I’m a great fan of pinball and spent much of my life as a student happily flipping the silver ball.

When you’re playing pinball you don’t just bash the flippers and hope for the best. There are certain shots to aim for and certain goals to achieve. Ideally you bring the ball to rest on a flipper then take your time and make a carefully aimed shot.

Unfortunately a pinball table rarely lets you have an ideal shot. Instead there are times when you’re main concern is saving the ball. There’s no time to plan carefully and make sure your shot’s perfectly on target. That’s especially true in multi-ball mode where the table throws everything at you.

Life’s like that too.

Often we’re too busy firefighting to stop and think, we’re too busy solving immediate problems to look ahead. All our grand plans, goal setting and task management systems are forgotten whilst we simply react. It happens to all of us.

One of the best pieces of advice I was ever given about pinball was to aim my reaction shots. Even when just trying to save the ball, at least be aware of what you’d like the ball to hit, the rough direction you want it to go. Don’t just whack it anywhere.

That one piece of advice improved my pinball game immeasurably. Even when I thought I was too busy saving the ball to care where it went, at some level I still had at least a little control. Just knowing what I wanted to do and where I was aiming meant that in many cases the reaction shot turned into a good shot. Not always, of course, but enough to make a significant difference.

Nowadays I also try to apply that idea in life. Even when I’m snowed under, dealing with the immediate demands rather than working my planned actions, I try to remember the bigger picture. I try to remember why I’m doing this task and what the rewards will be. Very often I find there are small but significant differences I can make in the way I respond to ensure that instead of just saving the metaphorical ball I also knock it in the right direction. Sometimes doing a task the wrong way can be worse than not doing it at all.

This approach also has a huge subconscious impact. It makes me feel in control rather than swamped. That feeling may be an illusion but it works for me.

I like to think that in life as well as in pinball my game has improved.

Photo Credit: robinvanmourik (Creative Commons)