Here I’m sitting, sipping tea and compiling firmware in the background, when I come across a blog entry called Reading Blogs is Useless. The argument is basically that you need to choose wisely where to spend your time, and blogs are useless unless you read them with a clear goal in mind. Opinions are like arseholes (” – everyone’s got one,” in case you’re not familiar with crude proverbs), and of course I have one of my own in this matter.

Individual productivity is something I rarely discuss with others; I know how I work, and so far I really haven’t been required to take note of other people’s methods. Myself, I basically have two different work modes:

1. Focus. I can get extremely focused on some project. When I receive an interesting task at work I’m happy to work long hours, and I’m eager to get working again the next day. This happens more often with my personal projects; I have fond memories of spending a whole week writing and recording a set of songs, for example. (The Leper would have been such an awesome collection of songs if I’d ever finished them all! Alas, I’m only happy with three and a half of them.) Or working for whole days in a row on programming projects.

   It’s tempting to call this mode flow, but that’s not really how it feels. It’s just an intense will to produce something; working on the project takes precedence over resting, talking to people, eating, and so on. The problem with this is of course that it’s demanding, and there’s no way to stay in this mode for too long.
    

2. More often I’m in my normal mode, where I get bored with my tasks unless I get variation. I like to have a long list of things to do, sort them in order of priority, and then choose a combination of prioritized tasks and other simple ones depending on my mood at the moment. I may be fooling myself, but I think that I’ve noticed how my productivity increases incredibly if I can choose semi-haphazardly.

   Adding to this, I am a firm believer that reading blogs or engaging in other technically useless pastimes also increases my productivity. It clears my mind, takes my mind off things, and forces me to return to the important things with a new mindset afterwards.

   After all, all work and no play makes Jack very gay.

3. Oh, right. The third of the two modes: when my head feels like a sponge and I can’t wake up. I’ll just ignore that one.

The blog link at the top does mention that reading a blog for fun can be a valid reason, but it still claims that “if you never use the information you receive from the blogs you read, then they are useless.” While I understand the need for an independent game developer to spend his time wisely, I just can’t agree that the best practice is to make every action a deliberately planned choice – one needs to relax as well. And besides, it’s impossible to tell when a new idea will pop up from reading something random.

But of course I have to play the independent developer’s advocate as well: given the harsh demands placed on a professional in that area, time and relaxation might be a luxury that they can’t afford. If that’s the price to pay for becoming independent, I’m not sure if I could ever do it myself.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 7th, 2006 at 11:25 am and is filed under Observations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.