Category: Personal Development

I really enjoyed reading Build Something Cool in 24 Hours. Basically, set aside a weekend with some peers and decide to make something new. You’ll likely be more motivated with others than you would alone and you’ll learn a lot in the process.

I cannot imagine a better, faster path to creativity, innovation, and most importantly getting something done!

Similarly, David St. Lawrence posted a third entry for Creative Time that describes the same thing on a more personal level.

Creative time is a period of outflow. Watching TV or listening to a lecture is inflow, as is reading, eating, and mindless vegging. There is a time and place for all of these activities, but creative outflow will give you more bang for your buck than any other activity you can think of.

Game in a Day was great for me because it allowed me to set aside a weekend to making a simple game, and I did it. Within 24 hours, I went from having nothing to having a creation of my own. It was very satisfying and I learned way more in that shortened period of time than I did in the two months since then. I think I need to schedule another one…

The Power of the Force is an older post about Anthony Salter’s specific experience with great opportunities resulting from his actions. He’s a game developer, too, so that’s a bonus.

It’s always inspirational to read about what someone else did, especially when you know that you can do it, too. It was probably this time last year that I was worried about my programming abilities. I was basically telling everyone, including myself, that I was out of practice and needed to work on it. Except I never did much to work on it for some time. Reading programming books wasn’t enough. I needed to actually DO something. When I started working on chapter exercises from different books, I realized that I was programming again. And when I did my first GiD, BOOM, I was making games! All I had to do was stop worrying and start doing. Taking action resulted in taking more action. I was no longer just thinking vague thoughts about what I would like to do. I was doing.

I’ve had self-confidence problems my entire life. In the past I have managed to overcome my fears and self-doubts long enough to do some great things, but afterwards I always reverted back to type, thinking “Whew! Glad I got away with that, now let’s never do that again.” This has kept me from seeing the truth – that everything I’ve really tried to do, I’ve succeeded at. And every time in the past that I have conquered my fear and moved resolutely towards my goals, the results have always been positive. But now I know. This most recent experience is simply the icing on the cake. I’m not going to be afraid any more. In a few years I’ll be speaking at the GDC. Just you wait.

Perhaps by then I’ll be attending myself. I’ll keep an eye out.

Smart People Are Dumb. Failure is Success by Jon Jones is a great insight into the best thing you can do to get ahead in work, relationships, and life: show up. Most people won’t, so you win by default.

And that’s why I say smart people are dumb. “But I’m BETTER than him.” “But I want this MORE than him.” “But he’s so STUPID.” “But he’s ugly!”

But he still wins. Because you create excuses for yourself not to try. Because you’re “too smart” to bother trying, because of X, Y or Z reason.

If you were really smart, wouldn’t you be winning? 🙂

David St. Lawrence wrote about how the glass isn’t half-empty or half-full.

Life sweeps onward through time and space, even for those who are hiding under rocks like a hellgrammite. There is no inevitability that things will “improve” or “decline”. There is only change and your own potential to exert control over some part of that change.

At at given moment, you can bring about a dramatic change in your own future by deciding to confront what it is that you are doing and how it is related to your own chances of personal survival. It is this incredibly powerful, yet subtle action of facing something and taking responsibility for some part of it that starts you an the road to taking control of your destiny.

I’ve already learned the eye-opening realization that I can control my life’s course. In fact, even when I didn’t know this fact, my life was still being changed by my own actions or inaction. My decisions to do or not to do resulted in what I did on a day to day basis, therefore impacting my week, month, year, and life. It is humbling to know that I have only myself to blame for what’s wrong in my life, but it was also empowering to know that all I need is myself. Looking back, everytime I did well, it was because I took responsibility for my own actions. Everytime I felt in trouble, I also was blaming other people.

There are a few keys to taking control of your life. You need to be able to control what you think since all action leads from thought. Joan of Arc said, “All battles are first won or lost in the mind.” You need to be able to discipline yourself to take action instead of getting stuck in analysis paralysis. Finally, you need to take responsibility and stop assuming that circumstance or other outside influences have more of an impact than you do. All life is change, but you can take charge and make sure that it isn’t left to chance. “Go with the flow” is a nice saying, but it is a horrible motto for your life.

Sometimes I think about pruning out the blogs that aren’t directly related to game development, software, or business. Then a great post like 5 Secrets to Getting Results comes along from a music business marketing blog in my RSS feeds.

Each item is not so much about doing a specific action or using a specific tool. It is about changing your thinking. The only thing you can control in life is your own thought process, so it obviously has a big impact on how productive you can be. Being negative will only help you be more negative.

You can read more details on each secret, but here is the list:

1. Set out deliberately to make every day highly productive.
2. Make the most of your opportunities each day.
3. Appreciate the privilege of work.
4. Be courageous!
5. Develop extra energy reserves.

In the past couple of years, I’ve learned a lot about personal productivity. The value of my time, the importance of clarity, and the usefulness of having goals are a few things that have had a profound impact on my life. Along the way, I’ve learned a few practical tips. For instance, if the phone is ringing and I’m in the middle of something, I’ll now let it ring. I’ll check my messages when I am finished with whatever I am doing. Another example is placing reminders for your goals in a place that allows you to most effectively accomplish those goals. These are simple things to do that make a big impact, and sometimes it is good to be reminded of them.

Steve Pavlina’s Saying No reminds me that sometimes you have to say “No” in order to get things done. It’s easy to fall into the trap of wanting to please everyone. People invite you out to a movie, your boss wants you to work late, and your girlfriend wants to go on a date. Meanwhile, you have a list of projects that you were hoping to put some dents in. You can’t do it all, so you have to realize that someone has to be told “No”. Otherwise, how can you say “Yes” to every demand on your time?

That’s the power of the word “No”. It lets you say “Yes” to something else. It is very powerful and yet very simple. In order to accomplish things, you sometimes have to decline to do other things. Another way to look at it is the idea that to make the decision to do something, you necessarily had to decide to NOT do something else. If I decide to go on a date with my girlfriend, I necessarily had to decide not to work on a game review. Obviously there are times where it isn’t black and white. We could go on a double date with some of my friends, killing two birds with one stone. But the point is that something has to be refused in order for something else to be accepted.

Knowing when to say “No” to an action is just knowing what action would be a better use of your time. You need to be consciously aware of what these important actions are because otherwise your life will be dictated by other people’s demands, not your own. If I just have a vague notion that I want to work on my game project one weekend, it can be easy to accept a date on Friday night or an outing on Saturday morning. Eventually I can find that my entire weekend has been filled with all sorts of obligations while my own vague plans just don’t happen. They can’t happen unless I explicitly and consciously say “Yes” to them, which means I have to say “No” to other demands and requests.

I finally had a chance to weigh myself on a scale and found that I was 185 lbs. That’s 5 lbs heavier than I was when I last visited a doctor who told me to try to get back to 150. My watch has been feeling a bit tight lately.

So one day this past week, I took a walk for about an hour. I was half expecting to get winded 20 minutes into it, but the walk was great. I also came up with game ideas while walking. Bonus!

Steve Chandler mentions that walking exercises the mind since your arms and legs are cross-patterned. When you take walks, it actually helps develop your mind’s ability to think creatively. Chandler will take walks when faced with difficult problems and claims that he always thinks of a solution by the time he finishes.

It’s a bit sad that an hour of just walking was more exercise than I’ve gotten in some time. I plan on making walks a regular habit. Besides wanting to be healthy in general, I like the idea of being more productive because I won’t need as much sleep. I’ll sleep better and more efficiently. Also, the more oxygen getting to my brain, the better I’ll be able to think, especially over long periods of time.

Hopefully I’ll lose some weight, but I’m more interested in being as athletic as I was in high school. I suppose I would have to join a soccer team. I can’t wait.

microISV had posted a link to Advice from an Entrepreneur by Harry Newton. After talking about how much better off he was than the rest of his class, he then provides some advice to their children and to everyone else.

It is always great to see nice, bulleted lists of things you can do. My favorite is “Learn a new skill every six months”. Steve Pavlina will periodically talk about how investing in yourself is the smartest investment you can make. When you improve your skills, you improve your ability to create value. Hey, it makes me feel better about buying software and game development books every month! Joking aside, I know that every time I learn something new, I am adding a new key to my collection. It opens a path to learning more new things and improving my ability to create and be productive.

When you learned how to read, you paved the way to learn how to write. When you learned how to write, you paved the way to learn about writing well. Now you can write letters, blogs, IMs, emails, books, pamphlets, and many more things. And those things will probably allow you to learn about something new, such as how web servers work or what is involved with publishing. And so on and so on.

To be more pragmatic, learning a new skill every so often prevents me from stagnating. It keeps me competitive.