It is easy to treat a game like this as a joke, and that is fine. But the design is based on a few simple ideas about how people choose, and they are useful outside the game as well. Here are six.
1. Every real choice has a price
In the game there is no option that is free. Real life is the same, even when it does not look that way. When a choice seems to cost nothing, the cost is probably being paid by someone or something that is not in the room: future you, a colleague, the environment or a relationship.
2. Name what you are protecting
The four meters make your priorities visible. In real decisions, the difficulty is often that we have not decided what matters most. Writing down your own four meters, such as money, health, relationships and growth, makes trade-offs much easier to talk about.
3. Balance beats brilliance
The most common way to lose a day in the game is not to make one terrible choice but to ignore one meter for several turns. In organisations and families, problems often arrive the same way. They start as a small neglect and become a crisis.
4. Advice reflects the adviser
The two advisors in each role are deliberately biased. That makes it easy to see something that is true of real advisers, too: everyone sees from where they sit. The skill is not ignoring advice. It is knowing what each voice cares about.
5. Choices have a long tail
When a decision comes back later in the day, it is the game’s way of showing that choices have consequences that outlive the moment. A quick fix in the morning can shape the afternoon. It helps to ask, before choosing, “What will this look like at six o’clock?”.
6. A good ending is not a perfect day
The balanced ending is not about doing everything right. It is about keeping things in reach of each other. Many of the most memorable endings in the game come after a mistake that was handled honestly. That is a useful reminder that a “good enough” day, kept honest, is a very good day.
If you try the game with these ideas in mind, notice which of the six you tend to forget. That, more than your score, is what the game can tell you about how you decide.