Archive for August, 2010

(I posted on Twitter yesterday that this would be called “Overthinking is Masturbation”, and it is, but I had further thoughts this morning. Heh.)

One of my many flaws is that I procrastinate in the form of “thinking about what I need to do.” I like to take long walks and muse about shit: story ideas, game mechanics, blog posts, personal stuff, whatever it is that’s on my mind. And there’s a degree to which this is helpful.

That degree is the excuse I use to keep doing it far, far beyond usefulness. Because (and here’s where we get into the original title) thinking, as an act, is pleasurable. Being clever or intelligent or whatever it is we’re doing when we’re thinking to ourselves about something fires off neurons in our–well, at least my–head that reward me for this activity. I find it calming, relaxing to just think about something. For hours. For fucking days.

Only it’s not useful to “just think” that long. After a bit, because nothing is recorded or submitted to others for feedback or anything that would take me beyond “just thinking,” I come around to the same thoughts over and over. Sometimes I realize it and explore new tangents. Sometimes I don’t until much later. Either way, now I’m wasting my time and preventing myself from moving onto the next action I need to do.

Sometimes these thoughts are about worrying about said action. So I analyze over and over what I feel I should do to mitigate a problem. Sometimes these thoughts are about a hard action, like a tough bit of writing or designing or editing that I need to do. So I think about it over and over. There are different reasons I’ll spend time just thinking, and they’re almost all excuses.

(The ones that aren’t excuses, unfortunately, justify this activity for the ones that are.)

I’m started to read, slowly, Getting Things Done. One of the things mentioned early on is to write down on paper things in your mind, so that you can free your mind up from fixating on them. It hit home yesterday, and a little more this morning (when I changed the title of this post) how the ways I’ve already been doing that have helped me, and how I need to do a better job at it still.

Since I got my iPhone a few years back, I have absolutely fallen in love with quickly typing notes and emailing them to myself. Or occasionally doing a voice memo. I told people within two months of having my phone that it changed my life. I would have a quick idea, type a note, email it to myself, and did that so often that I have a tag in GMail called “Notes to Self” that I routinely go back and search through.

Suddenly I could remember small ideas that would hit me minutes after going to bed. And by typing them out, I was suddenly able to sleep better. My mind wasn’t chewing on this idea over and over — it was allowed to set it aside.

Productivity ensued.

Now, I realize I need to get better at this, not just for the “I’m walking and oh that’s a good mechanic idea I should write it down” moments, but for everything. I can “just think” about a short story for a day, at most, but the next day I need to write things down. The act of writing makes an idea concrete, something I can better explore because I have made it tangible, and something I can then put down without fearing losing the idea — the very reason my mind keeps obsessing about overthinking.

That frees up my mind, my mental bandwidth, for other things it needs to work on. And for working on whatever that thing is more efficiently.

I mentioned why I considered “Overthinking is Masturbation” above, with the brain reward cycle element, but here’s why it’s toxic: once you’re done with the initial thinking you need to do, you’re wasting time. Your thoughts will become better once you write them down. And better still once they come into contact with someone else. The move from pure thought to action is profound, sometimes intimidating, but necessary. And the longer we delay that move, well, none of us are getting any younger.

There are so many excuses we do to keep us from acting. I’ll address some of my own past ones now:

• I only have part of an idea. Congrats, that means you have an idea. You’ll have more if you make your brain explore it by writing it down.
• I don’t know where to start. Actually, you do, it’s just not where you want to start. That’s okay. Start in the middle, or wherever words flow best. You needn’t be linear.
• My idea sucks. Then stop thinking about it? Can’t? Probably means that it’s actually your confidence that sucks. And that’s something that takes practice. So, practice by writing this idea down.
• I’m not ready to write it down. You never are really ready to do anything until some time after you’ve done it. Don’t wait to be ready. Make yourself ready by doing it.
• I’m tired now. I’ll do it tomorrow. Really? You can’t just make a few notes right now, before going to bed? You can’t suck it up for ten minutes?
• I don’t think I can hack it. That’s honest. And you might not be able to right now. But if you never act, you’ll never be able to. Yoda was full of shit: there is a “try.”
• I’m afraid of what I’ll write down. Yep. But that fear doesn’t go away if you ignore the action. It just eats at you. So, suck it up and write. And move on. It’s easier to do so if you act than if you don’t.

When we overthink, when we allow our minds to keep us from moving forward, we’re losing precious hours and days that we could spend creating. We’re losing precious time we could spend learning how to be more confident in our efforts, in how to recover from the mistakes we will invariably make, in all those things that it takes to be a creator.

I’m not telling you not to think. But instead of procrastinating, allow yourself to enter an upward spiral of thinking-acting-thinking-acting. You’re allowed to go back to thinking after you’ve acted. I promise you that. And I promise you that in each iteration of that spiral, your thoughts will be even more awesome and more rewarding.

- Ryan

I’ve mentioned before that I think more podcasters take the idea of “seasons” as a silly, “let’s pretend we’re real media” way. Like, “ohh, look at us, we’re season 2! Aren’t we keen!”

Not that I mind people having fun, playing around at something, whatever, but I feel like if that’s what someone thinks of as a season, they’re missing the point. And it’s a point I’ve been talking about here and there for the last year or so. That seasons can be a good idea, if you understand them.

These days, I don’t enter into new projects without some plan of an exit strategy. Things that sounds like they’ll go over forever tend to end at a point of low energy, which is a violation of one of my podcast rules: “Leave people wanting more, not having wanted less.” Which means that with anything on-going (including this blog), I break my time spend doing that into seasons, and choose whether to renew that project after each season.

I’ve been talking with a friend about starting a new show, something we’re both interested in talking about but want to make separate from our current shows. He was worried about adding another ongoing commitment to his life, and I agreed.

“That’s why podcasts aren’t ongoing commitments to me anymore. I think in seasons. Tell you what, let’s try five-episode seasons. If we like our first season, we’ll renew.”

As I described my thought and the advice I’ve given over the years, he came at me with a new thing I hadn’t considered before. “No. I don’t want to do something episode-based. That doesn’t feel like it has a hard stop.”

This blew me away, because I hadn’t considered something based on time-elapsed before. Or, rather, I had and discarded it. “Yeah, but if we say ‘Let’s try this for two months’ and we only do an episode…I dunno.”

We compromised. Five episodes in fourteen weeks. That’s one episode every two weeks, with an extra four weeks to cover life happening. Not that we’ve started that yet, but then GenCon recovery really only started with me last week, and I have a backlog of life. We should be recording our pilot in September.

Another podcast I might be a part of (holy crap, it’s almost like I’m a media producer again) is taking a similar approach, and it’s smart[1].  Small, agile seasons. It gives us a target to shoot for that’s reachable in the short term, a period when we not only can but must seriously evaluate what’s happened, a time where we can plan to take a break rather than it just happening…and lasting several months. Most importantly, it gives us permission to walk away.

Permission to walk away while you’re at a high point is important to being successful at anything. You’ll be remembered for your last acts on something. If you ride something all the way down to it crashing, that’s what people will remember. People give me shit still for Master Plan podfading rather than properly ending (though I am, slowly, getting back on that horse because I feel like I should finish it right, even if that violates my rule above). And that’s the point of seasons — to give yourself permission to quit something while it’s still good when you think you don’t have another full season in you.

Also, funding. But that’s another topic for another time.

- Ryan

(Not sure if I’m going to stick to “Media Monday” as a blog topic, but I’m playing with the idea. We’ll see if it survives a season!)

[1] Yes, I just said my own idea is smart. I’m a humble guy.

Another Gen Con has passed, and now we ring in the new gaming year the way we ring in the new true year — by talking about antics we participated in and antics we missed during the New Year’s Party that is Gen Con.

The lovely and badass Jen Dixon of The Walking Eye Podcast did a great job filling in for our traditional One Cool Thing video:

(Look at that handsome bastard.)

Of course, you can get your fix by going over the shows we did as part of This Just In From Gen Con 2010! The post-show wrap-up, a.k.a. Ken Hite’s traditional unpacking of the Gen Con we all just experienced, will be up in the next day or so. (Some news about me will drop on that episode as well.)

But I just did a couple shows every day. There was amazing live coverage this year, thanks to the good folks at NeonCon. If you know me, you know I’ve raved about NeonCon since I was one of their GamesU (now rebranded CreativeU) guests last year. (With all or most of their GamesU seminars up online, you can see me make an ass of myself.) The team there — with folks like Doug and Jules being the faceman/woman for the broadcast — were a joy to work with and to watch produce what was essentially hours of Gen Con for those at home.

You can check out archives of the live stream, like the filming of the ENnie Awards, at http://www.livestream.com/neoncon/

I was really happy to accept on behalf of Jason & Steve at Bully Pulpit the ENnie Fiasco got. Of course, I also feel like a touch of a heel, because that was a moment that I wished I could have admired from the audience, like I got to with Ken Hite & Hal Mangold accepting their gold ENnies for Cthulhu 101 & Day After Ragnarok. But, the point of accepting an award is less for the person accepting and more for the crowd watching. When you’re up there on stage, your job is to say (using completely different language) “Thank you for putting the effort into this award and giving me this opportunity. I will not belittle those efforts.”[1]

In other words, it’s okay to fuck up my own award speech, but I take accepting for someone else seriously, because it’s their moment and the crowd’s moment, and I’m just a stand-in. A stunt-Morningstar or -Segedy, if you will.

Speaking of Fiasco, this was fun:

(Thanks to Travis & Kira Scott for the bourbon pictured in the photo.[2])

Anyway, that’s all right now. Thanks for indulging this non-post. :)

- Ryan

[1] A non-zero number of you are reading between the lines. Good.

[2] If your comment is “but there’s no bourbon in that picture!” I assure you there is. See those smiles. Yeah. ;)

For someone who has supposedly retired from podcasting, I have been a bit prolific lately. But first, some congratulations:

Canon Puncture hit episode 100! Woo!

The guys over at CP are pretty awesome, and watching them grow into the show they’ve become over the years has been really neat. I wish them the best of luck in enacting their master plans!

I already announced this earlier, but since we just put up the second episode, I’ll announce again!

This Just In…From Gen Con! 2010 edition is up! Pre-show #2 has been released, and we’ve got more coming this Thursday through Sunday!

Chris Hanrahan and Brian Isikoff were foolish enough to have me crash the most recent episode of 2d6 Feet in a Random Direction. We talk about the Dresden Files mini-con at Endgame, the Go Play SF Bay kick-off, ICONs, and #ShitRyanMacklinSays[1].

But, that’s all old news…

Today, August 2nd, 2010, Master Plan has returned from podfading. I give you: Master Plan #54, wherein I’ve interviewed Ken Hite about Setting Creation and Day After Ragnarok. (Right now, I’m having some DNS issues, so you can find it at http://masterplan.libsyn.com/master_plan_54_kenneth_hite_setting_creation_day_after_ragnarok)

This is the first in a series I’m doing where I’m publishing interviews from 2009 that I’ve been sitting on for months. Those who follow me in other spaces know how busy I’ve been and know how long it takes me to produce an episode that I’m happy with, so it’s been something I’ve pushed off again and again. But it felt really good to kick this out, so expect it to continue for a little bit. Whether I keep doing it after I’m out of my old material or not is up in the air.

- Ryan

[1] Which, by the way, Karen has asked that other people take part in — since she can’t be at Gen Con to chronicle me putting my foot in my mouth.