Video games are a great time killer, that’s for certain. No matter how many League of Legends smurfs EU West accounts you may have, there’s always something cool to do and occupy your time with. Many people will deride this hobby as a waste of time – but they’d be surprised. There are actually quite a lot of valuable skills you can gain by playing video games. Here are some ways in which being a gamer can help you boost your career.
Improve your leadership skills
If you play a lot of online games, you know that coordinating your team takes a lot of effort. You need to know how to use the right language to motivate everyone else, as well as how to play to people’s strengths to balance the weaknesses of others. This is actually a crucial skill to leadership in the workplace.
Many professionals who have played games like League of Legends or World of Warcraft have stated that the game has given them a good understanding of the social dynamics of a group setting, as well as teaching them the means of managing that. It helps in gauging the needs of a group of people quite effectively in a relatively controlled environment.
Learn to persevere
One important lesson you can get from any type of video game – whether it’s multiplayer or single-player – is failure. There is pretty much no chance you’ll be good at a game right from the start, so failing at least to some degree is unavoidable. Still, when you’re in the game, you can easily shrug it off and start over, armed with more knowledge.
There’s a valuable skill to be learned here. Games help you understand that while you can fail, there’s something to be taken out of it. You learn what not to do, how to do it properly next time, and most of all – you learn not to give up. That’s a particularly important skill in any career.
Become an improvising champ
Online games necessitate a flexible attitude. You can’t just do anything you want and expect everyone to adjust to your plans – you need to take into account the fact that you’re not only dealing with a whole host of other individuals with their own wills, but also the game’s environment, which may end up surprising you. You either quickly learn to adjust to all of these factors and change your plans ad hoc, or you fall off the wagon.
Needless to say, this can be very useful in the workplace. There are many fields in which the situation can change dramatically within hours. Armed with the quick thinking you stand to gain from playing online games, you actually gain the flexibility to handle more sudden, more demanding tasks through improvisation.
Practice teamwork
When playing online games, you are constantly interacting with many different people, which means that, in order to complete the most challenging quests, you need to learn how to cooperate with these people. As a result, you need to quickly pick up on various social cues (so, for example, you’ll soon find out some people may be unhappy with your decision to buy LoL smurfs) and adjust your own actions to those of your teammates.
You learn the art of compromise and negotiations in order to achieve a common goal. As most businesses consist of teams, this level of teamwork will be an incredible skill to add to your arsenal. Employers always want good team players – they’re the key to a more efficient, more successful company.
