Getting Things Done (Soon. I hope.)

[owsf2000]

Going to be trying to become Productive and Non-Procrastinative. (Fuck you spellchecker that's now a word.)

Long story short, I haven't been getting much done at all the last couple of years. Things pile up that I want to do, or need to do, and a heck of a lot ends up being left undone. Started reading a book called Getting Things Done, by David Allen (going off memory here, so hope I have the author right. ^^)

I don't know if this method of his will work to unstick me as it promises, but I'm going to give it a serious shot starting this weekend. Initial Collection/Processing stages for getting the system running can take a weekend - he recommends having two days set aside to give you plenty of time to collect all the "stuff" in your head and process through it all.

I've tried plenty of methods in the past and they'd always fall apart fairly quickly. We'll see if I can stick to this one. If it starts to fall apart I'll regroup and try it again. See if I can make the new habits stick. I'll put a note in my tickler file (once I set it up) to remind me to assess how everything's turned out around December. :)

Comments

[kane_magus]

You're probably better off than I am in that regard. At least you have methods that you're trying to overcome it.

As for me... well... for example, it took me a week just to reply to this. >_>; (Yeah, I know I do tend to reply quicker to the video game industry rant posts, but it's almost... apropos... to procrastinate on writing a reply about procrastination, in a way. >_>;;; It wasn't intentional, though, I just happened to see it again and went oh shit I meant to reply to that.)

I've been "in a rut" or whatever you want to call it for, especially, the past four years (since moving back to NC from WA), but probably for at least six years before that, as well (i.e. ever since finishing at DigiPen in 2008... almost a full 10 years ago... fucking hell). Only things I've done during that entire time that wasn't just monotonous, daily-life, doldrums shit is written fanfic, which ain't saying much, and around 70 pages (double-spaced) or not quite 24,000 words on a novel I started in 2014, which is going nowhere fast. As I said in this post, I wrote almost 10 times that amount of fucking fanfiction in the span of maybe a year at most, so I don't know what the fuck is wrong with me as far as writing on original stuff goes. Well, actually, I appear to have apparently written over twice what I'd written by the time of that post, between then and now, which is actually a bit shocking to me, honestly. So... that's something, I guess? Well, either that or I just fucked up the word count addition when I wrote that earlier post. *shrug* ...I dunno, maybe I'll dust that off for a little while today.

[owsf2000]

Yeah that's the kind of realization I was getting as well - time flying by with me just living week to week without accomplishing much of anything.

As for organizing myself as this post alludes to, I'm not finished with it yet. Still firmly in the "Gather all those loose ends/open loops" to know exactly what I need to be doing. I have gotten some things done, mostly minor things, but at least I'm pushing forward a bit.

For instance one of the things on my "projects" (anything you want to do/or feel needs to change that takes more than one action step to complete - so a lot of fairly simple things are still "projects") is to get a game published on steam. (That's a big goal of course.)

The strategy I'm using basically gets you to focus on figuring out what the next thing you need to do in these projects to push it closer to completion. In my case, odds are any game I'm going to make will be created with those game maker type programs - so it's mostly design that I gotta deal with. I'd like to do an RPG so "Buy RPGMaker MV" was one of my next steps. When it was 75% last weekend, I cleared that step and aded it to steam. So it's no longer an excuse not continue the project later. ;)

Of course, I still have to learn MV and think up an actual game idea, then figure out what I have to do for art and music etc. But that'll all start flowing when I sit down to brainstorm ideas.

[kane_magus]

"get a game published on steam"

That's been something that's been niggling at me as well that I sorta kinda potentially want to do someday maybe.

I did buy the Humble Code Your Own Games Book Bundle from a couple weeks ago, uploaded them all to my Kindle (after using Calibre to convert the non-MOBI versions to MOBI) and... haven't touched them since. >_>; And I've got all versions of RPGMaker on Steam except for MV. Getting that at some point is on my list as well, but I'm not really in a good position to do so at the moment. I also have the old version of GameMaker Studio from a previous Steam/Bundle thing, and I've also kind of been occasionally, vaguely looking into stuff like Adventure Game Studio and Ren'Py and even still the older text-stuff like TADS or Inform or RAGS and the like.

Beyond that, I've also toying off and on been with the idea of trying to make music, using something like OpenMPT, inspired by stuff like Homestuck and Undertale and OFF and such.

...

But I really think I should probably focus most on getting my damn novel(s) written first, since I know I could actually do that if I'd just fucking do it (if not necessarily get them actually published to any degree of success), before seriously considering tackling any of that other stuff, though. >_>;

[owsf2000]

I saw this comment randomly again and realized it was a year old. And I'm still not any closer to seriously finishing anything. X_X Summer is setting in as well so I may not get a lot done for the next couple of months due to the heat but I suppose we'll see.

Regarding your novels and game making ideas, perhaps attempt a Visual Novel?

As Steam shows, a visual novel doesn't necessarily have Choose Your Own Adventure branches and are at times a straight story from start to finish. There's Ren'py or whaever it's called which is an open source visual novel engine plus there's a few VN maker programs on steam if you have trouble running the open source one. (Haven't delved into it much myself.)

You could just write the barebones story aspect of the visual novel - no need for actual visuals. You could get ambient music from various royalty free sites like Incompetech to use as temporary filler or even the final project. If you actually finish the main storyline you could then go back and either do some branches to alternate ends and/or if you're planning on selling it on steam (or where ever) perhaps look around to see if you can commission an artist to do some art.

Just an idea of course, but it would keep you writing. I'm more likely to focus on a MV project and add in visual novel styled conversation/events to it but we'll see. I've at LEAST started opening MV now and then and bought a few extra tile sets that tend to be used in games made with MV on steam. ^^

I think MV would require me to learn some programming in ruby or something if I really want to customize it though. Something for me to consider.