When someone else can’t do a job right, sometimes you just need to do it yourself, right? Maybe, but not really. YOU have another job that YOU need to do. If YOU do not do YOUR job, then it will not get done. This is a problem that I feel many people have on a regular basis. One person may find that another individual is supposed to do their job and they are not doing it the way it needs to be done. This leads to the first person doing the job instead, ignoring their initial responsibility. Even if their first job is already complete or can technically wait, going out of your way to do something that is not your responsibility can lead to larger problems. As someone who often feels compelled to help others, this has been a lesson that can still be difficult for me to practice on a daily basis.

Sticking to your assigned task may be an easy lesson to learn in video games, but much more complicated to put into action in the real world. In video games, mostly in cooperative multiplayer games, you are given a role to perform with your group. Most of the time these roles include: Tank, Healer, Damage Dealer, and occasionally Crowd Control (or support, if that is different than healer in your game). Of course the tank’s job is to keep the attention off of your teammates and take the damage so your team doesn’t. This position allows your teammates to maximize their potential and complete their roles. Healers are there to make sure everyone stays alive so that they can continue to perform their roles. Damage Dealers, naturally, are meant to deal the majority of the damage to the enemies so that the rest of the team is not overwhelmed by enemies and you can all make progress. Support, or crowd control (if either is involved), are in the team to make everyone else’s job easier. They increase everyone’s ability to perform their roles or make the groups of enemies more manageable.

Usually this should be a very simple concept to grasp if you are playing the game, it’s often the first choice you make in a game like this and most of the time you are given these explanations of your role. The problems start to arise when you play a character that has the option to add some parts of each role to their list of abilities. A lot of games might offer these cross-role skills so that a player may be able to play by themselves when they do not have teammates available to play with. Being able to heal yourself in a fight when you are the only one dealing damage and you are taking all the hits is pretty important to feel like it’s a fair fight. When it is less important is when you have other people that can heal you and take the damage instead of you and you have the ability to deal the most damage. If you are taking time during a fight to heal yourself instead of damage the enemies, then the fight will take longer and you put your teammates at risk of becoming overwhelmed.

A real-world example can be found in a restaurant. In many restaurants, there is a host, a waiter, and a cook (many more of course, but these are usually the three that people will see or think of at first and no more are necessary for this example). The host will seat guests and provide menus, the waiter will take the guests’ orders and relay them to the cooks, and the cooks will actually make the food. If you are in a busy, 5-star restaurant and the waiters just aren’t there (or just aren’t doing their job) then someone else will have to do their job for them. If the cook is required to come out to take orders, they are likely to make mistakes while cooking something or all the guests will have to wait much longer to get their food. (Now, this was a really bad example because of so many reasons, but please try to follow my logic.)

Even though it may seem like a good thing to do, to help someone else with their job, it most likely will not end out being good for anyone involved. The person that is having their job done for them will not get better at their job and will only get worse. The individual helping someone else will likely be in trouble with their boss or customer (or whoever) because they did not get their job done when it needed to be. 

I am not saying that nobody should ever do nice things for others or help anybody. I’m saying that if you have a job that needs to be done, a role that you committed to, all you need to focus on is that job. The best teams are those where every member understands their role and performs it to the best of their abilities. When team members begin to step on each others’ toes, that is when confusion sets in and nobody understands what the others are doing.