Angry Birds – 10 Lessons I Learned

As I sat to write a post in my blog after a really long time, a compendium of thoughts and ideas flowed through my mind. I contemplated for a long time and decided on this. After all, if I am not writing a post on the activity that I am spending most of my time with these days, if I am not writing a post on something that’s keeping me motivated even during this lull, I am doing a serious injustice to this game. Unlike many other games, Angry Birds offers a whole lot of lessons which can be applied in your career and life in general. While many of us may overlook these, fortunately I had the time and energy to ruminate through and come up with this list. This post is dedicated to all those awesome fans of the awesome game of Angry Birds Now, let’s get to the lessons.

1. Keep Learning – Change is the only constant thing in this ever changing world. If you thought you can just deal all those bloody pigs with just the red bird alone, sorry my friend, you are wrong. You need to learn when to tap to speed up the yellow bird and when to split the blue bird. And when time demands, you need to know when to drop the egg of the white bird and when to boomerang the green one. There are always new birds and new demands. Like they always say, it’s an ongoing process, be it Angry Birds or life
2. Perseverance is key – It’s quite easy to withdraw from a challenge with a lame excuse that you can’t do it. But if you keep trying with perseverance, you will realize that all it takes is time and some serious application of thoughts. You will also realize that there’s nothing called a problem that can’t be solved – a serious message for those who are demotivated with life and career.
3. A solution worked in the past is not necessarily the best solution – This is an important lesson taught in many B-Schools for a hefty fee which is offered for FREE by Rovio. The solution you used last time isn’t necessarily going to work every time. While your previous experience can help to some extent, it entails creativity and pragmatic approach from you to solve the current problem, every single time.
4. There’s more than one solution to a problem – this is a classic statement told by professors with multiple Ph.Ds during their business strategy classes or during a case study. This applies to Angry Birds and of course life in general as well. Not many games offer you the luxury of finishing a level through multiple ways but Angry Birds does. Lesson to be learned – there could be multiple ways to reach your goal, consider the options and choose wisely
5. Every step is critical while solving a problem– Killing as many pigs possible in the first step doesn’t necessarily achieve anything. Every step is as critical as the previous one to make sure you kill all those culprits and destroy their safe havens. Similarly, just completing a significant portion of what you wanted to do in life may not produce any fruitful results anything until you finish it completely.
6. You don’t always get what you want when you want it – If only Angry Birds allow us to shuffle birds as we like, I bet we all can beat our best scores easily in many levels. But that’s not the point. You’ve got what you got and you’ll get the next one only when you’ve used what you’ve got. Life is even better for the suspense it keeps where you might not even know what’s in store until you complete what you’ve got in hand now. So put your best effort forward with what you’ve got now and you will be rewarded accordingly
7. Improve resource utilization – Sometimes, you may not need all the birds to finish a level. If you don’t have to use it, just don’t use it, it’s as simple as that. This is an important lesson in any walk of like be it your utilities or a project you are leading to remind you to conserve resources.
8. If it’s not perfect, it’s not perfect – While killing all the pigs alone will complete a level, it isn’t really enough to get 3 stars. You have to think about all possible strategies to maximize efficiency, improve resource utilization, and destroy as much property as possible to get the best score to earn 3 stars. This will make you someone who tries to go that extra mile every time to achieve the perfect result. There cannot be a better motivation for one to achieve the best possible result!
9. Keep ‘Optimizing’ – Being complacent about what you have achieved is not going to help you in anyway. While you can be proud of finishing all levels with 3 stars, there are numerous people who have performed better than you, if you look at the official Angry Birds scoreboard. This will motivate you to beat your own achievement every single time, making you a CMM level-5 player in both Angry Birds and in life. Yes, it is ‘optimizing’- a present continuous which reminds you that there’s always scope for further improvement.
10. It ain’t over until it is over – Just by finishing all levels with 3 stars and finding all golden eggs in Angry Birds, it’s not over. You and I now have the challenge of finishing Angry Birds Seasons and Angry Birds Rio. Most likely you and I will have much more in front of us while we finish these two. So never ever think that you are done with all the challenges in life. Always take the next challenge as a new one and start with #1 from above

PS: While I thought this topic would be very innovative and creative of me, when I searched the internet I found few similar thinking minds around the globe so I had to remove some of my best points to save myself from accusations of plagiarism (as if anyone is going to read and accuse me ). But it’s my duty to share the best one I came across  (of course, apart from the one I’ve written )- http://www.cio.com/article/678656/10_Lessons_from_Angry_Birds_That_Can_Make_You_a_Better_CIO?page=2&taxonomyId=3172; Read both of them and enjoy your Angry Birds even more