By definition, jobs are pointless, monotonous, and interminable. While this can be bad for your self-esteem, motivation, happiness, and interpersonal relationships, there is a silver lining! Because of how jobs are structured, you can easily “level up” your career by applying techniques you’ve learnt from another pointless, monotonous, and interminable activity: RPGs.
Step 1: Grind. Not every workplace is blessed with a cave full of Level 1 Rats to cull, but that needn’t stop you from grinding. Make a list of all the things you do in your job - such as writing reports and attending meetings - and circle anything menial, repetitive, or futile. You should find that at least 95% of what you do constitutes grinding. Cool, huh? Now all you have to do is grind for eight hours a day every working day, and you’ll earn enough XP to level up in a year. Tip: Grind extra hours to level up quicker.
Step 2: Talk with NPCs and fully explore their conversation trees. This isn’t hard, as most have only a few lines of dialogue, such as ‘How was your weekend?’ and ‘Do you have plans for the weekend?’ Important NPCs will give you quests (see Step 3).
Step 3: Complete quests for important NPCs. Quests will vary depending on your character class, but once you have completed one quest in your class, you’ve basically completed them all. Is this a bad thing? Of course not! See Step 1: Grind.
NPCs have been known to use emphatic dialogue to make quests appear time-critical. This is almost never the case.
Step 4: NPCs occasionally offer relationship side-quests. These can be interesting, but are rarely necessary for career advancement. Be sure to save your progress before commencing a relationship side-quest, however, as the consequences of failure can be disastrous!
Step 5: If you follow this guide, you will quickly hit your level cap/potential. You may start wonder what the point of it all is, so make sure to buy lots of things such as sports cars, exotic holidays, and more desirable spouses.
Key take-home: Keep on grinding!
