New Thresholds
So I’ve been hitting the video editing desk pretty hard lately, which I will use as another excuse for not posting anything here again last weekend. But I’m not going to drag myself for it at all, and maybe biweekly blogging is a better fit for my schedule at the moment anyway? The payoff here however was being able to finish up what is likely my biggest video project I’ve ever assembled, and I was able to test myself a bit in multiple ways while making it.
Something about this project compelled me to push myself to upload it as soon as humanly possible, but still retain the general level of quality I wanted along with not completely burning out in the process. While I usually break up my day into 3-4 hours of “focus” time in the mornings, while putting this video together I didn’t really create a consistent schedule, but rather just worked on the video for as long as I had the energy to do so, pushing myself to put in longer hours per day in order to get the video done sooner. Doing this helped me realize/confirm a handful of things about my work/energy process.
Certain types of work better suited for certain times of day
Lately I have definitely had more success with focused work sessions in the morning, so tasks like writing & video editing were much more efficient during these hours. Whenever I tried editing the video later in the evenings, I was probably going at 1/4 of the speed, making more mistakes, getting distracted, etc. So evenings tended to be better times for more mindless & reptitive things, like downloading all the cover art for the games, capturing footage, adding on screen text. That kind of stuff I can work on while lurking Twitch streams or whatnot, so it felt more “leisurely” as well. So as tasks unfolded before me, I was better able to allocate certain work into the ideal times of day to best complete them.
The power of tight deadlines
Not a super new idea to me, but having a deadline really helps me follow through and finish things, and especially helps with potential perfectionism issues. I gave myself a pretty tight (but still arbitrary) deadline to finish the video by (which I met, a day early!) and it really helped me calculate out how much time I had for certain tasks. And while I don’t want to rush too much or overexert myself, what tends to happen is that I was get more creative with methods to increase efficiency and speed as opposed to just freaking out about a lack of time.
Sleep/Exercise are really good for your brain
There were a couple nights while working on this where I had some really rough sleeps, and my productivity was so bad the day after. I also found myself having clearer and better ideas in the mornings after a good sleep. As for exercise, a good workout not only help me sleep harder, but I also find it a great time to think (depending on the exercse though). I’ve mostly been going on bike rides and taking walks lately and often came up with cool ideas about the video (and other future videos) in the process.
All in all, I feel I hit a new threshold for the amount of work I can put into a single video, and tracked about 75 hours of work on this one over about two weeks, not far off from the hours of a full time job. It was also a bit exhausting by the end, and I did notice other things going a bit by the wayside (housework, cooking, and no daily game dev habits yet). So there is still a bit of a better balancing act I want to strive for, but I know now the potential of pushing myself is there, and I didn’t hate it! Of course I ran into a few frustrations here and there, but generally really had a fun time putting the video together, and was often hitting flow state during various parts of the process, helping time fly by so much faster.
The feedback so far on the video has also been great, thanks so much to everyone who took the time to watch, give some kind words about it, or helped spread the word. Metrics-wise, it seems to be getting some traction as well and is already helping grow the channel faster than the previous few videos since the “reboot.” I’m leaning towards the idea of making another larger comprehensive horror game list video soon after a few others I already have in the works, one of which just finished uploading while I wrote this post (a funky mix of Castlevania tunes). I’m still deciding on the system to cover but hopefully can post that up in October while people may still be seeking the spooky stuff.
Thanks for reading, and hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!