What Clash Of Clans Taught Me About Productivity
For those who never played Clash of Clans (good for you!), it’s a game where you have to open their app every 4 hours in order to upgrade your village and raid someone else’s village. Your village produces resources, and you use these resources (and the resources you plunder from others) to build bigger warehouses and to build defense structures for your bigger warehouses. These bigger warehouses allow you to build bigger warehouses and bigger defense structures, and bigger armies for more plundering other villages. Repeat ad nauseum.
Protecting Your Village
At first, you have a fairly minimal village: a town center, a gold mine, and a small container for putting your gold in. But as you progress in skill level, your village becomes more valuable. Clash of Clans is all about moving your buildings around to protect the most important structures from enemies. The question that the experienced Clash of Clans addict expert always asks themselves is: “how should I organize my village’s storehouses and defense structures so that I can maximize my in-game productivity and not be hijacked by others?”
When setting up your base, your first priority is to put the most important thing as far away from your attackers as possible. Because you don’t know which side your attackers will come from, this usually means placing your most important structure in the heart of your base.
Conversely, you place the least important structures as close to your attackers as possible, so that they spend their time attacking these structures instead of your most valuable assets.
Protecting Your Focus
At first, you have a fairly basic set of responsibilities. Treat your little sister nice, put away your toys. But as you progress in skill level, your time becomes much more valuable. Productivity is about moving your activities around in your daily routine to protect the most important tasks from interruption or loss of focus. The question that the productivity addict expert always asks themselves is: “how should I organize my time and tools so that I can maximize my day-to-day productivity and not be hijacked by others?”
When setting up your day, your first priority is to put the most important task as far away from sources of distraction as possible. Because you don’t know when distraction will occur throughout the day, this usually means doing your most important task first thing in your day, when other people are still sleeping, or not at work/on social media yet. It can also mean that you do your task somewhere removed from other people, such as a library. Furthermore, it could mean uninstalling everything on your phone that distracts you unnecessarily (like Clash of Clans)
Conversely, you place the least important tasks as close to distraction as possible, so that if distraction does occur, it takes you away from these less significant tasks instead of your most important tasks.
Summary
In any situation where you have a limited resources, whether it be gold or focus, you need to ensure that above anything else, you’re always protecting what matters most.
In your experience, what are some of the limited resources that you’ve struggled to protect in the past? How can you better protect them?
Disclaimer a): I really struggle to stay away from iPhone games. I usually do fine until a friend tells me I should try out the latest viral app, and then I cave, so please don’t tempt me ;).
I do however enjoy board games. Board games are social, much more rewarding and actually have a well defined “you’re done now” condition that keeps you from spending all summer generating ad revenue for video game designers.
Disclaimer b): I do realize that in my previous post I said no more images. For some reason, telling myself that I didn’t have to write an article with images was all it took to start writing g again. Besides, my sister drew the pic in this article for me two years ago, and it was about time I published it.