As I’ve talked about before, my life goals guide my decision-making. However, over the years I’ve kept tabs on lower-priority life goals as well, that I’ve labeled as my side quests. For those unfamiliar, the term side quest is common in video games, specifically role-playing games (RPG’s), as quests that aren’t central to the main plot but are still fun regardless. These side quests can run the gamut from being tangentially important to gaining new items or skills, or can just be a nice change-of-pace. However, side quests in life can become a distraction, and it is paramount not to let that happen.
I’ve accomplished a few items from my side quests list in the last few years, and I’m glad I did so when the opportunity presented itself. As I’ve talked about previously, time-efficiency is a virtue, and this includes seizing opportunities that present themselves. One such example was that a few months ago, I flew a Cessna plane. My original side quest was to merely go hang-gliding but the opportunity to fly a plane had presented itself. I had cashed in some internal rewards points from my employer (they’re hiring, by the way) and one of the available rewards was to fly a plane. I gleefully chose that as my reward. The lesson was informative, and the instructor kept the material interesting; I got to maneuver the Cessna plane all over the crisp Connecticut sky for 30 minutes. I had accomplished a pumped-up version of a side quest and something that hardly anybody outside of professional aviators can boast. However, this side quest wasn’t particularly life-altering, and neither have any of the other side quests I’ve accomplished. This is good in a way, because it reinforced the lesson of having priorities in order. These side quests, by and large, are not worth going particularly far out of my way for, fun as they may be.
One of the traps that players of RPG’s fall into is wanting to over-explore the game world and complete side quests merely for the collectionist aspect of it. Scoff if you’d like, however the same tendency can, and does, manifest itself in the real world; tales of merely collecting passport stamps come to mind. While I have nothing against accomplishing a side quest as one goes about their life, there is something to be said in solely pursuing side quests purely for the sake of; what are you procrastinating from? Life is finite and there will be limited opportunities to accomplish main goals, therefore dedicating large blocks of time to side quests is a sub-optimal strategy.
For example, one of my side quests has always been to chase a tornado. I’d very much like to accomplish this, however New England is not known for tornados. Tornados are also difficult to predict with modern technology, hence there’s very little strategy that can be applied to accomplishing this side quest. The best plan would be to uproot my entire life to move to the South or the Great Plains, and blindly hope that I cross paths with a tornado. Hope is not a plan that can be executed. Not to mention, wages in the tornado-heavy states are also substantially lower than they are in the Northeast, thus pursuing this side quest would endanger my main life goals. Therefore, this is a side quest that isn’t worth pouring large amounts of time or capital into. The same could be said of accomplishing another side quest of mine that I’ve always had; giving a fist bump to the Joe Louis monument in Detroit. As much as I love fist bumps, this would be a poor use of limited time off to make an entire separate trip to Detroit to accomplish.
Thankfully, I’ve started to accomplish some main life goals in the last few years, and as this has happened, I’ve set new goals and made them more difficult than their predecessors. The feedback loop has kicked in where nearly all I want to do now is relentlessly chase life goals. This has come at the cost of pursuing some side quests and I am completely okay with that. Assuming a relatively safe life filled with healthy choices, there’s a good chance I’ll live to see 80. On my death bed, chances are staggeringly low that I’ll regret not eating a deep-fried turkey for Thanksgiving or never riding inside a human-sized hamster ball. None of these are common regrets of the those on their way out, therefore significant investments shouldn’t be made to go after these side quests.
Ultimately, the purpose of this article is not to dissuade anybody, nor is it to tell any of my readers what to prioritize; I’m merely saying to prioritize. Unlike RPG’s, it is often difficult to put your main mission(s) on hold on a whim to pursue side quests. It’s also equally rare that these experiences in a vacuum will add significantly to your overall playthrough of the MMO called Life.
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