5 ms·
When playing a board game, like Terra Mystica, where there are choices I can make, and there are random elements that change from game to game, there's two rout
by meric 11y ago
When playing a board game, like Terra Mystica, where there are choices I can make, and there are random elements that change from game to game, there's two routes I could go - The first is to play out the plan I've thought about so many times previously, to align the choices I make with that plan as faithfully as the random elements allow. The second, is to completely ditch whatever was in my plan, look at the random elements for this game, and play accordingly. I call the second strategy "Play to the board". The first strategy often means I'll do fine in the game, but will lose out to the player who benefited from the random elements of the game this round. The second strategy provide no such guarantees, but is the only strategy that allows great wins.
In life, people can pick one of three strategies. The first is they can fantasise about what kind of car they want, what kind of job they'd like, what kind of girlfriend they'd have, and then try their best to make these "achievements", often falling short because the world is not fantasy. The second, they observe what kind of random elements the world exhibiting, e.g. "Oh these days accountants make lots of money", "These days Software Engineers have high salaries" and directly translate to mean "I am going to learn programming, even if I don't like it", and then they are playing to other people's fantasy rather than accepting their own strengths or weaknesses. Or thirdly, they can "play to the board" and make the best of what life gives them, at each moment in time.
The bookshop-keeper here, is eking out every single edge he can out of books to operate his shop. Where 30 years ago operating a successful physical bookshop might mean having a large selection available at any time, and frequent events to draw crowds, today, in competition with digital books, operating a successful physical bookshop might mean emphasising the advantages of the physical book, the romanticism attached to physical objects. I get the feeling he is the type who sees what the world is like today, and because he's got experience bookshop-keeper, not a software engineer or tech startup founder, he goes with the flow with what he's got.
Where in a board game, the game board is the entirety of the world, and can be considered by itself, in the real world, our own selves are part of the board - and I can't always do it, but I aspire to do what I can to play with what I've got, like the man depicted in this article.
- krallja 11y agoHe's only sold 2100 books in 7 months - not much of a success, at least in terms of profitability.
- littleweep 11y agoI suppose that would depend on how much he sold each book for. ;-)
- meric 11y agoWe'll see in the next 7. The Guardian article is 1 day old so far. ;)
- ramchip 11y agoI don't think an English language article on the Guardian will draw many readers to a Japanese bookstore, unfortunately.
- personjerry 11y agoGinza is already a pretty popular tourist destination. Certainly this article might make the bookstore a destination to visit while in Ginza.
- kitsune_ 11y agoI wouldn't be so sure. Recently Nat Geo featured a place that is located 10 miles from where I live on their cover ('Places of a life time', Äscher, Switzerland) and it's now over-run by tourists.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- biggestbob 11y agoIf he can pay the rent for Ginza, must be making acceptable money.
- ericpearl 11y agoYou're not counting what the publisher is paying. Publishers pay for table picks, end caps, face out displays and more.
- cpitman 11y agoAre digital books really a part of the Japanese market? The Japanese have historically preferred physical goods over digital goods.
- jacalata 11y agoHow is the decision to do software because the moneys there not playing to the board?
- ma2rten 11y agoWhat OP means is that this person is following a long term plan which will eventually turn out to make them miserable since they don't really have a passion for software engineering. Hence, it is analogous to following a plan for the board games instead of adjusting to the random element. The random element here is how your talents and interests develop.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- Captain_Usher 11y agoThe difference is whether the decision is based on where the money is today or where the money's been historically. The board game analogy is pretty apt. In The Settlers of Catan, players compete to reach 10 Victory Points by developing a robust and healthy colony. Settlements are worth one VP each, and upgrading one to a city makes it worth two. The city also pays out double resources, and it's relatively difficult to stop a player from building cities. I might observe that players who win tend build all their settlements and upgrade as many of them into cities as possible, so I decide going into this game that's what I'll do. I decided on that strategy without actually taking this game's state into account, and I will probably not do very well if this game is unlike games I've seen before. Alternately, I might just build whatever seems appropriate given the resources I'm getting. This is "playing the board." The strategy for this game is based on the current game's state, not general knowledge of the game's rules in a vacuum or observations of prior games. If someone studies historical trends and concludes that people with skills related to broadly applicable inventions will get paid a lot, like people who can make steam engines or program computers, they're using the first strategy. They didn't look at today's conditions at all, they noted that life in general seems to cause good salaries and specific types of skills to coexist. If they instead just show up to their first day of college, look up the average starting salaries for recent graduates in every department, and join one with the highest number that they feel confident they can graduate from, they're using the second strategy. The end result could be identical and they wind up writing software either way, but the strategies were formed using totally different methods.
- deciplex 11y ago> The bookshop-keeper here, is eking out every single edge he can out of books to operate his shop. It could be, but it could also be the case that he's trying to be 'quirky' and happened to implement this particular idea, picked more-or-less randomly from a set of other quirky ideas. Walking around Tokyo it is not hard to find shops where you really struggle to figure out how they are making money, and often it's the case that they actually aren't and they close their doors after a few months or a couple years. I guess it's just really easy to get a loan in Japan even if your business plan is utter shit?
- azm1 11y agoThis is such flat, materialistic comparison. What about going back to roots, hara how its called in Japan, doing one action well, instead of focusing on the amount, focusing on single quality and trying to find beauty in it. I would almost call it practical art. There is something peaceful about it.
- rlt3 11y agoHis point was that sometimes business owners can get used to applying a template. It's a bookstore so it gets the bookstore template -- 4000 books and a coffee shop, right? Instead of applying this template, an owner with a pulse on the business can see what their customers are doing/buying/wanting and can change accordingly rather than apply a template.
- galfarragem 11y agoGreat comment. So, as I understand: strategy 1 = idealism strategy 2 = realism strategy 3 = pragmatism
- bikamonki 11y agoGreat comment! I drew the same analogy from hold'em poker.
- CydeWeys 11y ago> Where 30 years ago operating a successful physical bookshop might mean having a large selection available at any time, and frequent events to draw crowds, today, in competition with digital books, operating a successful physical bookshop might mean emphasising the advantages of the physical book, the romanticism attached to physical objects. This isn't an accurate description of the current bookselling climate. Two counter-points: http://fortune.com/2015/09/23/e-books-digital-publishing/ http://fortune.com/2015/09/23/e-books-digital-publishing/ http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2015/12/barnes_noble_is_dying_waterstones_in_the_u_k_is_thriving.html http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2015/12/barn... Digital e-book sales are on a sharp decline now, and normal booksellers are stabilizing.