Choose The Game You Want to Focus On

You should recognize the level of commitment you are willing to live with for a particular game, and be content with it. There are a few games I take very seriously, and the rest I simply enjoy as much as I can with my limited commitment. For example, I have read many books on chess and played chess occasionally over the years. On the whole though, I am a terrible player. During a game of chess, I do everything I can (within the scope of the game) to win, but I do very little to improve myself over the long haul. I am not a member of the chess community, I do not seek out superior chess players as mentors, and I do not even seek out the readily available wealth of opponents free to play on the internet. In a very limited way (during a particular game only), I “play to win,” but the whole endeavor of chess playing is an occasional “fun” activity for me, not a serious attempt to dominate the chess world. I’m comfortable with that, because I realize I can only dominate so many worlds.

Even so, I’ve invested quite a bit of mental resources on chess compared to other games. I used to play a few games of Boggle per week, and again, I tried to win those games, but I did absolutely nothing outside the games to improve. I was comfortable with that because any time I might have spent improving at Boggle was better spent improving at games I took more seriously.