Chapter 2: How to win at social life.

We tend to regard examining our approach to other people as calculating, as if anything other than one’s own ‘natural’ approach is cold and calculating. Talking of game skills is unfortunately associated with pick-up artists and manipulators.

But those most genuine and likeable learned those skills at some stage, either deliberately by the parents or incidentally by observation, and the rest of us missed those lessons, or never grew out of our brattish teen years.

Our interpersonal connectedness could well be the most important game we ever play, so we ought to learn how to play it better.

To this end, let’s break down social life into game elements: goal, obstacle, skills and resources.

Social goals.

Ask yourself what the goal is of a social life, and many would say ‘enjoyment’, ‘relaxation’, ‘fun’ or ‘friends’.

These are vague notions, and when pressed about how to achieve them, most people feel uncomfortable being asked, and all give a different answer. There seems to be no consensus.

So, what is a measurable outcome? What can we quantify and say ‘Yes, I won at social life this month’?In a TED talk, Cam Adair cited his personal social experiment. After his school years of being rejected and bullied, he had a goal: to make as many friends as possible.

To that end, for three years he went out every night and was on high-five basis with a hundred or more people.His goal: popularity. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsT5eV_m7BA At the end of this, he realised that he was unsatisfied. That he had no connection with them. That if he stopped going out, he would never see them again, and they wouldn’t care.

In game terms, he had been aiming at the wrong goal. A mistaken win condition. This did not lead to the reward of happiness. He was still pretty lonely and sad. Adair’s experience would be like playing Monopoly and thinking that the goal is to collect as many different colour properties as possible. Instead of a hand of value, you would soon end up with an array of valueless cards, and lose the game.

So Adair assessed his disappointing results and came up with a new goal. He changed his aim to make better, fuller connections with fewer people. Concentrating his efforts on fewer friends. One property group.

As a result, he found deep friendships that gave both he and they deep joy to see, no matter what they were doing. These are the rich friendships that are the goal of a social life.The better goal: Deeper connection. The reward: happiness.

Keeping score.

Once you have defined a goal, we now need to quantify it.Take stock of your relationships and rate them on a scale.

Level 1: ‘would nod politely to’ to Level 10: ‘would donate a kidney to.

’Success is an improvement along this scale, but the reward is happiness, and this rises exponentially the higher up the scale you reach. Bonus rewards.

This means that spending time with one friend who scored a ‘10’ would be worth more than ten friends who rate ‘1’ on the scale. Then add up your scores by assessing how much happiness the company of each person gives you. Next month, repeat with different actions and see if your score improves.

Carnegie’s goals

Dale Carnegie’s famous book How To Win Friends and Influence People is an excellent example of how to game human interaction for everyone’s benefit, and looks at the small scale of every interaction you have with another person.

For example, if you disagree with someone, your goal might not be to convince them that they are wrong – this is pointless anyway since people never think they are - but is to build better relationships with them, which in turn will gain you an ally for work and social life.

How can you measure this? Mostly by who you keep good contact with, but nowadays there are even devices to monitor conversations and give you a score at the end of the day – a very useful learning tool for those who need it.

The obstacle, and resource, of time

The obstacle in the German board game Power Grid has players constantly short of money. This creates an obstacle, which is also the resource with which to win. You bid for power stations and expand your grid to make more money per turn.In social life, your chief obstacle is time, which is also the chief resource. You have only so much time in a month, and must spend it efficiently to get returns, which may increase with every passing month.

There are only so many hours in a day – you can’t affect that. You can adjust the amount of time you devote to social life, by shifting your work balance, or by sacrificing some solo activities, but 24 hours is your limit, and at some point you must sleep. So spend this resource wisely.

You could see if some of your friends are compatible enough to meet together, but not in so large a group as to dilute the experience. Find more interesting things to do to create more rich, memorable experiences rather than the same thing repeated.

The skills

Most playable games have certain skills that can be improved in order to play it better.And social life is no different – it has more skills that can be improved than Poker, Chess and Bridge combined! Anyone can have a happier life if they learn these skills, most particular if they have none naturally.

Daniel Wendler thought he was merely awkward until diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome, whereupon he learned social skills and put them into an authoritative book on the subject. We can all learn from such books. Taking an honest assessment of your own social skills is the first step to improving them, and the more honest you can be, the more you can work on them or accept them, and develop personality and charm. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-xgdqNtcDI

So, the skills:

1. Manners

If the title ‘manners’ brought up images of stuffiness and old-world values, then it is time for a re-think, since manners are not airs. Quite the opposite. Manners are to let other people feel comfortable in your company, and to this end we may drop airs and stifling rules to suit each others’ comfort.

Each of the following sections leads back to this concept, so hold this thought and read on.

2. Conversation skills

Small-talk will only get a new relationship so far. Its only job is to probe for which topics and in which manner these topics may be brought up and discussed, before you really ought to move onto them. So, take note of which questions elicit better responses.

Take note of how long you have been speaking as opposed to letting them tell a story.

Get to know the back-and-forth rhythm of conversation, and know when to ask a question that will get them to open up without being more invasive than your present relationship will allow.

3. Body language

Well known but rarely practiced, being aware of the message you are sending is important to making connections. If you slump your shoulders away from the person you are talking to, the message says that you don’t want to talk to them. Opening up the shoulders and the feet to point in their direction when they are speaking is a good way for them to feel acknowledged and valued in their presence, which again comes back to good manners, and the development of an affinity with that person.

The social game

Once you recognise goals, skills and resources, you can see anything as a game, and get better at it. When it comes to dealing with people, what was once thought to be innate, arbitrary or mystical is more often in the skills listed above.So go improve those skills. Join a drama class or conversation group, learn those skills, apply them, and keep score!

Gamification 2 - How to win at social life