People who have something to protect just win—or if they can’t win, they freeze or flail. What they don’t do is confidently pursue an irrelevant subgame that distracts them from the true goal and prevents them from noticing that they’ve lost.
I’m not sure this is always true. Your story about Ben got me thinking about a friend who went through parental abuse as a teenager, and they had a goal that mattered to them (getting their parents to leave them in peace) but they didn’t see any chance to win, because the parents had all the power. And they definitely kept trying to score points instead of winning, because trying to win “is pointless anyway” (=was probably too frustrating/humiliating/upsetting for them).
I think a lot of people, when faced with the despair of not being able to win no matter what they do, would start trying anyway. “Every little bit counts” and “at least you tried” and so on.
This advice does work for me, as someone who already values winning more than scoring points, but I’m not sure that it would help someone get out of scoring-points mode if they aren’t used to focusing on winning.
That said, thank you for writing this post and giving concrete strategies on how to fight this!
content note: child abuse
I’m not sure this is always true. Your story about Ben got me thinking about a friend who went through parental abuse as a teenager, and they had a goal that mattered to them (getting their parents to leave them in peace) but they didn’t see any chance to win, because the parents had all the power. And they definitely kept trying to score points instead of winning, because trying to win “is pointless anyway” (=was probably too frustrating/humiliating/upsetting for them).
I think a lot of people, when faced with the despair of not being able to win no matter what they do, would start trying anyway. “Every little bit counts” and “at least you tried” and so on.
This advice does work for me, as someone who already values winning more than scoring points, but I’m not sure that it would help someone get out of scoring-points mode if they aren’t used to focusing on winning.
That said, thank you for writing this post and giving concrete strategies on how to fight this!