Seth Godin nails it when he describes strategy as recognizing the games we’re in – complete with players, rules, scarcity, choices, and outcomes.

We’re all navigating serious games every day: building financial security, maintaining our health, contributing to our communities, staying culturally relevant, participating in civic life. These games have real stakes. They shape who we become and what we create.

The beauty of recognizing these structures is the power it gives you. Once you see the game clearly – who’s playing, what’s scarce, what the actual rules are versus the theater around them – you can make conscious choices. You decide which games deserve your energy, which rules you’ll play by, and which games aren’t worth entering at all. You move from reactive to intentional. From blind participation to strategic engagement.

But there’s also another category. The Tom Foolery games.

You know these players. They expend enormous energy discovering trivial details about your business just to let you know they know. You sell a property, and they’re burning calories tracking down the buyer’s identity, not because it matters to anything they’re building, but because telling you they found out feels like winning. They’re playing detective in a crime that never happened, collecting information that changes nothing, celebrating victories that exist only in their imagination.

Here’s what’s fascinating: Tom Foolery mimics the structure of real games while being completely hollow at the center. And it’s seductive precisely because it delivers a quick hit of validation without requiring the vulnerability, skill and expertise of something real and meaningful that makes a difference.

You get to feel informed, connected, relevant – all without risking actual failure or creating actual value. It scratches the itch for importance while demanding nothing of substance.

There are moves being made, energy being expended, even a scorecard being kept. But there’s no real value creation, no meaningful stakes, nothing being built. Performance art masquerading as strategy.

The real game? Recognizing the difference.

Attention and energy are genuinely scarce but vital resources. The person spending their Tuesday cyber-stalking your business dealings is spending limited time and mental bandwidth on activities that create exactly zero value – for themselves or anyone else.

They think they’re playing chess when they’re actually just moving checkers around an empty board.

Meanwhile, you’re over here playing games that actually matter. Building something. Growing something. Contributing something.

There’s a difference reacting to Tom Foolery and rising above it.

Choose your games wisely. Some are worth your time, agency, and genius. Most aren’t.

Thanks – Michael (he, him)

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