It’s more fun when you are at the top.
2026 Day 297. #PersonalDays.
The longest commitment of my life has been a mobile multiplayer game by Supercell, Clash of Clans (or CoC) for short. I’ve played that game on and off for a little over a decade now. I wouldn’t say it’s a masterpiece but it’s just always been an easy fix for boredom.
When I first started out it was always about getting to the top. Comparing myself to the best in the world and then trying to calculate how quickly I could get there. It seemed like an impossible task. No matter what I did I simply was too far behind.
Every time I played it was about progress. When I would stop playing for random periods of time, it just made me come back even stronger until eventually my motivation would fade away. I just simply didn’t feel like I would ever catch up to the top players.
It eventually made sense why.
Top players spent money to be at the top, and to stay there. They were extremely competitive, some were content creators making a living off of it and so on.
How could I ever hope to compete with that?
Going through the game, trying to enjoy the journey, but it was hard to get to the top or even close to it.
That is what I felt like until last year. I came back to the game after a short hiatus. I was determined and a bit mature. I changed my strategy about achieving my goals.
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Instead of going step by step, building a strong foundation, I simply choose the quickest way to the top. Only once I got there did I start looking at what I had missed. It was a lot. But because I was at the top, I knew what I needed the most and was able to prioritise the right ideas.
Today I’m still far off in some terms, but not in the ways that matter. And only now am I enjoying the journey, the road never ends, but now it’s within reach.
The motivation to play has also changed and also the experience of playing.
Earlier I would focus really hard on in-game moments, each loss would cause my great frustration, I would be anxiously waiting for time to bide over so I could progress. At this time however, I made a lot of friends. The community is what kept me going and I always had CoC around as an escape.
Now everything is a joy. A win is a bigger one, a loss is a small trouble, but I move on quickly. No more anxiously waiting around upgrades to finish, just enjoying my time at the top. My interaction with the community has however decreased. The game is fun, I don’t need to interact with a lot of people all the time, although once in a while interactions do make it fun.
This ties in to my other believes that you really need to focus on your own thing. It can be about the journey, or it can be about the destination. But you need to be sure what you want, and what you enjoy. Things work differently for everyone, figure out what works for you.
So then are we not to listen to any advice?
I think it’s important to realise that first you need to consider if the advice is subjective or objective in nature. A good attacking strategy is an objective advice. A rushing/farming strategy is a subjective advice.
Listening to objective ideas is mostly useful. Listening to subjective ideas is only useful when their goals align with yours.
See you tomorrow.
