Why it matters to do unimportant things

Do you play computer games? I’ve noticed that I deal with many complicated problems and tasks as if I were playing one. It reminds me a lot of role-playing games, or RPGs. I don’t mean I’m a hero. You can often play on the villains’ side and develop a character for good or ill. An RPG usually gives you a main quest that all your efforts point toward. You can play by doing the bare minimum needed to complete it. Or you can explore the world, taking on side quests or just wandering around to see what you find.

I love that second way of playing. You never know whom you’ll meet, what you’ll do or where it’ll take you. You might find better equipment, take out some enemies to gain experience or unravel a piece of the story that helps you get your bearings. Your character’s experience matters because it lets you develop attributes such as endurance, health, strength and agility.

Working on a complicated problem feels like starting a new game. I’d compare it to making your way through a dungeon. I see the entrance and know where I need to get, but I don’t know the exact route or what’s waiting for me. I like exploring the corners of the dungeon because I don’t know where I’ll find something or what will get me further. I could go straight ahead, but would it be as much fun? Would it get me there? A path isn’t a dead end until you’ve walked it. In the dungeon you can do things and finish quests that aren’t important. They give you experience that helps with the main quest.

When I’m programming or designing something, I never focus on the main task alone. I refactor a lot and try to make the code more general, and I prepare tools and small frameworks because I think they’ll come in handy later. Sometimes they do. Often they’re useless and I have to throw out or revise the code, the idea or the design because the future turns out differently from what I pictured. It’s how I test my assumptions, get more experience and understand the problem better. It’s like improving my character’s bladed weapons in a dungeon only to discover they’re useless against a new kind of supernatural enemy.

People often feel bound by the idea that they should do only the important things that will solve the task. But what’s important? Can we tell the important from the unimportant? In hindsight we can. Anything that didn’t get us an inch closer was, in quotation marks, a waste. As in games, though, it matters to do unimportant things for exactly the same reasons. You gain experience, you have fun, and you won’t know a path is a dead end until you try it. Remember that next time you torment yourself for doing something unimportant.