SQYD.studio

Hello anyone! I have a confession: I’m an “ideas guy“. I know it. I’m great at coming up with new projects, having brainstorms, white-boarding out grand plans, and getting really excited about the final product before ever putting pen to paper (or code to keyboard, as the case may be)- these things come easy. Unfortunately for me, and everyone around me who’s sick of listening, being an “ideas guy” is a lifelong chronic condition- but with careful management and judicious application of coping mechanisms, I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to live a relatively normal life.

During school I had the power of procrastination to help me through- bottling 100% of any deadline related anxiety until the final moments and using it to bang out a paper in a kind overwhelmed haze of emotional overload and hyper-focus. This seemed to work for me (though I imagine not for my peers, family members, nor immune system). In my jobs I’ve always been best at are the ones where tasks come one at a time with tight deadlines.

You know about the Eisenhower Matrix? It’s that second quadrant I struggle with. The Important/Not Urgent stuff. Historically, I’d just wait until the not urgent became urgent and then get it done. Obviously this is relevant to our game dev projects but even at work, where I’ve recently moved into a more organizational role, I’m trying to find a system that lets me settle into tasks without the thrill of last minute pressure to motivate me. And I’m sorry to say that I don’t really have a perfect solution.

Early in development for WOFG! Joel and I would set deadlines by publicly announcing them. We’d say our playtest will be available by X date. Then the self-imposed deadline (and the community we imagine cared- though I’m not sure too many did at the time) would hold us accountable. This worked for me. Sort of. The stress at least got stuff done, but it put a strain on our creative partnership- and, what with work and life in the mix, we agreed it wasn’t a sustainable way to continue development. That’s when we agreed to our Dev Principles. Even though I think we made the right call, I’m now left with the difficulty of motivating myself into tasks which don’t have clear deadlines.

Despair not! I’m better at this than I ever have been, but staying focused on a single thing is something I still struggle with. This year I’ve been diligent about using the Pomodoro Technique to track my time on tasks. That and organizing our dev project tasks on Kanban boards, has somewhat given me structure. We keep pushing forwards. Even on days when I fail to find my focus I will still direct my attention towards the problem, and sometimes that’s enough to start my subconscious thinking on a solution.

I guess as an “ideas guy” it’s so easy to see the grand vision that I expect it right now. Since the result is so clear it must not be that much work to get there, right? It’s a matter of bad perspective. I’ll get discouraged, even mad at myself, when I don’t see huge leaps of progress in a week- or even in a single coding session. When I take the long view though, I’m amazed at what we’ve managed to create. When I look back a year from now I think I’ll be equally impressed.

Thanks for reading today, if you did. All you other all-at-once thinkers out there should know that it’s possible to work on a long-term project and still get excited by new ideas every day. I do. I don’t think there’s a silver bullet that’s going to solve productivity for me (I’ve been looking), but I can promise persistent and honest effort does produce results- even if those results come more slowly than we’d all like.