clips of logic

My dad used to complain that I spend too much time gaming. But I always argue there’s plenty of things to be learned from playing games.

It turns out that if you play any RPG games like Diablo or D&D, you are learning important values and lessons to be an entrepreneur.

How you ask? Well let see what we can learn from the generic classes found in RPG games.

• Tank:
  Take everything head-on and always be the first to get into action. As an entrepreneur you must be ever ready to lead the charge into the unknown. It’s your job to protect those who decide to follow you on your adventure.
• Rogue:
  Precision strikes. Execute with pin-point accuracy. Ideas are useless without execution and good execution can make a huge difference.
• Wizard/Magician:
  Resourceful and knowledgable. To be an entrepreneur, you need to know more than just business or finance. You have to know a little of everything. You got to be able to do things that no one thought possible. You need to surprise people.
• Healer:
  Realize that you can always recover from whatever that hurts you. What doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger. The game doesn’t end when you fail. Just resurrect and fight another day.
• Bard:
  Ability to affect other people around you is crucial for an entrepreneur. Charisma is important if you want to inspire and recruit others to your cause. A bonus, if you can strike fear into the heart of your competitors.

So next time, if anyone complains about your gaming sessions, tell them you are preparing for your future business ventures.

After all, it pays to be well prepared and casting spells or slashing monsters are just too fun to resist. Just remember to actually do something after all that practice and preparation.

Since you were a baby, you learn from observation. You’ll mimic behaviors of your parents or siblings. You’ll start to realize that if you cry, you get food. We learn all these patterns and behaviors from observing others and the environment around us.

This is a vital skill and many great discoveries started from an observation. It is however extremely dangerous and rather stupid to rely solely on observation to find out about something. Take a look at these examples.

Assuming you have no knowledge of the mathematical symbols addition (+) and multiplication (x), what can you conclude from observing these 2 equations

2 + 2 = 4

2 x 2 = 4

From these 2 equations, you can conclude that + and x are the same and some might even go a step further and argue that x is just + written differently or wrongly

Now another similar example. What can you conclude from these 2 equations

4 – 2 = 2

4 ÷ 2 = 2

Similarly, you can observe from these 2 equations that – and ÷ gives the same result

Some of you might say, well those are rather simple and dumb examples. No one will conclude something simply based on a small observation sample. But sad to say, in my limited 20+ years of observation, there ARE people who draw conclusion from 1 or 2 observations.

Do you know anyone who decided not to buy something simply because they heard their friend’s friend had some issue with it? Did they check if it’s the same model? Was the issue due to faulty manufacturing or a user’s mistake?

It becomes scarier when people start to use past observation to predict the future. Your observation is simply 1 possibility and there could be millions or billions of others. When you start to assume, you need to be aware of the possibility of being wrong.

Sometimes you try to draw a better conclusion by asking more people. But what if your friends all have similar demographics? Just because all your friends think something is good doesn’t guarantee that it is. After all, peer pressure will tend to make individuals conform to their social norm.

I’m not saying that you shouldn’t learn from observation but rather to not so easily conclude something based solely on observations. It’s not enough to just increase the sample size. You need to consider different scenarios and always be open to other possibilities. You need to conduct experiments.

When someone tell you something is faulty, ask him exactly what is wrong. Ask other friends. Go online and do some research. If you can, get yourself a sample to test if the problem is an isolated case. Having done all that, you still must account for the possibility that it could be something else you missed.

An observation is merely the beginning of the learning process. You need to test and experiment your observation before you can conclude anything from it. Start by observing and make no assumptions. Test and experiment your findings. Then conclude but be ready to go through the entire process again.

Learning is a life-long process because a new observation can change what you already know. So start observing but don’t forget to experiment.

Ideas are usually born from some insights. Google founders’ insight was their PageRank algorithm.  They realized they could sort the web by their link popularity. The more incoming links a page has, the higher it ranks.

For Showtimes.my, the simple insight we had was to deliver what the user wants (showtimes) in the fastest possible manner. This meant showing all the movies that are shown in your area at once and format the showtimes nicely so it’s easier to read.

Obviously, the better the insight, the better idea will be.  So far, most of our ideas are developed from rather simple and common insight. Hopefully, one day we’ll have some rare insight to a problem and build a solution for it.

2 days ago, we launched StartNOW. We are hoping that the site will inspire more people to take action and work toward their dreams.

Making ideas happen

On the site you’ll be able to create project for ideas that you want to work on and also ask/answer questions from the community. It’s still a work in progress so be gentle on it. We’ll be adding more features to the site to improve its usability and usefulness.

If you got something you always wanted to do, well this is it, go and StartNOW!.

Every time I start working on a fresh new idea, I get really excited and motivated. The first few weeks will be extremely productive as you have momentum and optimism on your side.

It’s similar to the feeling when you first got a book. You’ll go through the first few chapters really quickly. If you’re fast, you might even finish it on the same day.

But unlike reading a book, working on an idea and developing it can’t be done in a day or two. It’s a marathon not a sprint. So what happens when your initial enthusiasm and motivation wears off?

You’ll start to be less productive and suddenly everything seems hard. At times, you might even ask if you should continue working on it. You’ll start to notice all the flaws and problems with your idea.

My advice is that you have to see it through somehow. Nothing great and worth doing has ever been easy. You’ll learn more from finishing it and fail than abandoning it half way.

It is said that failure is the best teacher. I think success is a better one but to get to either, you actually have to reach the finish line. Whether you succeed or fail, you win. You lose when you give up half way.

The only other reason you lose is that you didn’t even start. So get started and make sure you persevere till the end.