When I was a kid, there was a video game called Rampage that was released on Nintendo, and it was also in the arcades. Rampage had no plot line to it. It had no ending. I'm not even certain it had a leaderboard. It was just a game that you played for fun, to kill time, and to disappear mentally for an hour or so.
The premise of Rampage was simple. You could pick from three characters: George, Lizzie, and Ralph. George, of course, was a King Kong-style gorilla. Lizzie was a Godzilla-style lizard, and Ralph was a giant werewolf.
Once you picked a character, you were off to the city. What were you off to do? To smash buildings. That's it. You climbed the side of Manhattan-style skyscrapers, and you smashed them. The military, of course, wanted you to stop, so they sent in helicopters, and they shot bullets at you and dropped bombs near you. But your sole job was to smash the buildings until they were demolished.
That's it.
The next level was another set of buildings. You smash. You advance. Repeat.
There were no medals or final boss levels or anything. You just smashed until your heart's content, or until your brother came in and said, "Let's play Mike Tyson's Punch-Out." My brother boxed me out from playing Punch-Out because, apparently, I wasn't any good. He also used to get me killed on Contra because he kept jumping the level too fast, and I was at the bottom of the screen, and I would die. Anyways, the point is, Rampage was a game that had no purpose, no sense, and no ending. Just a game for you to play, blow off some steam, disappear, and have some fun.
Sometimes I think we need a built-in Rampage break in the middle of the day to smash some buildings.
Work can be stressful. Co-workers can be painful. Clients are annoying. Deadlines are looming. Projects are boring. And that can all happen before 11am.
When I worked at one particular tech company, we had a video game room. I used to walk by and laugh at these guys in there playing Mario Kart in the middle of the day, but today I get it. We need breaks. We need time to disconnect our minds.
I think there are times when we also need to work on things that don't really matter. We spend every minute of our workdays focused on important projects, and in some companies, they can be make-or-break. If you own your own business or are independently employed, then you know you are hanging on a thread by every single client interaction, and every project matters, and I think that's detrimental to us sometimes.
Our minds need time to recover unless you're a psycho. We need to be able to step back and laugh, enjoy the day, smash some buildings, and really disconnect. It's no different than an athlete taking a play or two off to get some rest, regenerate, and then go back on the field again.
Because of our insane working styles, it can be frowned upon, like taking a break in the middle of the day to scroll or to mindlessly watch a YouTube video is seen as a bad thing. I disagree. You need to find this space.
So the next time you find yourself dreaming about smashing buildings like George the gorilla in Rampage, smile and enjoy it. You shouldn't feel guilty about taking a minute to step back and recover.
And maybe that's the real lesson from a ridiculous 8-bit game about a giant lizard smashing office buildings.
Not everything in life needs to have a measurable outcome. Not every minute of your day needs to be optimized, monetized, improved, or turned into some productivity metric.
Sometimes you just need ten minutes to mentally climb a skyscraper, rip the windows out, kick a helicopter away, and laugh at the chaos for a moment before you go back to reality.
Because if you never take a break from the game of life, eventually life will put you on the wrong side of the screen and drop the bombs anyway. So take the Rampage break. Smash a few imaginary buildings, reset your brain, and then get back to work when you're ready.
Of course, you can also play Synergy Strike at thescottbond.com/jargon if you need to take a break, too!