work-keystone

Freeing Up Time

There are a lot of hours in a day.

Last I checked it was something like 24 right?

sheeeeesh

So much time! What on Earth will I do with it all?

Before I move onto answering that question, I’m gonna make a list of all the things I have already found particularly enjoyable in the past.

woooo list time!

• sleeping
• playing video games
• just vibing outside in nature
• beating my meat to smut
• meditating / resting
• journaling
• exercising
• deeply questioning the meaning of life and whether or not any of this really matters in the grand scheme of things
• programming a video game
• continually browsing the YouTube home page
• scrolling through ass on Tik Tok
• scrolling through ass on Instagram
• hanging out with friends and doing nothing in particular
• scrolling through more ass on Tik Tok
• partying
• observing arguments on Discord
• talking to other game devs
• studying mathematics
• reading
• watching videos
• listening to podcasts
• exercising my social skills
• dating
• writing
• DJing
• making lists

Now that’s a big list! And is by no means exhaustive. There are practically an infinite amount of ways I could be spending my time, each of them being enjoyable in their own unique way.

Here’s the thing though. What do I actually want to be doing?

Long-term, what’s my vision here?

Well, I’d say it’s pretty clear - I want to become a really great game developer. I want to take my dreams and turn them into a reality. I don’t know why I want to do that. I also don’t really think I need a reason why beyond “it’ll be kinda hype ngl.”

I’ve got a bunch of other wants in my life though. I want to DJ live in a club, I want to find my significant other, I want to buy a plot of land somewhere in the woods and build a log cabin…

Yet none of these wants burn anywhere near as brightly as my desire to become a really solid game developer.

I’m a strong believer in not taking any half measures. If I want two things, and I try to pursue both simultaneously, it always ends up in me doing both things kinda mediocrely.

Mediocrely compared to what I could be achieving if I were just only focusing on one or the other.

My favourite example of this is my YouTube channel X game development - In the end I wasn’t producing content I was happy with, while also running in circles with game development.

So my answer for “What do I want to spend my time doing?” seems pretty fucking crystal clear to me now.

Game development. Nothing else. That’s it.

Not just for the next week, not just for the next month - for the entire next year of my life.

I want full immersion.

It’s the only way I’m going to achieve my decade-long gamedev goals. I don’t need to talk about the specifics of those goals because my next milestone is pretty clear to me - just get good at game design.

That’s my mission for this next year.

One. Singular. Focus.

Now, going back to that handy dandy list from before with my newfound mission articulated, I can cross out everything that doesn’t serve that.

• sleeping
• playing video games [1]
• just vibing outside in nature
• beating my meat to smut (this really doesn’t serve anything aside from my short-term primal monke brain)
• meditating / resting
• journaling
• exercising
• deeply questioning the meaning of life and whether or not any of this really matters in the grand scheme of things
• programming a video game
• continually browsing the YouTube home page
• scrolling through ass on Tik Tok
• scrolling through ass on Instagram
• hanging out with friends and doing nothing in particular
• scrolling through more ass on Tik Tok
• partying
• observing arguments on Discord
• talking to other game devs
• studying mathematics
• reading [2]
• watching videos [2]
• listening to podcasts [2]
• exercising my social skills
• dating
• writing
• DJing
• making lists

[1] - unless it’s for inspiration / case studies [2] - unless they faciliate game dev

Now this may all sound pretty extreme…

and yeah, it is. I ain’t gonna sugar coat this.

I’ve got pretty extreme ambitions and this is the only way they’re gonna be realised.

I’m also not making this switch all at once, it’s been gradual over the last few years ever since setting out on this journey.

I started out by cutting back on my 12-hours a day of playing video games “habit” and I still continue removing things in my life today that I realise don’t ultimately serve my long-term vision.

Just last week for example, I realised that while DJing is a lot of fun, it’s taking up too much mental real estate in my mind that could otherwise be allocated toward game development.

I can always come back to music when I’m done with game dev. After all, Fisher is 35.

Another example is dating. While I have absolutely no intention on removing this from my life. I think that just getting rid of the explicit focus on it will both free up mental energy, and also allow me to come back to it with a better mindset - one free from my need for validation.

Just recently (progressively over the last year or so) I have removed every single social/media outlet from my life. Bottomless pits like Tik Tok, Instagram, Twitter, Netflix, and YouTube.

With all of this, as a result I’ve gone from “I wish I had more time in my day.” to “What the fuck do I do with all this free time?”

Depending on how I structure my routine and down-time, I’ve got a blank slate of around ~14 hours each day to work with.

ALRIGHT.

So I’ve got my single-threaded core focus (game dev), and I’ve also got a shit load of time to allocate towards it.

Now it’s just a question of - how do I spend that time specifically in order to become a really good game developer?

This seems like a good cut point, so I’ll talk about that in my next post.

allocating-my-time (coming soon)

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