how to turn your life into an addictive video game

Let me ask you a question:

Have you ever had a taste of the optimal human experience?

The state of consciousness that professional athletes, spiritual masters, and culture-shifting artists swear by as the key to their success.

You've felt it before.

That sense of unbreakable confidence.
Feeling light on your feet and secure with your future.
The moment where skill becomes art and you no longer care what people think.
You feel as if you don't exist and can't think of anything you'd rather be doing.

It's called the flow state.

A state of peak experience, maximum enjoyment, and effortless productivity.

It's quite similar to "being present." You know, the thing that spiritual gurus won't stop preaching about.

Presence comes from an open state of focus. You release your mind from attaching to any given thought and become one with life itself.

Flow, on the other hand, comes in handy when in the pursuit of a lofty goal. You become one with the task in front of you, which leads to the actualization of a meaningful goal.

A self-generated goal, that is.

Not a goal that is assigned to you, dictating your destiny and molding your identity into an unconscious monstrosity.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, author of the best-selling book Flow and the godfather of Flow Psychology, describes flow as an "autotelic activity:"

"Autotelic” derives from two Greek words, auto meaning self, and telos meaning goal. It refers to a self-contained activity, one that is done not with the expectation of some future benefit, but simply because the doing itself is the reward.

We will be referencing much of Csikszentmihalyi's – along with a leading expert on human performance, Steven Kotler's – work throughout this letter.

The big problem with today's society seems to be that we can't just get our work done.

We lack meaning in our careers.

The tasks are repetitive and endless.

Distractions are everywhere.

We don't have clarity on what we want out of life.

Dopamine is quite a popular topic these days for that reason. Dopamine plays a crucial role in reaching the flow state, but it goes far beyond that.

Too many people get stuck in a state of narrow-minded surface-level living. All they know is to go to school, get a job, scroll on their phones, chase material objects, and never experience the depth that life has to offer.

That isn't a way to live.

But what if I told you that you can find enjoyment in the boring, mundane, or terrible aspects of your life?

Even further, what if I told you that you could use the flow state to achieve the meaningful goals you've been putting off in 6 months rather than 6 years?

The result of understanding flow is discovering your life's work, having a sense of passion for that work, and having tools to navigate the dreaded anxiety and overwhelm that cause most people to spiral into chaos.

Life enjoyment isn't dictated by randomness or luck. It's created by deconstructing life as the game it is and learning how to play.

The Anatomy Of A Video Game – Why We Become Obsessed

I used to play a game that consumed far too much of my life.

It was called World Of Warcraft.

If you're familiar with it, you're welcome for the nostalgia.

For those who aren't, WoW is an MMORPG. A massive multiplayer online role-playing game. I often found it more interesting than the real world.

At night, after coming home from my part-time job as a lifeguard over the summer, I'd put on my headphones and get immersed in the online world. Nothing else mattered but my mind and the lines of code that kept it sane.

When you log in as a beginner, you're met with a series of tasks.

First, you choose a faction, then race, then class, and customize how your character looks. There were two factions, Alliance and Horde. Many players were passionate and rather ideological about the faction they chose. I played Alliance but always thought the digital religion was a bit too much, so I didn't necessarily "hate" the other side… I just thought the characters looked a bit funny.

Most of my characters were either humans or night elves, but you could choose anything from gnomes to orcs to Pandaren (panda people) to the undead. The "class" you choose determines much of what you do throughout the game. A class is your role and play style.

You can play the role of tank, healer, or damage. When you and others complete quests, dungeons, or raids together, the tank keeps the enemy attacking them, the healer keeps the group alive, and the damage role – whether close-combat with blades or long-range with magic – well… they damage the enemies.

The cool thing about a video game is that you can experiment with the character you play and start over if you don't enjoy it.

Are you noticing patterns in the real world? How your identity influences your opportunity and potential? How getting attached to one political, religious, or social ideology will make it difficult to reach a state of maximum enjoyment? We will break down the psychology of this soon.

After you create your character, you are thrown into a starting zone specific to that race – like the culture you were raised in. All you know is one little spot on the map. The rest of it is dark and unknown. In reality, you are raised in a culture that determines your beliefs, which you accept as truth. What you fail to realize is that you only understand less than 1% of reality (if I could actually put a number on it, it would be closer to .000001%, but we like to act like we know more than we do to our own detriment).

The game will not let you progress to new areas of the map until you acquire the skill and ability to level up to the point of being able to survive in those areas.

As you level up, you unlock new quests, dungeons, special abilities, career choices, and the ability to ride or fly to new parts of the world.

You don't need to understand many more details, but this will help us answer a few questions:

Why do we find video games so enjoyable to the point of addiction?
Is it possible to replicate that enjoyment to make progress toward our own goals in life?
Can we structure our lives like video games so that we become so immersed that we forget we are playing a game in the first place?

Let's deconstruct the parts of this fantastical game to understand the principles that addict our minds.

A Hierarchy Of Goals – The Key To Mental Clarity

The mind craves order.

Video games have quests, leveling, and skill development to narrow your mind on the big goal at hand and eliminate distractions.

Video games are designed to make optimal experience easier to achieve:

They have rules that require the learning of skills, they set up goals, they provide feedback, they make control possible. They facilitate concentration and involvement by making the activity as distinct as possible from the so-called "paramount reality" of everyday existence. – Flow

The keyword there is "designed."

A question I want you to hold in the back of your head while reading this letter is, "How can I design a life, month, week, and day that gives me a sense of control over my life?"

Like the tutorial phase leading into quests of a video game, society is designed in a similar way:

You go to school to make sense of the game society wants you to play.
A hierarchy of goals is placed in front of you. Go to school, get a job, praise your God.
At first, there is ample challenge to keep the mind narrow, but soon, life becomes repetitive and mundane.

It is human nature to gravitate toward the things that bring us comfort and security, but that can turn on us fast.

The massive problem with the default path in life is that one size doesn't fit all.

It's not difficult to see that most people don't enjoy their lives. They are stuck in jobs they hate. They have lost trust in the God they praise. They were assigned goals to achieve – like reading a specific book in school – that put a bad taste in their mouth for learning, so they stopped.

We all find enjoyment in different things.

And, what we find enjoyment in evolves as our identity does.

A level 100 player won't enjoy a level 1 challenge.

A level 1 player won't understand a level 100 challenge.

The key to life enjoyment is maintaining a sense that one's skills are enough to take on the challenge of any situation that one understands. One must create an environment with a rule-bound system so one knows how well they are doing. By doing so, concentration becomes so intense that there is no attention left to think about anything irrelevant or worry about problems.

The lesson so far is that video games immerse you so far into the fabricated reality that it becomes your reality. Nothing but the rules and structure of that game fill your attention. You reach absolute clarity. Zero distractions live in your awareness.

This stresses the importance of the goals that you choose.

A big life goal to frame the information you see as important.
A series of reverse-engineered goals to bring clarity to your actions.
A small goal in the present to rivet your attention and kick you into flow.

This is why weird deep-work hacks like playing instrumental music, planning your day the night before, and wearing a hat while you work are so potent. They focus your mental energy away from distractions.

The mind is a machine that aids in reaching known goals and discovering unknown goals.

Your mind will notice, accept or reject, and use information to achieve the goals you feed it. If you're always focused on negative outcomes, your life will become negative. If you only focus on the goals society assigns you, you lose a sense of control over your life.

In psychology, this is called pattern recognition. You feel the dopamine when you notice information that helps you achieve your conscious or subconscious goals. You can't help but use that information to make progress.

The question is, how do we use this knowledge about goals to live a more meaningful life?

If you want to change your life, you must start by removing yourself from the repetitive string of tasks that make life unenjoyable. You must dive into the unknown.

How would you feel if I offered you a scenic helicopter ride over the ocean?

You may be a bit fearful, but you'd be silly not to accept.

Now, how would you feel if, on that ride, I took the chopper low to the water, pushed you out, and brought it up just enough so you were forced to swim?

A few things could happen:

You would succumb to your fear, overthink it, and drown.
You would flail like a madman doing whatever it takes to stay afloat but soon lose energy and, again… drown.
You would remain calm, attempt to float, and potentially stay above water long enough to devise a plan.

None of those are optimal.

When you play a video game, you have a map of the digital world.

On that map, there are unknown areas. Places you haven't, or can't, explore.

There's a reason you can't just teleport into the middle of those areas. Chances are, you'd be swarmed by monsters 50 levels higher than you, and you'd get killed in one single hit.

Is that fun?

Would you want to play the game anymore?

Now, what if you completed quests until you unlocked the ability to fly? What about reaching the level to do your first dungeon?

You would be ecstatic! You wouldn't waste any time. You would get there as fast as possible to test your abilities. In the real world, you may even pull an all-nighter because you are obsessed with seeing the new opportunities available to you.

The lesson is this:

Meaning is found at the edge of your abilities.

The edge of the unknown.

Not so deep that you are met by chaos, but not so shallow that you close yourself off to depth.

The sweet spot where your skills are enough to navigate the challenge of any given situation.

You've been there before…

When you feel incredible for no apparent reason. When you know exactly what to do to make progress in your life. When you can't stop having ideas. When your vision for the future is so clear that you can't help but act on it.

The "flow" state of consciousness is where the "flow" of information is maximized. All thoughts, ideas, and mental energy are useful for the meaningful hierarchy of goals you are attempting to achieve.

Maximum signal, minimum noise.

Maximum focus, minimum distraction.

This is true education. Learning, doing, and discovering in unison. Not being told what to learn for a task you don't care to do on a path that hordes of people have gone down before.

This gives us a hint about how we can maximize our time in the flow state.

I like to think of the mind as the metabolism for experience.

When you eat too much, you feel sluggish.

When you eat too little, you feel on edge.

When you are overwhelmed with information, you feel anxious.

When you are underwhelmed with information, you feel bored.

It isn't uncommon for us as humans to bite off more than we can chew. To accept more work when you're already neck deep in water. To learn too much and expect it not to overwhelm you. To know that you should say "no," but say "yes" so you don't disappoint the other person.

The optimal state of mind is when you can metabolize life as it comes. You learn and do without thinking and emerge a new person.

You have the skill to match the challenge of a situation. There is no friction. You flow with the information that life throws at you.

People often report that they don't remember the times they were in flow, but once they came out, they feel as if they unlocked a new level of self-development.

One common misconception about the flow state:

It is not the product of trying.

It is effortless.

I have always been fascinated by the law of reversed effort. Sometimes I call it the “backwards law.” When you try to stay on the surface of the water, you sink; but when you try to sink, you float. When you hold your breath, you lose it—which immediately calls to mind an ancient and much neglected saying, “Whosoever would save his soul shall lose it.” – Alan Watts

Now, this is pretty obvious, but you can't go from working a 9 to 5 you hate to making millions from your life's work.

But there is a quest you can create and follow in your life to reach any goal you want be it weight loss, good looks, charisma, more money, or work you enjoy.

The only thing standing is the way is you.

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