Escape rooms increase problem-solving by encouraging you to spot patterns, think creatively, communicate clearly, work under pressure, and navigate setbacks, which are great life skills that translate to school, work, and everyday life.
What happens in an escape room?
When you visit an escape room, you and your team will:
- Search for clues and solve puzzles
- Connect any information that may be relevant
- Test your hypothesis based on clues
- Adopt new solutions after failed attempts
- Have fun
1) Flexible Thinking
Escape rooms enable you to think creatively and logically, which helps open doors to multiple solutions. Interpreting the smallest details and investigating something out of place in an escape room can reward further progress. In times of failed solutions, you will be forced to create and apply new solutions.
Carryover: If a plan stalls at work, you will be well-equipped to try another angle instead of spinning your wheels on one solution. This persistence will build resilience in times of difficult challenges.
2) Enhanced Communication
Voicing concise updates with your team allows everyone to stay focused and on the same page. Keeping your team up to date on possible solutions prevents reworking old attempts, further improving your ability to solve puzzles faster. This constant communication also builds a sense of comaraderie and inclusion.
Carryover: Sharing information with your team at work taps into a pool of intellectual resources, allowing you to get the help you need when you are stuck. Furthermore, the team will build trust when communication is frequent between the team.
3) Pattern recognition
When solving a puzzle in the escape room, it is likely the case that there are multiple clues needed for the solution. Puzzles usually have a common theme that will assist players in understanding where to search next. Look high and low, gathering all of the information necessary before providing a solution.
Carryover: Understanding the patterns of processes will increase efficiency in the work environment. When a similar problem recurs, identifying past solutions will help you quickly procure a new solution.
4) Time Management
In an escape room, the clock is always ticking! Making good decisions with your time is a valuable skill that could be the difference between making your escape and not. Identifying all clues and making a string attempt is the best bet before moving to a new solution.
Carryover: Deadlines at the office require completing tasks in a manner that makes an impact within a reasonable amount of time. Understanding all of the constraints of a project will be crucial to adopting a plan to tackle all that is needed to move from one step to the next.
5) Resilience
Some attempts will not be the answer when you and your team are attempting to solve a puzzle. You and your team might need to regroup, ensure you have all of the clues, and try again before reaching a solution.
Carryover: Learning from your failures is a valuable skill that is not necessarily a reflection on you, but a chance to improve and do better in the future. Complex projects are inevitable, but having the confidence to overcome them is vital for pushing through to completion.
Recap
- Escape rooms train flexible thinking, clear communication, smart prioritization, and calm iteration.
- Make small, reversible tests and treat errors as information.
- Short, frequent check-ins keep teams aligned and moving.
- Search, connect, test, adapt: works for real-life problems of any size.