Mindfulness as a Video Game Perk

In an IRL RPG, mindfulness is OP.

It’s that character perk that sounds boring on paper. “Probably won’t make much of a difference.” Then one day you finally unlock it and it changes the way you play the game. You can’t believe you didn’t consider it earlier.

In this imaginary game, Mindfulness comes as both a castable special and a passive.

Special: Meditation

• Meditation lasts 10-30 minutes upon activating
• “Mindfulness” increased by 200% while meditation is active
• Boosts the ongoing Mindfulness passive benefits upon completion
• No cooldown!

Passive: Mindfulness

• Provides a passive ongoing boost to Mindfulness
• Effectiveness increases with continued “Meditation” activations
• Decreases the effectiveness of Monkey Mind 🐵
• Increases resistance to negative debuffs
• Greatly reduces “flight or fight” responses

Another bad analogy: Mindfulness as a design pattern

Mindfulness is like a design pattern that decouples your thoughts from your identity.

In your application (your life) with mindfulness implemented, shitty_work_day() does not produce side effects that directly impact your identity or actions.

It’s like a catch block that lets you deliberately handle the exceptions life throws at you.