Conversation

@noelle my /played on WoW was well over a year when I quit. I'm vaguely afraid to go sum it all up even today. I had spent many many *many* hours before WoW playing video games.

I chose, for myself, to write code instead of play games. It scratched a similar itch (sit at computer, don't make loud noises, use mind), but directly fed into career/productivity type things. Games started feeling void and empty after a while. They still do, today. I want to look back in 20 years and know my crap is still there.

Now, I do want to make a point: I can sit on my arse and fail at something for hours. Or make tiny lame incremental progress. Call it debugging a program, call it grinding reputation in WoW. Six of one, half a dozen of the other. Not that different. Not everyone can do that...

I can aim that ability to be intellectual through tedium in other ways. I paint now. I wouldn't mind doing some other creative things with my hands.

I guess I genuinely don't mind low-impact failing: my ego is yuge, yuge, yuge, and most failures bounce off of it.

The other thing I want to note is that productivity is a journey of 10000 tiny steps. I.e., I don't just block time to Be Productive. I whack away a little bit at a time, constantly. Things Get Done that way. I've climbed 3000 feet of pathless mountain the same way. One foot after another, and then, after 5 hours, wow, you're up there. Other people do do it differently, but I can confidently assert that the "constant tiny steps over time" method is a winner.

Improving executive function (which is what this is) can be aided by notepads, Google Keep, MS One Note, JIRA, fossil, etc. Particularly when so very many things need to happen.