Choose where wisely

William Liao
1 min readFeb 10, 2024

I discovered this arcade-style game called Risk of Rain last weekend.

In the game, you can spend your resources on two types of things:

  1. Personal upgrades that make you more powerful against enemies or
  2. Drones that traverse the game’s map and knock out enemies for you

Every time an enemy is knocked out, you get more resources.

It’s tempting to upgrade yourself because it enables you to knock enemies faster than any drone can.

But here’s the kicker: you can have more than one drone.

Ten times out of ten, two inferior drones will outperform one superior you.

All else being equal, if you spend your resources on drones you will end the game with at least 10x more resources than if you had focused on just upgrading yourself.

Moral of the story: where you choose to focus can be a force multiplier… or a force shrinker of your time and energy.

Choose where wisely.

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William Liao

Taiwanese American, daily blogger of ideas about impactful work in service of others, photographer (ephemera.photography)