News: The Right Amount of "Challenge" In IT & Gaming

[News Bot]

boyko.at.netqos writes "In an essay entitled 'An Epiphany I Had While Playing Pac-Man,' the author talks about how smart people need to find a certain amount of intellectual challenge from day to day. If they don't find it in their workplace, they'll end up playing complex, 'smart' games, like Civilization IV or Chess - and if they do find it in their workplace, they're more likely to sit down with a nice game of Pac-Man, Katamari Damacy, or Peggle. Quoting: 'When I look back on my life, and I compare the times in my life when I was playing simple games compared to the times in my life when I was playing complex ones, a pattern emerges. The more complexity and mental stimulation I was getting from other activities - usually my day job at the time - the less I needed mental stimulation in my free time. Conversely, in times when I was working boring jobs, I'd be playing games that required a lot of thinking and mental gymnastics.' The author then goes on to speculate that some IT workers might subconsciously be giving themselves more challenges by choosing to deal with difficult problems, rather than performing simple (but boring) preventative maintenance and proactive network management."


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[Ze-Tomb]

Mental stimulation is needed everyday most of the time. Or you'll find yourself bored and wondering what to do.
"Play this game? Nah, boring. How about this one? No, maybe something harder... ah here we go!"

You find yourself saying or thinking this to yourself and after months you see a pattern. I oft find myself playing more complex games on the weekend, and on school days, I find my simple games, which can be the complex at the same time depending on how I play it.

The human mind is a wonderful thing.

[MarieWoodell]

My husband often asks me how i can sit in front of mind numbingly boring repetatice tasks like sweating in entropia and say I enjoy it. I usually tell him that its because my brain is fried from working so hard and that it helps me have some fun without making my brain hurt more. He still thought I was odd but I guess I'm not the only one to do things like that.

[TheOneOmega]

Wow this topic is so true.

I always play old school Sonic games while I'm at college, but now, during the summer, I find myself board with such things.