Yet another concept shamelessly stolen from Amy at unicornfree.com… some of her ideas really resonate with me and help me think about things in a different way.
So, this post will be about steam and pressure valves, short and sweet.
You know that guilt you feel when you know you should be working on your game, but you have no motivation to do so? You complain. You talk about it.
Stop, just stop. From now on, no more complaining about how you don’t have time, or are tired, or are busy, or the other excuses you use.
The guilt you feel is like steam. Your head is a container for steam, and the more guilt you feel, the more steam is in your container, and the more the pressure inside you builds. The pressure to do something, anything, to release the pressure.
When you talk, when you complain to someone, when you write an excuse-filled email, you open the lid on your container. The pressure to do something is released. You feel like you did something – you talked about your concerns. It feels like you did something productive, when you really didn’t.
When you stop the complain train, the pressure keeps building. It keeps building, and it still needs the release. If you only allow the release to come in the form of something -actually- productive, well, guess what?
Steam’s gotta go somewhere. It will make you work on your game, just to release the pressure.
Just so long as you curb your impulse to release that pressure via an unproductive source.
It works for me. 