Work Retreat
Part 1: Our Hopes the Week Prior
This summer has been really busy for Justin and I. Justin transitioned to a new job in which he is able to telecommute four days a week. But as such, the area which was formally dedicated to brainstorming and working on Chronobit Studios has now been converted (if only in our minds eye) to a place of work for his 9-5 job. That's fine: there's nothing wrong with converting a space and utilizing it for another purpose. But for whatever reason, Justin (much like myself) has a hard time compartmentalizing mentally if there is no proper compartmentalization physically as well.
As such, his ability (and mine) to work on Chronobit Studios work (namely game design and fundamentals) has declined as of late. I've already reviewed my "Big Project Cycle" in a previous post. I believe we've reached the distracted stage. The daunting nature of what we want to do (start a self sustaining gaming studio) has overshadowed us so much that we are no longer even choosing to look at it and find comfort in other things around us. I've gotten through War and Peace and am starting on Les Miserables. Justin's working through playing Destiny and I've played through Assassins' Creed: Brotherhood. These endeavors are not bad within themselves: Call them research in how other people have produced wonderful stories and games. But when these things stray closer to the side of distraction rather then the area of enlightenment, you have a problem.
This distraction is caused mostly by how large this whole idea is! I'm sure there are times when neither Justin nor I really comprehend how big of an endeavor this is. And at times, it's magnitude is very greatly felt. We like to talk about the point in our lives where Chronobit is self sustaning: where we make decent money at doing it, when we can have some kids out in farm land someplace beautiful and Justin simply walks to a detached office we will build on our acres and acres of land to work all day and the walks back to the house to play with the kids at night. My idea is very idylic and perhaps overly romanticized, but it's our dream. But the death of dreams is when our fear consumes us to the point that we do nothing to push towards the dream. Distractions aid that fear: it's a snow ball effect. We get distracted, do something else, look back on our suffering productivity, feel more overwhelmed, get more distracted to deal with the feeling of being overwhelmed, produce even less and so on and so forth until you're watching Days of Our Lives reruns in your pajamas on a Saturday morning instead of thinking about your projects and dreams.
All that to be said: we need to refocus. We've made a decision: we still want to pursue this dream: we want to push forward and at least try with all our might or else we'll always wonder if we could have done more.
So Justin approached me with a proposal the other day: There's a start-up weekend in VA where you pitch and idea for a company or product and then work the rest of the weekend on the idea. We sat in bed and struggled with what we would pitch: a game studio. We want to do games. cuz.... games. It's not a very strong or inventive business pitch. Plus, the bread and butter of that pitch is that you have an inventive game to push, not a ground breaking business model or company idea. The Ludum Dare is more suited to aid indie game developers in that sense.
The alternative to pitching an idea was to support someone else with their pitch. Although information we may learn from the guidance of the leaders of the seminar, there would not be a great deal of information sessions or business type guidance. Mostly, the work would be dedicated to pushing someone else's idea and conducting research to further substantiate and promote their idea. Frankly, we have our own ideas that need that kind of dedication.
Lastly, we've been to a handful of entrepreneurial breakfasts and Lean methodology meet-ups. Programming games does not really fit neatly into their upfront, research heavy methodology. And although there are a great many tenants we want to learn from with the Lean methodology, there are a great many difficulties to applying it seamlessly to a gaming studio. As such, we seek to better understand how we can concentrate on building up our studio not just in it's business model but also in it's products: the games themselves.
We ultimately decided not to do the start-up weekend in VA for fear that we would ultimately be stuck on a team of people pushing to make an integrated coffee ordering system in an office environment rather than promoting our own desire to make games. But we thought a work retreat on the whole was a good idea.
People take retreats for any number of reasons: health, spirituality, relaxation (gosh, in our searching for a proper spot, we even found a retreat for "Knitting and Yoga" which featured a photograph of someone in downward dog next to someone in a rocking chair knitting... no joke). We figured, why not take a retreat to concentrate on work? This brings me to the idea of environment. What about our current work environment makes it difficult for us to stay at home and just dedicate our weekend to a programming project? What about leaving our home for the weekend to sit in an office or a hotel room and just code away for hours on end seems more sustainable and more attractive? Why do I expect that we'll be able to keep up our motivation there?
I'll be honest: I tried to find someone on the internet that would give me a scientific reasoning to explain this assumption of mine but no matter how good my "google-foo" was, all I would get was articles about how to modify a work environment to make it more conducive to the welfare and productivity of the workers. I could not find any articles about what occurs when you change the environment of an individual consistently to promote creativity and concentration. I have to, therefore, rely on my observations.
In College, and even in high school to a certain extent, I found that I would often change the location in which I was studying. For four to six weeks I would sit on my bed and study. Then, without even being conscious of it, I would begin setting up and studying on the kitchen table for four to six weeks. Then I would begin to study on the couch for perhaps six to eight weeks. Then I would just study in the library constantly. Then perhaps back at the kitchen table. It didn't really depend upon what my roommates were doing or what the weather was doing. It wasn't contingent on the class I was studying for or the nature of the work (be it reading or a paper). It was simply something I needed to do. I remember saying, when asked by my roommate why I had suddenly changed, "I just need a change of atmosphere, you know?" And she would often agree and go on her merry way. I even observed that she, too, would change her study spot (but perhaps less often than myself).
I no longer have classes I have to study for but I still do this today. I will play assassins' creed at the desk and then change randomly and sit on the coach instead. Basically, I set my nest up in different places and just reside there for a while before moving on. Now a days it is contingent more about comfort than it is about concentration, but to a limited extent I still must concentrate on various aspects of blogging, game designs, writing my book, and any other project I've set out on. Changing my nest has always been a good way for me to gain a bit more momentum. However, I'm not sure why. Perhaps the change in atmosphere prompts me to work harder. More likely, going to a new, less comforting spot (one which I am not as familiar with) keeps me from becoming complacent and lazy. Sometimes it's about posture, sometimes it has nothing to do with how comfortable my chair is.
I think there is an unconscious association we make with different environments around our house. As such, the idea of leaving our very comfortable and comforting home to go somewhere generic and impersonal will prompt us to remember what our goal is and therefore not be distracted. If we put out a few dollars to get a room for a weekend, we'll be more motivated to make that money worth it by putting in the time towards the initial goal. It seems like standard psychology to me (however maybe i'm not a standard psych subject) in which you remove elements from your vicinity which trigger responses of relaxation in favor of a work environment which are less comfortable in thereby depriving you either mentally, emotionally, or physically of the trigger items prompting distraction. People sometimes struggle working from home because so many things around them are designed to promote relaxation and leisure time. Knowing this struggle is real, Justin changed his previous leisure area to promote more work but as such, things not related to the 9-5 get tossed to the wayside.
Hence, the retreat. We hope (and perhaps you could say, hypothesize) that taking ourselves out of the leisure environment of our home and going to a less comfortable environment will prompt us to work harder on our goal (e.g. making the most recent Lunum Dare entry, Luna Form, a more fun, interactive and playable game in the hopes that we may submit it to a con or at least put it in the app store).
I plan also to get myself back on the blogging band wagon and as such, I'll be blogging about our experience doing this retreat, just the two of us, to try and self motivate ourselves to work on this game, without the influence of the Lunum Dare community. Being able to do so will really help our self esteems and solidify in our minds that this is truly something we could accomplish for our company!
