Finite vs Infinite Learning

ERIKA TWANI

Finite vs Infinite Learning Opportunities

What is Working and What is Not

“This is not working. We are six weeks in this project and haven’t achieved what we planned.” This is how a project review meeting with my team used to start. “The customer is not doing their part. We need to push harder,” the team continued. These challenges derail the project’s timeline, which is always a major issue when there is so much to deliver. What would you do if you were the manager of this team?

Team meetings like this are typical in many organisations. It is all about pointing out what we are doing wrong and where we are failing. The boss blames the team for not trying harder. The team ends up finding more tasks to do and consequently gets stressed out. Not even entrepreneurs are spared! A friend of mine, who is the CEO of a major company, shared her frustration of not seeing results during the pandemic, even when working a lot harder. I asked her, “Isn’t it time to work smarter instead of harder?” There may be many reasons why we believe we must work harder after every meeting. Here is where it comes from: It is a habit learned in your school years! In previous articles, I emphasized the importance of forming habits. It takes 10,000 hours to become an expert on anything. You spent 16,800 hours in school, Kinder through 12th grade, sitting and waiting for someone to tell you what to do. Then came that test, and a BIG RED pen pointed out your mistakes. You were told you must try harder, or you will never get into college and never succeed in life. Do you believe this is true? If so, reflect on this: Did Michael Phelps need to ace literature to become the most decorated Olympian of all time?

We formed the habit of laser focusing on our school years’ mistakes and solving them by trying harder. We bring this habit to work later in life. We become perfectionists, stressed out about what the boss will say in the next meeting. We

ERIKA TWANI

prepare to blame someone else whenever there is a flaw in the project, like blaming teachers for not teaching well. Is there a way to fix this? It all comes down to playing the infinite game! on innovation and finding new ways to bring out the best in each learner.

In my book, Becoming Einstein’s Teacher, I use game theory to explain the importance of self-assessment that can be developed while students are in school. “There are at least two kinds of games. One could be called finite; the other infinite,” philosopher James P. Carse wrote in his book, Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility. “Finite games,” he explained, “Have clear rules known by all players, and end when a single player wins.” Since a finite game must have a winner, there is a huge focus on enforcing the rules to maintain fairness to all players. Card games, sports, board games and video games are finite. Players compete against each other, someone wins and the rest of the players lose. An infinite game’s objective, on the other hand, is never to end. Rules, boundaries and even players may change along the way to keep the game alive. In Carse’s definition, “Finite players play within boundaries; infinite players play with boundaries.” In infinite games, players contribute to keeping the game alive with a clear purpose. Players have continuous awareness, able to identify the required resources and skills they need to develop. There are no losers; everyone is a winner as long as the game continues. The challenge is to keep the game alive.

Take Amazon, for example. Its CEO, Jeff Bezos, says that a customer will never say, “I want more expensive products,” or, “I am willing to wait longer to get my order.” They want to pay less and have it faster. So, its ultimate focus is to improve the shopping experience and shorten the delivery time continuously. That customer will always come back over and over. This is an infinite game. Children If we teach students to CAN learn to play the infinite game of life with appropriate play an infinite game, practice while in a safe school they will learn the environment. By allowing learners to choose a path, habit of continuously experience and self-assess transforming the consequences of their choices, we also will enable themselves, which is a them to gain awareness of how decisions impact their reality key to happiness in this under the coaching of their ever-changing world. teachers. The infinite game enables children to become life-long learners because they develop the habit of continuous improvement of the best version of themselves. You may be asking yourself, “I already have this bad habit you talked about. Is there a solution for me?” Well, start your team meetings by highlighting your achievements so far and recognising the team’s strengths. Then, evaluate what areas need improvement. Self-assess the execution process rather than just trying harder using the same process.

Standardised tests evaluate students’ capacity to remember—or memorise—what they have, in theory, learned throughout the school year. They create a dynamic of competition because their nature compares one student’s testing performance to another’s under the same set of rules and gives those students A to F labels - winners and losers. This culture becomes prominent throughout learners’ lives… striving to be “the best” gets in the way of being better than they were yesterday. Like finite games, standardised tests require rules set by a third party—the education system—to compare students to each other. The students end up frustrated when they do not win.

If we teach students to play an infinite game, they will learn the habit of continuously transforming themselves, which is a key to happiness in this ever-changing world. Continuous self-improvement creates inner peace, and therefore, a better quality of life. Plus, putting educators into an infinite game instead of a finite one will lead to happier teachers focused

Erika Twani

Erika Twani is a learning enthusiast and an optimist of a better world built by humans with a life purpose. She is the co-founder and CEO of Learning One to One Foundation. Her philosophy is to simplify complex concepts and make them useful for everyone, starting with children. She can be contacted at et@erikatwani.com