There are two types of games in this life: finite and infinite. Finite games are things you do once and then they’re over. An infinite game is more like life itself—it goes on and on and everything is interrelated and independent. The former is zero-sum, the latter is non-zero-sum.
Tobias Lütke, the founder of Shopify, tries to live life as an infinite game. He also tries to make sure he doesn’t send mixed messages to his kids. We talk to our children about education as an infinite game, he has said. We say it’s about the love of learning, it’s a lifelong pursuit, it’s about developing into the best person you can be . . . but then we send them off with strong expectations of winning the finite game of first grade.
This sounds familiar, right? We’ve caught ourselves comparing our kids’ grades with other kids’. We’ve talked to other parents about what grade level they’re reading or doing math at and what percentile they’re in statewide. We’ve obsessed over GPA and standardized test scores as if they were keys to the kingdom . . . of what exactly? Then we grill our college kids about whether they found their major yet, about whether the major they picked is going to snag them a high-paying job or not.
You want kids who are in this for life. You want kids who don’t think in zero-sum terms. Teach them to play the infinite game. Teach them by playing it yourself.