ProSoundWeb: One of the very few “non-productive” activities I enjoy is a good strategy game.
I say non-productive only in the sense that it’s not earning income or accomplishing something directly tangible, but these games aren’t entirely useless. They’re mind-challenging exercises that can be applied to our work in professional audio production.
I once had a TD tell me to think about the shop as a real time strategy game where each section needs to be working simultaneously and sometimes to get more “output” you have to figure out which part of the system needs to be changed. While I think that was good advice and kept that in mind while I was ATDing a show, said TD was not very good at team management and not someone I necessarily want to emulate. This summer I learned a lot about how to manage teams of people, especially how to manage teams of people who did not have all the necessary skills to be fully successful. Sometimes you need to think about each team and what “level” they are which then affects what “level” of task they can complete in a certain amount of time. If you give them a higher level task, you need to be more hands on and be there for any questions they might have and the task will take much longer than if you gave the task to a similarly leveled team. However, if you give them an appropriately leveled task they will usually complete it in the amount of time that you need. Management at the theater I was working at did not grasp this concept at all.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed this authors connection between strategy games and working on a production. As an avid fan of mind games I love the feeling I get when I implore a strategy and it works in my favor due to careful planning. I can see how if you begin to treat your work as a strategy game you could get that same success and internal gratification that comes with it. Work can sometimes feels monotonous and something that you have to do but the mindset shift into making it a game you choose to play makes you a more active participant in your work. Being active instead of passive in your work allows for more attention and quality decisions to be made. Going into my next two productions I would like to implement this mindset into my everyday life. I think it will help me be more active throughout the load-ins this fall.
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