Written by Xiao Wei, 2021 Cohort
I am currently learning about investing, and I learned two words: finite games and infinite games.
What are finite games? It refers to games with clear objectives and precise conditions to win. The most typical one is just like a competition, a final test at the end of a term.
What are infinite games? It refers to games that do not have clear and precise boundaries and conditions to win, neither an ending but need to p]be played for the whole lifetime, like running a business, running a family, and a life.
As a matter of fact, it seems like people working together have the same goal and fight for it at the same time, but they are actually playing different games. For example, the University Entrance Examination in China. In terms of the objective, teachers, parents, and students all want to get higher scores in the examination and fight in their own way. Actually, they are playing different roles.
For teachers and schools, assisting students to get a higher score is a finite game. They aim for the end of every three years. Only if students get competitive scores, the rankings of schools can be more forward. Thus they could acquire more attention and resources, and teachers would get awards and promotions, correspondingly.
But for students, the University Entrance Examination is only a sector of their infinite game of life. So they have to care about their scores, but they should not only focus on their scores. They should also take their abilities, career life, as well as other sufficient but not necessary conditions into consideration.
Recently, many students would get depressed if they could not achieve an ideal result in an exam. Even for me, I started to understand that studying at a university is only the beginning of my life, after having worked for years. But we were trained to think we would be losers if we failed the University Entrance Examination, which is nonsense. Everybody has his/her own gifts, and gifts are not designed to be examined. From the perspective of infinite games, one’s life cannot be determined by one loss.
So, we must keep a clear mind to distinguish infinite games from our own, reflect on our behaviours and adjust them frequently in case we play our infinite games as finite games.
