Making It Up As You Go Along

If I had a dollar for every time my hobbies have benefited me professionally, I'd have two dollars, which isn't a lot of money, but it's weird that it's happened twice.

As I mentioned last week, I managed to scrape out a bit of experience leading real people back when I was utterly addicted to World of Warcraft. I don't know if it was worth the trade-off of actually playing the game for hours and hours on end, but hey, silver linings.

Many years later I picked up another hobby that involved sharing an imaginary world with a group of other people, and it forced me to get good at something that I use professionally basically every day.

The ability to improvise.

Be warned, this is another stream of consciousness blog post, because I'm on holidays right now so I really only want to spend the bare minimum effort keeping the old weekly writing machine going.

Now, clearly, I'm talking about Dungeons & Dragons. Specifically, filling the role of the Game Master.

If you're unfamiliar with the concept, the Game Master is the guiding force of the game. Their goal is to pull together all of the weirdness of a small group of people, all their ideas and desires and fears and weave it into some sort of shared storytelling experience that people will remember for years to come.

Most people think the role of the Game Master is one of intricate plans within plans, of extensive scheming and preparation, of insane levels of organisation and a big notebook filled with all of the secrets and anticipatory reactions to whatever their players might do.

There is definitely some of that, but it's really more about improvisation than anything else. So much so, that once you've been running D&D sessions for a while you end up getting pretty good at making stuff up on the spot while maintaining the illusion that you planned it all out ahead of time.

Just because you're improvising, it doesn't mean that what you're saying is nonsense though. You're thinking on your feet, coming to quick conclusions or decisions and then communicating those things clearly to the people that you're interacting with.

As you can imagine, that sort of skill is super useful in a business context.

Like when you're talking to someone and they drop a new piece of information or direction on you and you have to immediately synthesise it with the information that you've already got and come to some quick conclusion about how the two things could weave together to create a better outcome.

Or when you need to share some context with someone else, probably with short notice, about a thing that you're doing or a thing that you know, and you have to talk coherently about the subject in order to get them up to speed.

Or when you need to get up in front of a large group of people and give a rousing summary of all of the cool things that you and your colleagues have accomplished and why those things mattered in the grand scheme of the business.

You could try to anticipate any of the situations above and prepare and plan and that sort of thing, that is definitely a valid approach.

Or you could pick and choose your battles, improvising as necessary and saving your limited preparatory energy for the things that really matter.

I think what I'm trying to say here is that I'm much better at improvising, at thinking on my feet and running multiple threads in my head simultaneously as a direct result of the time that I've spent being a Game Master.

And I had fun along the way, creating memorable experiences for a bunch of different people. Experiences that everyone will likely remember for the rest of their lives.

That seems like a win to me.