Anyone who’s ever been around me in real life knows that I basically can’t stop making stuff. It’s been this way for as long as I can remember, I’ll be lying on the couch watching a mindless video and inspiration strikes. Suddenly I’m half-sprinting to my desk, desperate to bring my idea into reality.
In at least one sense, I have no problem with motivation.
For me the challenge comes from the gap between what I think I should be achieving vs. what I am achieving. There’s this nagging voice in my head that tells me that if I’m not consistently producing the best work of my life along every axis imaginable, then I’m wasting my potential.
Over the last ~2 months I’ve:
released The Song of The Fae (SoTF) into Early Access
delivered 6 update patches for SoTF
redesigned my personal website
drafted a new blog post for fundamental.sh
streamed game development every week
released lots of generative art
published a bunch of codesandbox experiments
That’s all with a full-time job taking up most of my time.
Reading that list, it seems like I should be pretty happy with myself but even as I write these words I know all the things I didn’t deliver on:
Github game off jam
SoTF Desert Biome
Tweeting about/promoting SoTF
The announcement post for my React input management library
A personal blog post (meta, since I’m writing it now)
Procedural generation research
Youtube videos from my edited Twitch VODs
& more…
So this is a quiet reminder that potential is purely theoretical. Reaching my “maximum” potential output likely involves burning myself out and taking care of myself can hardly be considered a waste. Your experiencing self and remembering self have wildly different opinions of you, don’t believe either of them completely.
A friend once told me:
The bar you’re measuring yourself against doesn’t exist.
And I think that’s something everyone needs to hear, at least occasionally. There’s always more you could’ve done, but perhaps it’s better to focus on what you did. Hell, perhaps it’s better to just focus on what you’ll do next.
✌️ ben