Life is a never ending series

Life is a never ending series of small games. Either you fail and learn, or you win. Those who never stop playing are rewarded with wisdom.

Mind Map Journal

The meaning of the quote

On December 5, 2004, Josh Waitzkin lay on his back in a stadium in Taipei, 40 seconds before round 2 of the Tai Chi Push Hands World Championship final. He walked out of that stadium a world champion.

He got there by losing. Waitzkin was a chess champion who had switched to a martial art where he was a beginner. Instead of training with people he could beat, he picked stronger, more experienced partners and let them push him off balance again and again. In the book The Art of Learning, he calls this habit “investment in loss.” Every lost round showed him a weakness he could fix.

“In the long run, painful losses may prove much more valuable than wins.”

Josh Waitzkin

Every round in life ends with a win or a lesson, and both leave you better off than if you had never stepped in.

Small games

A job interview is a small game. So is a first driving lesson, a class presentation, a new recipe or a hard talk with a friend. Each one ends with a result you can look at.

Seeing them as games shrinks the stakes, so a bad interview becomes one round with another one coming.

Fail and learn

A loss only turns into a lesson if you look at it. After a bad game, chess players go back over every move to find the one that cost them. Waitzkin lost his first national tournament as a boy and later credited that loss as a defining moment in his life.

It’s easy to skip the review. You lose, feel bad and move on, and the same mistake waits for you in the next round.

Keep playing

The quote saves its reward for the people who stay in. In the book Finite and Infinite Games, James Carse splits games into 2 kinds. A finite game is played to win, and then it’s over. An infinite game is played to keep the play going.

Life is the second kind. There’s no final whistle where you collect your wisdom and go home. It builds round after round and stops the day you quit.

Someone who lost 30 small games and learned from each one may end up wiser than someone who played 3 and won them all.

Exercise

Think of a small game you lost recently. It could be a test or a conversation that went wrong. Then ask yourself which part of the quote is holding you back.

1. Did you see it as a game?
   If it felt like a judgment on who you are, shrink it back down. It was one round.
2. Did you look for the lesson?
   Write down 1 thing you would do differently next time.
3. Are you still playing?
   If you stopped after that loss, sign up for the next round this week.

Win the next one or learn from it. Both count, as long as you keep playing.

Resources

• The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin (Book)
• Finite and Infinite Games by James Carse (Book)
• Mindset by Carol Dweck (Book)
• How to cram 2 months of learning into 1 day with Josh Waitzkin (Podcast)
• Investment in loss (Article)
• Joshua Waitzkin (Wikipedia)