Start before you’re ready

AKA "fuck around and find out"

“flight of the octahedra”, a quick raymarching sketch in glsl. View it on ShaderToy.

Life feels like a strange loop, sometimes. Profound insights give way to blurry dissociation only to be brought gently into focus once again. I know by now that I’ll never actually “get a handle” on my mind. Minds are slippery things after all, constantly defying their own understanding of themselves in the infinite pursuit of novelty.

Historically, this cycle has pissed me off a great deal but these days I am finding it much easier to “let it be”. It feels like my work is moving in the right direction right now just by following my curiosity. Still, giving myself the space (without judgement) to freely explore over the past weeks has actually been quite difficult. I have a conditioned, reflexive urge to make tangible progress towards something concrete.

My way of dealing with this is, as usual, by going meta: instead of progress coming from any given pursuit, progress is simply learning more information.

If I can find out:

1. what I like doing

2. what people respond to

3. what I’m good at

4. what I can do to help others

That’s actually the most productive use of my time. Or at least, that’s the mindset I’m using right now.

If you read about self-development online you’ve probably heard of ikigai: the “Japanese formula for meaning”. I’m not sure the Western pop-psychology interpretation of ikigai is particularly accurate but these same four questions do seem to have some value, in my opinion.

In practice this looks like “fucking around and finding out” over and over again. I’m naturally prone to navel gazing, pondering what I could build and where my ideas could lead. Instead, I’ve learned to try ideas whenever I feel the energy for them. I revisit this frame often, it’s the reason The Song of The Fae landed in Early Access extremely prematurely. I felt like I was waiting too long and I needed more information to progress my thoughts. I’d spent months prior worrying whether I could stand the EA process and if I could handle the number of plates I would have to spin to ship a game this way. Eventually, I decided we should just do it and learn on our feet.

Would I do it that way again? No. Was it worth it? I think so. I believe I learn best when I’m just barely in over my head, when the task is novel but not totally foreign.

By the way, we’re considering tweaking the game’s title as we work towards final release branding (this is still a WIP). It wouldn’t be a TwoPM game if we didn’t keep changing it.

This is extremely similar territory to the Silicon Valley mantra of “failing fast” to validate your ideas. In my case, validating a pursuit simply means checking it against those four same questions¹. I have a number of different threads I want to explore in the coming months and I am extremely excited about where all of them lead, but without more information I find myself stuck. I’m also stubborn, so when I get stuck I’ll deny that I’m stuck and convince myself that what I need is more thinking, more spinning my wheels.

Over time I’ve found a slightly better way. Start with the smallest possible step. Literally, the smallest actionable thing you can do that would allow you to progress your thinking. It just has to answer one question you have. Take a recent example, I found myself ruminating:

“It’d be great to have a regular long-term writing habit but it’s so unapproachable, how will I know what to write about? What if I’m just not that good? When will I have time for it? Will I start to hate it?”

Then I caught myself in the loop, and decided to break out of it². I took out my phone/iPad/laptop and start writing the first thing that came into my head. This reflex doesn’t usually result in something publishable, but that’s not the point. The point is to test your ideas against reality before you start to narrativise them. Is there something there? Is this even worth doing?

Another recent example:

I’ve wanted to explore generating music from code for a long time, especially in combination with audio-reactive visuals and interactivity. This is technically and creatively intimidating, to say the least, but this week I decided to take the obvious step and do some basic note patterns, chords and scales. I’m quite happy with the result to be honest, and I’m itching to do more. Check the video description on YouTube for links to see it live and the source code.

But, don’t get me wrong, not every idea gets this treatment. I love to daydream purely for the sake of it. It’s the ideas I come back to again and again that I test. I take the first step before I’m ready to avoid over-developing an idea. Without a tight feedback loop, mental constructions risk complete divorce from reality and become unimplementable. To some extent my behaviour here is motivated by loss avoidance, the pain of giving up on an idea you’ve mentally over-committed to is substantial (in my experience).

I’ve used this take-the-smallest-step mentality over the last year to:

• Start doing freelance software consulting/development

• Start streaming

• Learn graphics programming

• Start posting generative art online

• Publish fundamental.sh

• Start making regular videos

• Write this newsletter and,

• Get a dog

Making video devlogs for The Song of The Fae has been a goal of mine since late 2019. It wasn’t until late 2020 that I started to dip my toes in, and I didn’t start posting videos regularly until late 2021. Recording and streaming myself was a huge mental hurdle to overcome. Despite often being loud and outspoken I tend to shy away from the spotlight, but that’s not exactly possible on video. I spent many evenings staring at the ceiling wondering:

“Can I be natural on camera?”

“What if no-one watches?”

“What if I set expectations I can’t maintain?”

“How do I come up with thumbnails, titles, descriptions...”

“How do I know what to say?”

“What if my audio/video/technical setup sucks?”

I wasn’t actually sure I would enjoy making videos at all. So, I picked the absolute easiest way to start: I waited until I felt the urge to make a video, shot it unscripted with no editing, uploaded it and expected no-one to watch. There’s no use stressing about quality before you know how the end-to-end process feels. I’ve done this dozens of times now and it’s starting to seem natural, not easy by any means, but I don’t feel like an imposter anymore. I’m learning how to like it. The system works.

So, my macro-goal right now is to explore my personal possibility space both as efficiently and effectively as possible. Hopefully, at some point, I’ll naturally transition out of the explore phase into the exploit phase³. We shall see, stay tuned!

My recent burst of writing a week or two ago was also a product of this process and, after several recent days of wishing I could resume that streak, I took the obvious next step and wrote this post. Thanks for reading.

Until next time,

Ben ✌️

Stuff I’m thinking about

💀 John Carmack on The Lex Fridman Podcast

🛖 Martijn Doolaard restoring / renovating cabins in the Italian Alps

🤯 Nils Frahm - Says (Live on KEXP)

🎹 Hania Rani – Live from Studio S2

📐 Cramming 'Papers, Please' Onto Phones by Lucas Pope

🧠 Knowledge tools, finite and infinite

👨‍💻 The Cherno’s Raytracing Series

🗣 To-Do Lists Are Inhumane by Cal Newport

1. Again: what I like, what other like, what I’m good at, what is good for the world

2. That part takes a lot of practice.

3. https://conceptually.org/concepts/explore-or-exploit