Scores can be useful, but they can also quietly take over—until we start serving the metric instead of the reason we played the game in the first place. Sometimes we don't choose the game. At work, for example, the scoring system just comes with the role.
So how do we keep a score useful without letting it hijack our behavior? And for the games we do choose to play, how do we make sure we don't lose the sense of play that made them worth doing?
C. Thi Nguyen is an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Utah specializing in the philosophy of games, technology, and value. He was named to Vox's 2024 Future Perfect 50 list of thinkers working to make the world better. His first book, Games: Agency as Art, won the American Philosophical Association's Book Prize, and his newest book is The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else's Game.
Some highlights from the episode:
01:00 How metrics can replace the values they were meant to serve
04:00 Work OKRs and the problem of measuring at scale
06:00 Why organizations rely on numbers, even when the numbers are imperfect
11:00 How accountability changes what we measure
16:00 Goals, scoring systems, and when the numbers start taking over
17:00 Can you gamify your work without becoming trapped by a score
18:00 Goals and a purpose
20:00 Striving play
22:00 Games and "unnecessary obstacles"
25:00 When scoring and competition kill the joy of an activity
34:00 Why "just enjoy the process" can actually be bad advice
38:00 What to do if a goal that once motivated you stops working
42:00 Retirement and new games to play
44:00 Process beauty: why the doing can matter more
52:00 Gamifying life
56:00 AI and getting an outcome while skipping the normal effort in getting that outcome
Enjoy!
For show notes and more, visit larryweeks.com
