Thought&Will


I want to share something important from the development of Double Damnation. Important because it should help you in productivity. It is not easy to explain it directly, so I will give you many personal examples, and you should be able to draw the conclusion from it.


In the first year of Double Damnation, I was daily pumping 6~8 hours of work, without distractions (e.g. alt-tab) and just seeing the progress made me addicted to making more, it snowballed.
I had nothing else in my mind. I felt like I was crusading against the AAA industry.
When I wasn't actively gamedeving, I was hooked on youtube watching:


And if I was burned out from gamedev (kinda common every few months, as I was working nonstop without weekend breaks), I would bingeplay tons of videogames (resulting in most of the game library).
Even when I talked with others, it was about videogames, as I had always played whatever they love, and so I could easily bridge conversations. Even in the second year of development, I was still working daily on Double Damnation and kept going nonstop, though obviously the hours of work had dropped, but still it was ~4 hours of full effort (no alt-tab)


My entire enviroment was optimally made for gamedev, and I wasn't even conscious of it.
Because once I got hyped at at history and architecture for example

image which really makes you think mysterious image

my thoughts were focused onto history and architecture, and away from gamedev.
In my free time, I no longer watched any videos related to games or gamedev. I also barely played videogames (good videogames used to kill my development burnout and refreshed me, especially metroidvanias)


And even when I wanted to progress Double Damnation's development, because it was the only truly productive thing I could do? I could not.

Even self-discipline, which in the 2nd year of developing Double Damnation ensured I worked daily without missing a day, was just powerless. I asked myself how did I lose all this willpower?
It all started with thought.
My thought was redirected, and so my will.


I want to give other examples, however, to explain this insight onto productivity.

Reading random articles about privacy, or watching videos about privacy, often made me form thoughts on privacy, and write some things for myself. For example, why personal websites die's core, was made after reading articles on the early and late internet, by different viewpoints.


For more personal examples, while I read ancient greek books and many days after, I get extremely inspired to write text on ancient greeks, sometimes even game designs, or expand my ancient greek homebrew campaign.
It is something unavoidable, as I cannot get the hype concepts out of my head many days after I read them. It's the only thing I think of, sometimes even in my dreams, and so, it is natural for me to manifest these thoughts into digital text.


Another personal example is an old mod I develop, which I am not hyped to play or update by default. Yet, when someone sends me a bug report, or thanks me for sustaining it, suddenly its all I think about, and want to update it. I also want to update it when I lose because of a bug - a conversion of my anger and hype, into a swift update.


Lastly, a non-personal example.
How do mangaka push out a full chapter each week?
We are talking about insane amounts of productivity here. The answer is simple: Their entire life, their entire enviroment, all of their thoughts, revolve purely around manga.
They have no life aside of it - if they do, they form thoughts unrelated to manga (hiatus time!)


I hope you understand what I'm trying to convey with each example. Its in the title.


I lied however when I said no more personal examples, and will tell you a silly example
One day, I wanted to do pushups but was lazy and kept delaying them. Recognizing what I have explained, I forcefully started watching videos of chads exercising, doing hard exercises (e.g. proper pistol squat or one-handed pushups) Within 5 minutes, I was hyped and was doing pushups, it just works.


Combine the meaning of this article with "will to power" and it is no coincidence "eyeballs are the only currency" (focused so much by big tech, mainstream media etc etc)
Thought is energy, don't waste it.