All those hours toiled away getting your Charizard to Level 100 are about to pay off! Pokemon, while also being the most addicting game ever, is a great lesson in how to build a strong team. Read the eight ways Pokemon prepares you to build the best team possible.
1. Start Your Team With A Powerful Partnership
When you’re choosing between Charmander, Squirtle, and Bulbasaur you should remember that whoever you pick is the critter who is going to be with you for your entire journey. Usually they’re the ones you spend the most time training and the ones that produce the best results for your team. When you begin a team outside of a Pokemon video game it’s equally important to start your team-building with a solid partnership so that the team is built on a strong foundation.
2. Know Your Teammates
You should study your Pokedex constantly to learn the most you can about your favorite pocket monsters. Likewise, you want to really get to know every one of your teammates. It might take some time depending on the size of the team, but if you know them well you’ll get a lot more out of them.
3. Use Super Effective Combinations
Fight fire with water. Fight water with grass. Fight grass with fire. Those are just three super-effective formulas for powerful Pokemon attacks. Similarly, there are countless ways you can utilize different members of your team. Consider their strengths and weaknesses and partner them based on those so that your team members can accommodate for each other’s limitations. Mix and match when you’re team-building your group just like you do with your Pokemon.
4. It’s About The Journey, Not The Destination
Remember that your team should be happy as it’s moving ahead. The whole point of playing Pokemon on your Gameboy and your Nintendo DS is to have fun, so please: have fun. The destination is sweet, but reaching it is only results in a brief sense of triumph. You should have accumulated a lot more enjoyable moments throughout the rest of your journey.
5. Let Things Evolve Naturally
It’s such a cop-out to buy an evolutionary stone to move your Pokemon to the next stage early. Natural progression produces the best growth. By not taking shortcuts your team can earn its evolutions instead of just having them handed to them. Really do the work or you’ll regret it later. If you all rush things, everyone will end up unsatisfied with the end result. Team-building, in or outside of Pokemon, takes time.
6. Go To Your Healing Station Regularly
If you don’t heal your Pokemon frequently enough, you’ll find yourself KO’d. That’s not healthy for you or your pocket monsters. In the workplace, make sure your team is getting the opportunity to relax once in awhile, because it’s beneficial to no one if workers get burnt out from pushing themselves too hard.
7. Being The Best Takes Time
Your path isn’t a short one if it’s towards something truly great. To beat all the league masters and eventually the final boss, you have to dedicate yourself to the game and to your team. In life too you have to dedicate yourself to your team and your mission so that you can all find success on the same scale as Pokemon World Champion.
8. Be Efficient
Pokemon is an even bigger time suck if you aren’t as efficient with your training as you can be. Don’t have your Level 40 Pokemon fighting Level 5 to build themselves up; find the fastest way to get them to the next level. In the real world you should look towards strategies like the ones you find on this very site that increase productivity. If you do, you’ll find yourself achieving a lot more in a lot less time.
Featured photo credit: Travis Estell via flickr.com
