The Manliness of Home Management

Among other things , I recently developed a crippling video game addiction . It's amazing how fixated a person can be on a world that doesn't really exist. I speak in past tense about it because Thursday the wii Disc drive burnt up and ended all that. It wasnt a total waste though ; I've learned to handle frustration better due to getting beat up, shot up, and knocked off of ledges regularly.

Sadly, this is not the first time I've had to learn important life skills from a game. Some of the tools and inspiration for finally becoming an organized person and running my home came from a game.

 30, broke and living with my parents,  I was working at a day labor place with a bunch of junkies, trying not to get stabbed or catch TB .Due to my life situation and the events that landed me there, I decided I wanted to learn how to start managing my life and my money better. Unfortunately, saving for an apartment deposit and pay off medical debts while making minimum wage left me with little actual money to manage, and little free time to manage because I had to get up at 4 AM to sign the sheet early and be near the top of the list for the limited work that was available. I had an old app on my phone called trade nations, where you build and run a little village . I decided I could at least practice running a pretend village while collection agencies and a temp service were running my real life. So running my town and managing my resources became a 10 minute part of my morning routine. In the game it was way easier to make friends, create wealth, and manage your money than in real life.  I used the app as a lab/ playground to practice those skills in a non stressful , high-return-on-effort setting. I practiced keeping a $1000 cash Dave Ramsey type emergency fund in my bank account, a habit I wanted to have in real life .When I got a real job again, all that practice paid off and it did become a real habit.

What got drilled into my head from playing that game was that making small steady deposits daily was the key to success. I heard that from Jim Collins before , but never tried it out. And even though my first attempt was on a freemium phone app, I finally was able to experience it myself. I eventually deleted the app and moved on to managing my real life again, which is way more frustrating and complicated of course. But it's also real and the rewards are much better. 

I'm still grateful for that experience . I really doubt that games are the BEST way to learn life skills, but at least they are A way to learn. Especially for those of us who are too stubborn to learn from parents or teachers.