3.1 Psuedo-Productivity

Hyper-Focus

I have a problem. When I am really interested in or passionate about something, I often can't stop thinking about it. This may not sound like a problem at first glance - high levels of enthusiasm for a hobby or personal project are a good thing, and I dare say they are hard to come by. When I'm lying awake at 1 a.m. - repeating my step-by-step action plan for the next day for 100th time rather than letting myself fall asleep - it very much is a problem.

The Positives

For the right topic, I have a very high attention span, which is great in general. It was great for studying, and it is definitely helpful when making games. Additionally, getting through an eight-hour working day in any form of office job - in particular, one where 95% of those 8 hours are spent at a computer - requires a compatible attention span, otherwise I'd just piss about watching videos on social media or YouTube or whatever.

I work best in the morning, so I usually allocate a large block of time to making games on weekends. This is what have done so far on this project. I used to allow game-related activities in the evenings after work, but I now have a strict no-games-on-weeknights policy, which is ironically similar to the one my parents enforced when I was a teenager because I couldn't stop playing them. I introduced this ban because I would attempt to code, but not really make good progress with a solution I was happy. I would obviously be more tired in the evenings, so I would therefore not be working at my best. This meant that I would end up having little success, and I would come away - usually to go to bed - frustrated and unhappy. This is very demotivating, and it would lead me to lie awake fixating, which I talk about more in the next section.

Given these  restrictions, the ability to focus on something for extended periods of time is a huge boon because I can get a lot done in the limited time I have.

The Negatives

I have always had trouble stepping away from something when in that focused, flow state. This is probably not that uncommon. It often results in the neglection of responsibilities that come with being a 26-year-old child, such as eating a balanced diet, eating at all, and going to bed at the agreed time. It also leads to other interests and hobbies gathering dust and going out of tune in the corner, and people I care about are ignored. 

Another manifestation of this problem is absent-mindedness. For example, I will go into the kitchen to start cooking, and I will start opening cupboards but not getting any ingredients out. I will either wander absent-mindedly around the kitchen or just stare into the cupboard. This is because I am subconsciously still at my computer.

Falling asleep also becomes difficult. I can go to bed feeling tired, but my mind re-energises itself in those moments when it has nothing else to do besides regulate my organs. I am suddenly wide awake, thinking about what I am going to do when I wake up tomorrow. The thought process is not even productive either - it figuratively goes around in circles with the metaphorical minute hand on the imaginary clock on the wall.

The most severe symptom is what I refer to as fixating or getting stuck. I will catch myself stood still as though having some form of absence seizure. To be absolutely clear: I am not epileptic. I'm essentially starting into space as though thinking deeply about something, but I'm not consciously thinking about anything - that is, the voice in my head that usually represents my thought process isn't saying anything. Subconsciously, my mind is on whatever activity I'm supposed to have left behind. 

Whilst this currently stems from passion for a hobby, it can easily be substituted with work-related stress. In the past, I have suffered really badly with such stress, and it's not something I hope to see again any time soon.

This is something I need to make a conscious effort to improve, otherwise I will just stress over my hobbies rather than enjoy them. Whilst most of the effort will be in catching and rooting out toxic behaviours, I am hoping that having a well-organised project will make this easier.

Psuedo-Productivity

I started researching ticketing systems on 19/03 morning after I had finished writing the previous blog post. I love productivity tools - especially ones that provide graphical representations of workflows and allow me to track time spent on tasks. I want to build up a nice clear view of individual tasks for this project so that I can work on them independently and in isolation. This should remove my need to allocate 3-4 hours to this project at time in order to feel like I am maintaining momentum. I am also hoping that it will help with my fixation. Extremely long sessions leave me in a zombified state where I am very susceptible to the negatives described in the previous section. I also want to be able to log notes against each task, so I should be able to pick up where I left off more easily, which should in turn make it easier to come away in the first place.

Jason Storey mentioned Monday.com in a video I watched somewhere, and I usually get spammed with ads for it on YouTube anyway, so I was curious to take a look. Before my OG fans start screaming "YOU SOLD OUT!"  at the scent of paid third-party promotional content, please refer to analytics for the page for this project below.

Sprints

My work is now grouped into sprints, which is basically a glorified to-do list for the weekend. The current sprint is what I am doing this weekend, and the next sprint is - you guessed it -  what I plan to do in the weekend after. It also doubles up as a bin for current-sprint items that just aren't going to get done. The backlog is a dumping ground for tasks that I will need to do at some point, and items are added down here when they first pop into my head for a review later.

Over-Categorisation

In addition to tracking the completion status, I can assign a priority. This is really useful because I can then very easily do the least important tasks first. For example, the logging refactor task was the the first one I did this weekend despite it having the lowest priority. I spent about 2 hours on it too. Nice.

The type and role are effectively vanity categorisations at this point, and they are also kind of tracking the same thing. I do view my game projects in terms of roles though. I have my developer hat on when I am working with code, and all the code files are stored in a separate folder to the game assets. When I'm done with code, I put my designer hat on and work with assets and make levels. This encourages me as the developer to write code that is flexible and extensible so that me as the designer doesn't have to keep sending features back for tweaks and updates. My artist hat is very much still in the packaging, but when I start whipping that on my head, I don't want to have to go back go back to the code in order to integrate it in my game. I imagine actual game studios have a similar aim.

At the time of writing, I've been using this for about a fortnight now, and I have noticed that I am getting better at stopping at appropriate check points and doing something else. This weekend just gone, I stopped coding at 1200-1300 on both Saturday and Sunday. This of course, could be completely unrelated to the ticketing service, and is probably more reflective of the conscious effort I have been making. I hope this is the case: I was notified that my free trial of the pro version of Monday.com will end in six days, so I will probably relapse and have a mental breakdown when I lose all of the features on which I am now dependant.

Further Reading

I've given more of a project-summary-style post for this sprint in the next post here.