An interruption
Ok, how did you get here?
Was it a notification, scrolling a feed, did you saw my post and pressed the link, an RSS feed perhaps? What was the interruption that broke your flow, and do you remember the last thing before? Or even before, before you were on socials or scrolling whatever got you here?
Sorry, maybe an exaggeration here, it hasn’t been that long, but how often does that happen? That rabbit-hole where you set your time to do a certain thing and by the end you don’t even remember what it was?
The best time was yesterday, now it’s today
The irony of this title is I’ve had it on my mind for a couple months, but kept postponing for later. Oh … the lack of time, too much work, something got in the way… nah, let’s be honest here, there’s always something that I (we?) keep leaving for later and could be done rather quickly.
If only I had focused, giving it the proper and full attention for the required time it needs to get done, no side-quests. And I’m not just talking about big tasks that take weeks or months, but smaller ones, quick ones, that I could finish, snowballing the piece of mind that comes from taking action and getting things done.
It’s rarely just lack of time, if I sum up the wasted time looking at useless stuff or context switching since April (been a while since my last post) I could have gotten this post done a long, long time ago. queues Star Wars theme, speaking of that, Andor is just great isn’t it?
See, our brains have this tendency of stretching and tethering to other subjects. Or maybe it’s a me problem.
Stress from not taking action
Being overwhelmed by things to do, tasks we want to finish, tasks we SHOULD finish, side projects, freezing over selection of what to do next; is a natural occurrence as we want to do more, and have more on our plate, are handed over more tasks to do, or //TODO: that we kept on delaying.
It can be work, personal things, asking for something, replying to that email/text, a difficult conversation.
The more we pile the worst it gets because the possibilities are now so many. And the process of freezing while selecting the best use of our time, becomes the time sink itself.
Procrastination, leaving it for later, I’ll do that in a bit, but first I guess … hold on …. let me just …. watch check this notification first…
Wait where did the time go? It’s that easy isn’t it?
Free-time guilt
Have a bit of time you could actually relax, rest and recharge your batteries but feel guilty you should be working?
In a way that might be because there isn’t a clear separation of tasks time and “me time”, so if we context-switch a lot in allocated time for work, in the time you should be resting the brain doesn’t feel like it accomplished what it should have. Limbo.
Do you start a movie and pick up the phone while the title is rolling?
Doom scrolling
An expression that gets thrown a lot to define how the internet is (attempting and succeeding) to trap us on an endless scrolling of brainrot content. The quality really doesn’t matter, their whole goal is to keep us there, and that’s also one of the reason why the internet overall feels enshittified.
And while that is a whole different topic, it does prey and augments the issue that our attention span is being reduced, harder to stay focused on something.
Donkey Kong Bananza
Wait, what? Yeah sorry, bear with me for a second. 🍌
I got Donkey Kong Bananza at launch (July 17th), so around 2 months ago, it’s great, been playing a lot of it, has that right mix of gameplay and dopamine hit.
I found myself ONLY playing that on Switch 2, whenever time allowed, for these 2 months, no switching (bad pun intended) to other games in between. There have been many games where I’ll start and finish over time (still gotta complete Metroid Prime), but also a lot that I’ll just eventually give up as time passes, not because I don’t like them, but switching to other games usually makes it happen faster, because the attention span is now elsewhere, and then something else.
So DK Bananza made me have that strange and comfortable feeling that whenever I had time to play, I wouldn’t idle-freeze considering “what should I play now? …. omg I’m out of time”. A bit like if you boot up Netflix and you’re not sure exactly what to watch, you scroll a bit, time passes and … wait a notification … shit it’s 2am."
Multiple things at a time
I guess I’ve always had that issue a bit, I remember back when I was working on Vizati or QoD (because it took years), many times that I decided to do a gamejam during on-going projects, my brain would get invested in that new thing and the old thing seemed like well … old now.
When you reach a more complicated part in #gamedev, or boring phases you might be a bit stuck, or unsure of the quality, everything else seems more exciting so it’s easier to think “what if I do a smaller project, this new idea seems better”.
Most times it isn’t that, but our brain trying to get the next dopamine hit that comes from the initial stages of something, where the ideas just flow and our brain lits.
Learning can be quite interesting but we, as a population, are mostly consuming “knowledge” 10 seconds at a time and moving on, it doesn’t matter anymore, this becomes a cycle.
One thing at a time
I was having this conversation with a friend the other day about TV Shows, he watches multiple weekly-released TV Shows at a time, I wait for full seasons, so we are always out-of-sync if we want to discuss about a particular show.
I’ll try to watch just one show at a time, not necessarily binge watching in one weekend, but only one, until I finish the season or quit watching, very often I’ll wait weeks (waiting for Alien TV show to wrap up) for something to complete. I can watch at my own speed, but only one. This is probably the only situation where I can control that very well, no pressure, I don’t even think about it, I know it usually pays off, I can wait, know how much time I’ll need to watch, when I fill that in, and with it comes a certain liberation of either finishing or quitting them.
So can I do this with other things? Well…. not quite, for example this article you are reading (still there?), it wasn’t written in one go, not because it needs research, or it’s a super complicated topic, or even that long to write; but because when I searched that image of Calvin and Hobbes you saw a bit above, I got side-tracked and ended up watching unrelated stuff and then decided it was already late and might as well do it “tomorrow”.
Social Networks
Except it is!
Well sure the world seems crazy now (or I am?), and a big part of our lives is interacting online somehow, we are constantly bombarded by things to trigger us.
One can logoff and “touch grass”, that is actually surprisingly easier than I anticipated (I managed to not use Twitter for months now, and I thought it would be a problem), I don’t miss it, although I do have that feeling that I might “be missing something”. I can’t deny that a lot of work opportunities came from that platform!
But that enshittification spreads quickly, recently I’ve being going to LinkedIn more often; to search for work and/or maybe something a bit more stable (btw do tell me if you are looking, or know someone in need for a programmer with my “particular set of skills”); and that Feed is absolute trash fire, people are using it as they used Twitter and other networks, most stuff I see there almost always unrelated to work, but instead “the drama” of the day.
So it’s everywhere now, it used to be more contained to certain corners of the internet.
And the problem is that there is no winning there, not worth trying, fuelling arguments will just take your time, sanity, and kill your mood. I’ve seen mutuals enrolling in discussions that I know are topics close to their hearts but it won’t help at all unfortunately.
And that’s why those algorithms push certain posts to the front of the page, for …
Engagement
By now I imagine a large percentage has stopped reading the article, maybe because it’s not that interesting or any good, but some got a notification and “quickly check” and are not on another path, who knows where they are now, keeping someone engaged is hard on it’s own, especially if there are millions of possible distractions.
Many freemium games have that gotcha thing, to keep you hooked, engaged, if you aren’t paying with money, you are paying with time. Your life time!
An interesting argument I heard once “David you can say that about anything, a book wants to keep you engaged, a movie as well”. And while we can agree, I disagree on the fundaments, because a company doesn’t care much if you read the book as long as you pay for it, or buy the ticket, or the DVD. The intention of quality will come from the creator to make you satisfied enough to see/buy their next work, to recommend to friends. If they trick you once they probably won’t do it again.
But with a shift to live-services, subscriptions and freemium models, things are specifically designed to keep us hooked all the time, they HAVE to trick us constantly, the money doesn’t come directly from each purchase, not even from each user, but from carefully handcrafted/manipulated loop to exploit our time.
Isn’t this article crazy? This is the result over time, it’s insane and quite upsetting.
Ok I went on a weird tangent there, let’s talk about ….
Work & routine
Work is something that luckily I’ve managed to keep in a more controlled state, and I don’t find it as problematic, but it’s a combination of multiple things that help with that, and two of the ones I consider most important for me is a clear set of decided things that need to be done and routine.
Sometimes I’m not a good “decider of things”, but I can usually be better at getting them done, or finding a way, or just asking someone else for help. The goal is clear, I just have to get there. Even if there’s a bug where I don’t know anything, there’s a clear goal “fix this issue”. The problem really comes from a blank canvas, or until I can decide the first stroke of paint and color I guess.
That’s why planning is so important, and some people are great at planning but not starting; I’m better at starting if I don’t have to plan much. None is necessarily better that the other, but knowing your strengths is good.
I few times I got asked “why are you doing this?”, and the answer is often “I don’t know but if I don’t start I’ll never know”.
Lack of planning might only take you so far, but lack of action takes you nowhere. So usually just starting is great, but focus, and that’s usually the advice I give to anyone asking me “How can I learn gamedev?”. Just … start!
Routine is extremely important as well, I could not have accomplished working remotely for so many years if I didn’t set a clear “time to start working”. There’s always flexibility sure, but I quickly learned the best way is just habits and routine, your brain and body knows it’s time and it’s much easier.
Getting up, going for a walk, not random, mostly always the same path so that I don’t get distracted but still get some exercise and it helps with stress, coming back sort yourself and just start working.
I guess the third factor that is important is …
Accountability!
A month or so ago I read two different things within a couple days apart that got me curious. One person was saying that they were building a game and sharing the progress on social but the lack of engagement from sharing the progress was making them unsure and demotivated about the project and they haven’t been able to progress much. That’s rough, and very relatable.
A few days after I read on an unrelated forum someone talking about marketing and video-promotional-content not being great for people who don’t feel comfortable doing that. A few comments deep there was someone talking about streaming, and that streaming themselves working, even if most of the time for 0 viewers, had made them more productive because they had to plan something doing online.
Now that got my attention.
I talked with a friend who’s been streaming gamedev for a while and she confirmed that there are things that she plans, otherwise it would be harder to just … be here.
So I decided to give it a try, been doing it for a month now, and yeah it’s pretty cool, I plan a few tasks, some take longer, others are shorter, but if I run out of planned things, I have to just come up with something on the fly (sometimes I’ll see bugs while live so it helps). Most of the time I’m at zero viewers, but it doesn’t really matter because it keeps you motivated to work on your own stuff, also you never know who might show up.
A great side effect is that I found myself talking while typing, like reading the code out loud and the process behind it, even if alone (again because you never know), and that helps a ton, I realize how dumb some solutions might be before hand, like when you rubber duck it with someone.
I am not using a face camera, it was actually Joana who mention that to me, that a lot of people don’t use cameras, and it doesn’t matter depending on the streamer’s goal. So I just grabbed an old GoPro, it’s showing a view to my Keyboard, I have a Mic and I just work, it’s fun. I even added a task list on screen which I update as I go (this was a viewer suggestion).
That thermal printer on the right corner was yet another side-project that I thought “what if I hook up a python script to receive notifications of new followers and trigger a print by USB?” as you can see, the getting distracted by other things still does happen, luckily this one was short, it’s done and I got it out of my system.
Wrap-up
I think in the past humans were able to stay focused more time mostly because there were less things in front of us, with a more modern connected-world comes a new challenge of being able to filter our the noise from what we need, while still staying in it, connected and alert to knowledge.
I don’t think this all comes from technology, like it’s the worst thing ever, but it uses our weakness against us. People will always be distracted and not fully focused for long, it’s natural, but the problem now is we are getting distracted with things that add little to our lives. Better to have a bunch of failed projects than 300h of videos, because the failed projects you got them out of your system.
It’s been a minute
Thank you for reading all of this, some of it might not make sense, but this is usually the result of my brain dumping a bunch of thoughts in one post, something I wanted to talk about, the best part is that I’ve cleared this from my mind, it feels good, even if no-one reads it, it was something I wanted to do and now it’s done.
That thing you’ve been meaning to do? Start, just do it, don’t end this just to browse the next YouTube video, or Instagram. We overestimate how much we can get done in a week, but we underestimate how much we can get done in a year.
I’ll paraphrase something I’ve once read on a book (which I now can’t remember).
Giving meaning to life comes from having a purpose, and having a purpose comes from taking action.
See you in the next post!