Everything is a game. Everything. You can play games for fun and you can play games for prizes, and often you’ll do both. But everything is a game.
Running for political office is a game. Attending a fancy dinner party is a game. Navigating modern life, having a job, driving. These are all games.
You need to understand that everything is a game in order to understand how rules work. You need to understand how rules work in order to live a life of intention, instead of wandering around with no clue what’s going on until you die.
Here is the simplest definition of “rules” I can think of:
Rules are an agreement you make so that other people will play with you.
That’s it. They aren’t iron-clad universal diktats. They’re choices you make, based on outcomes you want. Some rules have more serious and deadly consequences (like, say, the rules of driving) and others seem to have very light ones – but someone cares about every rule. What you need to figure out is who.
And then ask yourself: is playing with that person worth the rule?
Sometimes it is and sometimes it isn’t, but it’s the people you need to care about, not the rules. A game is only worth playing if you’re playing with exactly who you want.
The Opportunity Machine 