Gamecraft

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Productivity Boost

April 1st, 2010

Prolific Development Through Isolation

Over the past several weeks, I have been working very hard on a number of exciting new projects, all of which are making great progress. In the process, though, I have managed to neglect and get a couple of weeks behind on my email, while essentially ignoring all other forms of inbound communication.

The result is that my productivity has increased greatly, while only missing one important piece of information. Therefore, I have decided to make these changes to my workload permanent. As of today:

I will shut down our email server. It receives, literally, thousands of messages daily, of which 99.9% is spam; even messages addressed only to my legitimate email addresses are more than 96% spam. Besides, the old hardware is locking up on a regular basis anyway.
I will remove telephone service from the office. Our two voice lines are used almost exclusively for answering telemarketing calls, and our fax line is disconnected most of the time due to the high volume of spam faxes.
I will bring an end to our social media experiment. In the time that I have been focusing on programming, I have not checked Facebook at all and do not feel that I missed anything. I feel likewise about Twitter, which I have never checked.
I will no longer spend any more than one hour per year writing joke posts for this blog. It is really too nice outside to be in here right now.
I will create a private contact page on our web site exclusively for those who pay us money. Those wishing to pay us money can initiate contact via blog comments.
I will keep the post office box, despite the junk mail, as it is a direct means for us to receive money. One can avoid the online back and forth by just attaching a check to your message and sending it to our business address.

I can feel my productivity on the rise already!

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Posted in Business

Tags: humor productivity

Compartmentalization

January 8th, 2010

Separating business matters from personal issues

Recently, I received the first newsletter of the year from (friend and former colleague) Steve Pavlina. For those of you who do not already know about Steve Pavlina, he founded Dexterity Games (now defunct) and published Dweep, an award-winning puzzle game. He was also the President of the Association of Shareware Professionals and was inducted into the ASP Hall of Fame in 2005. After this success, he left the game industry to pursue a career in motivational speaking and personal development, writing the book, Personal Development for Smart People.

Anyway, the meat of the newsletter, nestled in between the various sales pitches and recommendations from which he earns his living, was a section entitled, “Living by Your Own Rules“. This intrigued me, as it seemed to correspond nicely with my personal plans for 2010, so I read on. However, I quickly discovered that his ideas did not mesh with my own in this case. It had little to do with the actual content of his writings, but his radical ideas of sharing his personal life (specifically, his sexual preferences and desires) in the place in which he does his business.

Specifically, Steve made a blog post with his 2010 goals in which he reveals his personal goal of pursuing “Alternative Relationship Styles” and goes into detail (for which you will need to read his post). I have no problem whatsoever with his choice to pursue this lifestyle, but I do question the wisdom of presenting this in a forum in which he currently (by his own numbers) sells six figures a month; it seems risky to the point of potential self-destruction. More to the point, I wonder what benefit to his business (not to mention personal reputation) he seeks to gain from this pursuit. (I do see a great benefit in finding compatible sexual partners, though.)

Steve is good at taking things to the extreme, completing college in only three semesters, ramping up his healthy eating through vegetarianism to a vegan diet and finally raw foods, and now personal openness to a radical degree. He calls this last part “courage”, which it certainly takes, but I am not sure that courage is always the best choice. Aristotle’s Doctrine of the Mean suggests that the opposite of cowardice is rashness, and this might apply here. The more common idiom is, “All things in moderation, and moderation in all things.”

Personally, I think that it is still wise to compartmentalize to some degree, especially keeping business issues separate from (potentially) controversial personal issues, such as politics, religion, and sexuality. Discussing the particulars of these in a business context has the potential of alienating people with little chance of significant gain. I do not have a problem seasoning my business posts with personal items, and I definitely have business friends with whom I share more, but any proclivities I may (or may not ) have should remain discrete.

Ultimately, I guess that I am intrigued at Steve’s attempt to alter societal norms, and I wish him the best of luck, but I am also glad that it is he, rather than I, who is taking the risk of falling flat on his face. (Ridicule I could handle; starvation, not so much.)