The Infinite Game
author of Start With Why, Leaders Eat Last, and Together Is Better offers a bold new approach to business strategy by asking one question: are you playing the finite game or the infinite game? In The Infinite Game, Sinek applies game theory to explore how great businesses achieve long-lasting success. He finds that building long-term value and healthy, enduring growth - that playing the infinite game - is the only thing that matters to your business.
Stats for nerds
8recommend
22mentions
17people
2019–2026years
50% recommend45% neutral5% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I loved the book The Infinite Game. Really changed how I looked at work, personal research, and being an author. Recommended!
- I honestly cannot imagine living with these thought patterns, it truly sounds like hell to me. You don’t need to do hard things or overcome adversity every day to have purpose and find life fulfilling, it is an Infinite Game (read the book), not a Finite one.
If you are reading the comments, IMO these giant grand gestures to find some spark of insight (climbing mountains, moving to Hawaii, etc.) aren’t going to accomplish what you want. Ground yourself - go volunteer at a homeless shelter. Get a hobby that is social that you have no innate skill for, don’t tell anyone about your money, make some friends while learning a low-pressure skill. Don’t do anything until after the first day you didn’t worry about what you were going to do. Recover from your burnout.
- I think the best short answer I can give is that I’m generally aligned with the book The Infinite Game.
- Workers vs investors shouldn't be seen as a zero sum game. If it is then that's short-term thinking. Simon Sinek explains this all very well in The Infinite Game.
- Depends on the company. Conscious Capitalism and the Infinite Game are great books on why that's not the best approach.
- This article is similar to Sinek’s book The Infinite Game, which I enjoyed a lot.
Off topic and personal: I have enjoyed the tech industry for almost 50 years, but being in my 70s I just don’t have the energy to do everything I want to do. I still play the Infinite Game though as a 40 year AI practitioner by spending 2 hours a week working as an advisor to an AI startup, by closely following deep learning and specifically LLMs, spending about 1 hour a day trying papers + code, and about 2 hours a day writing whatever my “new book project” is. I also allow myself 30 minutes a day, usually during my morning coffee, to scan HN, Twitter, TLDR AI, etc., where I write down things I may want to look at in depth that day. (I wrote about this process yesterday http://mark-watson.blogspot.com/2023/03/time-and-attention-f...).
Anyway, I still feel in the game, I limit tech/gentleman scientist research/coding/writing to about 4 hours a day - that leaves plenty of time for friends, family, and reading.
I really think that some people try to achieve too much in life. Lower expectations and be happier.
