several million points above me.) And this made me realize something.
I actually do better if I take regular breaks and keep my stress level down. And I’m not just talking about computer games, either. Whether it’s writing, bookkeeping, coaching, cooking, cleaning . . . Breaks seem to improve the quality of my work and my life.
This is a new thing. I’m the kind of person who hates to switch gears, so usually I just plug away at something until the task is done or I’m exhausted. And now I’m wondering if that’s really the best approach. There’s an old saying: “A change is as good as a rest.” Maybe I should try that–work on something for a while, and then switch to something else beforeI get tired. It might make me more productive–or it may take too much energy to switch tasks to be worth it.
But one thing I know for sure: if playing computer games a) provides me with insights and b) gives my material for this blog, then I guess I’m going to keep on playing them!
Tags: breaks, games, productivity, stress
February 20th, 2008 at 12:13 pm
Well, I e-mailed my mother, proud of my high score, and here’s what she replied:
Congratulations. That is indeed a landmark. I checked my top scores and see that my highest was over 8,000,000. It was 8,845,460 the second highest was 4,719,870 and the tenth was 1,582,880. All of those scores would have been kept over several days, or even weeks. I usually only work about 20 - 30 minutes at a time. Some of the high scores are due to strategy and some (most) luck.
Of course, she’s been playing it longer than I have, and approaches it differently. But it looks as though I’m going to have my work cut out for me if I ever try to catch up!