The Score by C Thi Nguyen
Description: C. Thi Nguyen is a philosopher at the University of Utah, and before this he wrote a book called *Games: Agency as Art*, which argues that games are an art form whose medium is you. A game hands you a temporary self: crisp goals, clean scoring, a clear sense of whether you're doing well. That's the pleasure of it.
He has also written about what he calls the seductions of clarity: our tendency to trust an idea because it feels lucid and settled, not because it's true. Scores are the purest version of that. Real values are fuzzy and impossible to add up. Was that a good year? Depends what you mean by good. Followers, revenue and step counts answer instantly, in one number, with no ambiguity at all.
So the scoreboard doesn't beat your values by being better than them. It beats them by being clearer than them.
A test for this week: write down the number you check most often, then underneath it write what you wanted before that number existed. If the two don't match, that's where you got captured. If you can't remember the second one, that's the more urgent problem.
Nguyen, C. T. (2026). *The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else's Game*. Penguin Press.
Follow @danielpink for behavioral science you can put to work the same day you read it.--
To find out more about Daniel Pink, his books, and view his resources, visit https://danpink.com Close description
He has also written about what he calls the seductions of clarity: our tendency to trust an idea because it feels lucid and settled, not because it's true. Scores are the purest version of that. Real values are fuzzy and impossible to add up. Was that a good year? Depends what you mean by good. Followers, revenue and step counts answer instantly, in one number, with no ambiguity at all.
So the scoreboard doesn't beat your values by being better than them. It beats them by being clearer than them.
A test for this week: write down the number you check most often, then underneath it write what you wanted before that number existed. If the two don't match, that's where you got captured. If you can't remember the second one, that's the more urgent problem.
Nguyen, C. T. (2026). *The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else's Game*. Penguin Press.
Follow @danielpink for behavioral science you can put to work the same day you read it.--
To find out more about Daniel Pink, his books, and view his resources, visit https://danpink.com Close description