Play the Metagame

There are 2 ways to go through life: you can either play the game, or you can play the metagame. The game is 1-dimensional chess, and the metagame is N-dimensional chess.

You can apply this idea to just about everything in life. The easiest way to move from playing the game to the metagame is to think about every interaction in terms of incentives. Examining incentives is the easiest way to figure out what people want and how to turn win/lose or lose/lose transactions into win/win.

Playing the game is about following rules. Playing the metagame is about figuring out how you can use the rules to your advantage. Playing the game is when you rent out your time for income to survive, and the metagame is where you find ways to generate income while you sleep.

In software engineering, the game is writing software. The metagame is creating systems that write your software.

In marketing, it’s said that no publicity is bad publicity. The game is trying to market your product through traditional means (ads). The metagame is making people do the advertising for you, perhaps by acting quirky on Twitter to amass a following, or constructing scandals to generate attention for whatever it is you’re selling, or using so-called “growth hacks” like spamming your product on various websites.

Whatever you say on the Internet will probably offend someone somewhere, but the important thing is having your name in the news as much as possible (if that’s what you’re trying to do). You may not like it, but that’s how the world works.

People who go farthest in life are experts at the metagame. They’ve realized that most of the self-help platitudes are written to benefit the person writing them, not their target audience. In other words: everyone is selfish and acts according to their own best interests at all times, and once you understand that and act accordingly, you can start to use it to your advantage.

Let’s explore some more concrete examples of the metagame in action:

Career Development #

Playing the game: Working hard at your job, meeting all expectations, and hoping someone notices your contributions. Playing the metagame: Understanding that visibility often matters more than productivity. Building relationships with decision-makers, documenting your wins, and strategically positioning yourself for promotion or opportunities before they’re even announced.

Education #

Playing the game: Studying hard to get good grades and absorb knowledge. Playing the metagame: Recognizing that credentials and networks often matter more than actual knowledge. Choosing schools or programs based on their alumni network strength rather than just educational quality.

Finance #

Playing the game: Saving money from your paycheck and being frugal. Playing the metagame: Creating assets that appreciate or generate passive income, understanding tax optimization strategies, and building systems that make money work for you instead of you working for money.

Entrepreneurship #

Playing the game: Creating a better product than competitors. Playing the metagame: Creating a product with network effects that becomes more valuable as more people use it, making it nearly impossible for competitors to catch up once you reach critical mass.

Content Creation #

Playing the game: Creating high-quality content consistently. Playing the metagame: Understanding platform algorithms and optimizing for them, creating content that encourages sharing and engagement regardless of quality, and building systems to scale your content production.

The beauty of the metagame is that it’s infinitely layered. Once everyone starts playing at one level of meta, a new meta emerges above it. Consider cryptocurrency: Bitcoin was meta to traditional finance, then Ethereum created a meta layer above Bitcoin by enabling programmable money, then various DeFi protocols created yet another meta layer.

However, the metagame isn’t about cynical manipulation or cutting corners. The most elegant metagame players create genuine win-win scenarios. They align incentives so that what benefits them also benefits others. Think of how the best tech companies create platforms where third-party developers can thrive while strengthening the core platform.

The metagame also requires understanding people’s true motivations, not just their stated ones. People rarely act irrationally—they act according to their own incentives, which might not be obvious. By understanding these hidden motivations, you can design systems and interactions that naturally lead to your desired outcomes.

Some practical ways to start playing the metagame:

1. For any system you participate in, ask: “Who designed this system, and what are they optimizing for?”
2. Look for misaligned incentives in organizations or relationships—these are opportunities.
3. When making decisions, consider not just the immediate payoff but how it positions you for future opportunities.
4. Study the people who seem to effortlessly succeed—they’re likely playing a different game than everyone else.
5. Create systems that work for you rather than you working within systems designed by others.

The ultimate metagame move might be realizing when the game isn’t worth playing at all—when you can step outside entirely and create something new. The most innovative companies didn’t just outcompete existing players; they created entirely new markets where the old rules didn’t apply.

So while others are focused on winning the current game, look for opportunities to change the game itself. That’s where the truly transformative opportunities lie—not in being the best player of a game someone else designed, but in becoming the architect of the next game everyone else will be trying to master.