Don’t Play Your Words (A Time Warrior’s Perspective on Words With Friends)

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I love Words With Friends. It’s a great game. Since I only ever get to play Scrabble infrequently at family gatherings, Words With Friends provides a great solution to play essentially the same game with friends and family around the world. All from the comfort of your iPhone or Droid.

The problem is that Words With Friends games multiply like rabbits. Even worse. Like rabbits on fertility drugs.  Think Octobunny.

You start with one game.  You win or you lose. But in either case, both parties request a rematch. Now you have two games.  Like Adam and Eve, those two games take the command from Genesis literally to “be fruitful and multiply.”  Soon the offspring of the first game have spawned a warren.  Heaven forbid you start games with more than one person, since this multiplies your problem even further.

Soon the Words With Friends alert icon on my Droid phone is beckoning like a freshly lit crack pipe. Your turn – it tells me. Stop whatever you are doing.  You have words to play.

Forget checking Facebook or Twitter – this is even better. Gimme some words!!!!!  I need some words!!!!

At first, it’s great. Let’s see what my opponent did. Hopefully she didn’t use the double word spot I’d had my eyes on. Dang! Taken. So I move on, always continuing my quest for the Holy Grail — the triple letter Z, triple word that uses all seven tiles – worth at least a cool 140 points.  But alas, not on this turn.

And oh, the melancholy, when I check my phone but no alert is present. Sometimes I open the game anyway, just to see if there are any words waiting, which is quite possible since the app is still pretty buggy. Sometimes I get lucky. Other times, nothing. Then my outrage grows. What the heck are my opponents are doing. Don’t they know it’s their turn?

As the games multiply, I open the app to find at least a dozen different games in progress, all awaiting my next play. My sense of excitement soon fades as the list of games is longer than my actual “to-do” list.  A gathering sense of guilt and dread seeps in. But I press on.

I get a call mid-day from my wife. We check in on family logistics. As we hang up, instead of the usual “Love you,” she says “Play your words!”  As in, I’m waiting on you. You are holding me up.

I’m also playing my wife’s aunt who lives in Arkansas.  She’s a formidable opponent. Yet I soon hear a complaint through the family grapevine: “Why hasn’t Ron played his words yet?”

Even my daughters are now into the game.  We pass each other in the house. “Daddy, play your words!” the oldest commands.  Sure, I’ll get right on it.  Making money to fund your college education fund can wait.

I have five minutes to spare before my next client appointment. I really should be getting focused and prepared. After all, I teach that in my Trusted Advisor seminars. But hey, I’ve got words to play!  As my client walks out of his office to greet me, I quickly shift the phone sideways and pretend I’m responding to an urgent text message, and then put my phone away.  After my meeting, I hurry to clear the building by 150 feet so I can light up again. Oh, wait. That rule is for cigarettes. And I don’t even smoke.

Now I’m cursing that initial game. The Original Sin.

Even the Words With Friends homepage calls it what it is. An addiction.  Like the seductive call of the Sirens, it beckons: “Experience for yourself why millions are addicted to the word building, triple score seeking, chat bubble sending goodness of Words With Friends.” Goodness, yes, such sweet goodness.

Like any experienced addict, I’m an expert at rationalization.  Now when I wake up in the morning, I go straight to my words. Coffee and the Wall Street Journal can wait.  I’m checking my phone before I even get up out of bed and try not to trip on the stairs as I look through the latest moves by my opponents. Thirty minutes later I’ve worked through the entire set of games in progress. What a sense of satisfaction!  I start the day with a sense of accomplishment.  Or that’s the story I tell myself.

Yet I soon realize the exact opposite is true.  Playing my words is not exactly “eating the frog” as Mark Twain and Brian Tracy advise. Stephen Pressfield, author of the brilliant War of Art would call it what it is: Resistance.  Seth Godin would smack me for allowing my lizard brain to interfere with actually shipping something.

As a business person, I see the ultimate irony. One man’s creation becomes another’s addiction. The folks at Zynga have created a brilliant business by creating games that people love. Not just love, but an addiction. That’s a recipe for a great business model. But not so much if you are the addict. (By the way, this is nothing new. I remember when Tetris came out back in the day.  Conspiracy theorists thought the game was invented by the Soviets as a way to undermine American productivity.  Of course this analysis only perpetuates my rationalization and does nothing to solve my own problem.)

So I turn to my coach Steve Chandler, author of Time Warrior, now the number one book on time management on Kindle. I know he would diagnose the problem as evidence of all of the symptoms in the subtitle of his masterful book: responding to “Play your words” is to support procrastination, people-pleasing, self-doubt, over-commitment, broken promises and chaos.

Fortunately, Time Warrior provides the solution.  Ruthlessness. Like a true warrior, who as Bruce Lee said is simply an average person with laser-like focus, the time warrior must protect creative time.

As Steve Chandler writes, “Only a warrior’s approach will solve this … a warrior takes his sword to all circumstances that don’t allow him to fully focus.”

So now I take my sword to cut off Words With Friends — until my true creative work of service is complete for the day.  One day at a time.

The next time you are tempted to play your words, invoke the warrior spirit. Go focus on your own creative work instead.

“Play your words!”

No, don’t play your words.

At least not until you’ve shipped something first. You’ll be glad you did. When I do, I sure am.

And no, sorry, I won’t tell you my Words With Friends ID. Don’t even think of challenging me.