Choosing your game
We’re always navigating that spicy mix of strategy and luck.
One of the things that makes social media so compelling (and addictive) is the unpredictability.
From an operant conditioning standpoint, this is the classic irregular reinforcement schedule. When you don’t know what reward you’re going to get, you are even more likely to engage. Sometimes you don’t get any reward at all, but that’s the price you pay for the surge of dopamine when you get an unexpected jackpot.
In short, you’re always gambling, and that’s true not just for the consumers, but for the creators.
Recently, in a Discord group I’m part of, a bunch of us TikTok creators are commiserating about unpredictable RPMs (revenue per thousand views). Of course, views themselves are unpredictable as well, but with a $6.00 RPM, even a modest 15,000 views can result in strong earnings. Once you have a taste of that, to suddenly and inexplicably drop down to an RPM of $0.33 is frustrating and demoralizing — especially when the whole thing is determined by an opaque algorithmic process that not even the TikTok employees understand.
It’s hard to accept that level of powerlessness, so people try to figure out what they can do to fix it. But I’m taking notes from the most successful creators in the group. They say, in effect, “This is how the game works. If you don’t like this game, play a different one.” And then they keep going, adapting to the conditions without being thrown off course by them.
This mindset is useful as I consider the decisions upstream of my encounter with the inconsistent RPMs. I’m the one who chose to create content, in this medium, in this niche, on this platform. I’m the one who chose my career path. If it’s not working for me, I am not stuck. I can try something else, or I can try the same thing a different way, and so on. There are lots of places where the path forks.
Inevitably, as I reevaluate my choices, I encounter ones that cannot be unmade, like the series of actions that resulted in the two little boys who are raising a ruckus in the other room as I write this. But that’s part of the game, too. Any game has constraints — we call them rules. You can’t use a basketball in a game of tennis, and vice versa.
Having kids has been like competing in a game where the constraints keep narrowing: Can you succeed under these circumstances? How about these?
I could rail against it. I could give up. But I keep playing. That’s because, despite the challenges and discouragement, life itself has an irregular reinforcement schedule. I never know what will happen tomorrow that could delight me or spite me. And that keeps me turning the pages to see what happens next in the story.
That story can be framed in many ways. I want to interpret the story truthfully, but also generously. That’s why I define “winning” as simply “growing.” If I learn something, figure out something, have an aha moment, or even collect some hard-won data on what not to do, then I’m winning. That means that no matter what happens, I can find a way to win.
Much of life is a gamble. We aren’t in control of all the mechanisms that dictate our results. But any well-designed game has that spicy mix of strategy and luck. Our job is to refine our strategy and tolerate the role of luck. Might as well keep playing.
It’s so important to consider and weigh the balance of luck and strategy. I find it’s easy to credit the latter for my wins and former for my losses.