Cold Turkey
Last night, I did something pretty drastic. It wasn't on impulse... I had been thinking about this for quite a while. Finally, I decided to take the band-aid approach and just do it all at once.
I deleted all my games.
New and old alike, they all went. Bioshock, System Shock, System Shock II. GTA IV. GTA: Vice City. (I skipped San Adreas.) Venerable Diablo I and II, not to mention their leering cousin Overlord. Age of Empires. Several versions of Peggle and Bejeweled. Warcraft III. Every incarnation of Half-Life and Half-Life 2. Uplink, Darwinia, Wingnuts, Weird Worlds and SPORE.
Well, OK, it wasn't that hard to give up SPORE, but seriously, deleting Darwinia hurt.
Why chuck hundreds of dollars of software into the bin? It's all about time. My own time and time with a capital 'T'. I need time to understand Time. Too much recombinant thought has taken up residence. It's time to marshal these unruly ideas and get them out. So, the games served during gestation, but now it's time and Time and past time for me to put them aside and get scholastic. Put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard. Time to run some numbers, see the scenarios, and try to synthesize a cohesive whole. Time to abstract and distill and methodologize.
I know I'm being obscure. How can I not? Take the number of people exposed to a given process theory (OODA). Multiply it by the fraction who also know the second through the seventh (ToC, Lean, Six Sigma, TQM, Agile, Strategic Navigation). Mix in dynamical systems thinking (Senge, Liker, Hock.) Intersect that group with people who know something about uncertainty, complexity, and time. Now intersect it with people who view all the world as material and economic flux. (If you are a member of the resulting set, I want to talk to you!) I know all these things are deeply connected, but if I could articulate how, and why, then I'd already be done.
One thing I am already sure about, though, is this: It is all about Time. Time is far more fundamental and far less understood than you'd think. I'm now just talking about inappropriately scaled-up quantum mechanics metaphors. I mean that people fundamentally trip up on Time all the time. "The Black Swan" is just the tip of the iceberg.
If it works, I'll sound like an utter crackpot, raving and waving my very own personal ToE.
If it doesn't work, well, Steam knows which games I bought. I can always reinstall them.
Comments
I knew I liked you, and now I know more about why. I had no idea you were a Weird Worlds player -- I really like that game, and not just because I'm in the credits. :)
I'm really looking forward to seeing what you do with all this time. Or should I say Time?
It sounds a bit like you're headed towards dealing with Time on a perceptual level rather than an objective one, but that may be a misperception on my part.
- Kevin
Posted by: Kevin Matheny
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February 15, 2009 9:15 PM
I don't know about the Grand Quest for Time but in my case, I never regretted selling or giving all my games and consoles. That was just too much time for the fun I was taking out of it. Even if I loved some games.
Please drop us a note on how you survive the addiction and of course about your enlightments on Time, with a big "T"!
Eric.
Posted by: Eric Torreborre
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February 15, 2009 10:02 PM
Not just perceptual but actual.
I think we put too much emphasis on cost efficiency and project plans. Instead, we should focus on time, uncertainty, and complexity.
I'm thinking about ways to quantify uncertainty and adaptability. Ways to combine agile, lean, complex adaptive systems, queuing systems and information theory.
Time is at the center of it all: increments, iterations, and the asymmetry between past & future. Time is both the reason for uncertainty and the key to our response.
Posted by: mtnygard
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February 16, 2009 12:07 AM
If you come up with a good software estimation tool...
Posted by: Matt McKnight
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February 17, 2009 1:49 PM