i mean the fact i'm here posting instead of driving towards a specific goal is indicative of the issue. everyone is like this to an extent i guess, but I heard or read at some point that one of the differences between successful and unsuccessful intelligent people is one group has the ability to disregard unimportant information and distractions in order to focus on a more narrow range of goals. self control i suppose, and maybe some people are lucky enough to grow up just right so you have it pre-installed but it's something i'm still trying to forge in my mind for myself.
 
anyone been having success directing your mental energy in one place until you have acheived a result you desired? i'm not talking about lack of ideas, lack of caring - that's a different problem - i'm just talking about focus and ignoring distractions. you all know me so you know i have self control issues with most things in my life, and it's taken me going through a complete lack of it in many areas to realise that it is a general issue with me rather than a single chemical addiction thing - it's emotional and imaginative as well, i go all over the place and when something seems like a good idea i drop everything else and focus on that.
 
which is fine, maybe, but the problem is that is leaves me in the position of finishing little of what i start. right now i just thought oh yeah, i want to write a horror film, so i wrote up a basic treatment of an idea and that took i guess half an hour so now what do i do? start breaking it out into scenes and acts and then start writing a draft and all of this. you don't do all that in one night of course, but i would like to be able to train my mind into focusing on something important to me like this for a good 5 or 6 hours so i can get something substanial done for myself.
 
i'm supposed to be heading up two societies at university this year and i am running into the same problems. it's part of why i took the responsibilities on, so i would be forced through other people relying on me to consistently exert mental energy towards something over a period of time. hopefully i can look back on it and be proud of myself rather than think well it WOULD be been brilliant if only i hadn't spent all that time watching clips of ravens and crows talking on youtube, or deciding no drop everything, i'm a musician today! no, i want to make an animated show tomorrow!
 
any tips from grown ups? commisteration is all good but let's put something towards licking this son of a hound.

I heard about a method called "Don't Break The Chain" which is apparently sometihng Jerry Seinfeld invented to help with his productivity. The idea is you get a calender, and everyday, when you have Done Some Work (the amount is kinda irrelevant, just so long as you've done something) then you can cross off that day. The more days you have in a row increases the "penalty" for missing a day of work, since the chain will be broken.
 
I've taken to just having the mantra of "Achieve something every day" and once I feel I have done enough work I can go and play games or revel in any other unproductive activity without guilt.
 
As far as what work you should be doing, I'm not sure it really does matter, because you never know what is going to be The Thing That Makes You. A lot of my work days were spent making personal songs and EPs, and I've made a total of about 3 sales ever off them. The time would have been better spent working on a game or a game soundtrack but I couldn't have known that they weren't going to sell and also I may have gained some long term skills from it.
 
Any work you do is good work in my opinion. The more you know about anything, the better you are at everything.

amazing coincidence but this is the bonzi broblem #1 jamie and i've been struggling with it all the time (self-control issues), though with different aspects and for different reasons. so it's the #1 thing i got things to say etc. actually, you could say that this is THE issue or topic i have SOLELY focused in the past year or so, moreso than music or anything else. i might chip in when i get the time (atm kinda busy) (i do wanna see this topic thrive).

i do like that simple chain idea cos it potentially gets past the existential problems related to this. actually i did make that idea before but i never thought too deeply about the real pros of it in philosophical sense (like ofc you get off the unproductive guiltness but you could always use it as an excuse to avoid X task forever. however there is probably the assumption that your gonna chip away at the big project through time + if you really do say, 5 tasks a day for examples sake, it means you do 5 * 360 = ~1800 tasks a year so naturally some of them will be Vital Tasks as well.
also if you are naturally crafty guy or introspective, youre probably still going to accidentally put those free hours on good stuff so...

I don't have this problem. my immediate thought was "well, I have good self control" but I think it's just that I don't have any concrete plans or goals.

anyway - I definitely agree with JM that all this creative stuff you're doing is useful to you. there's stuff I did in high school that's junk, but I've been able to pull a lot out of those experiences and it gives me an edge I guess. it makes me a lot stronger. I think what you're talking about is kind of the nature of creativity. I dunno how you even get to be successful without a bunch of abandoned or failed side-projects.

The parameters of the society we live in are counter-inductive to setting forth focused work on things you are truly passionate about.
 
It's not an uncommon diagnosis. Heck, some of us most likely feel better off subconsciously about not having to feel responsibility in not focusing on a specific goal in the face of so many.
 
What I've heard is that it takes roughly seven years to reach a position where you feel you have truly mastered something. But that it is not requisite you spend every hour of every day within that time-frame. If you are regiment about it, you could probably get three different things pretty much mastered. I don't think I would recommend more than two, since in the next seven year timeframe you could start on two more while not losing what you got in the previous seven years.
 
But different things work for different people. For instance, what works for me personally, is looking for instances where I can give advice over something I have already spent a lot of time studying, or on a topic I have spent countless hours introspecting about. And then I immediately proceed mentally lambasting myself constantly whenever I try to ignore advice I had just myself given out freely.
 
It's been right around 20-26 years I've been doing that. I'll tell you how well it works as soon as I find out myself.

I find the more brainless the work is the more of it I can get done.
A lot of what I find helpful now is kind of establishing environments where I can just plug away without having to be particularly "inspired" or enthusiastic.
So I try to set it up so that the trickier bits where I have to use my head are all done on weekend mornings when I'm brightest and then the halfassed evening work is just connecting dots.
Or even coming up with ideas of what I want to do at work and then spending the evenings applying them, rather than figuring it all out when I get home.
In this example, tricky work is coming up with ideas or doing any kind of game scripting or thinking about what areas should look like, and drudge work is tweaking dialogue, moving objects around, making graphics.
I don't know what this would look like in context of screenwriting... writing down a big draft version and then getting into the habit of editing or refining that vs coming up with things from scratch?
 
I am aware that I'm giving hacky advice!
 
There's a schedule approach called momadora about working in short intense blocs which worked well for me in the week or so before I became too lethargic to start it.

I find the more brainless the work is the more of it I can get done.
A lot of what I find helpful now is kind of establishing environments where I can just plug away without having to be particularly "inspired" or enthusiastic.
So I try to set it up so that the trickier bits where I have to use my head are all done on weekend mornings when I'm brightest and then the halfassed evening work is just connecting dots.
Or even coming up with ideas of what I want to do at work and then spending the evenings applying them, rather than figuring it all out when I get home.
In this example, tricky work is coming up with ideas or doing any kind of game scripting or thinking about what areas should look like, and drudge work is tweaking dialogue, moving objects around, making graphics.
I don't know what this would look like in context of screenwriting... writing down a big draft version and then getting into the habit of editing or refining that vs coming up with things from scratch?

oh, I do do this. within boundaries, I'll put off the trivial anytime work until I get burnt out or brain fog. I also think it's good to find out when you work best, then set that to a schedule if you can and stick to it.

I dunno asfaras music goes I have cycles of WORK ON LOTTA SONGS vs. try to make one song sound perfect and sometimes doing one helps me learn stuff I could do with the other. Also trying to mix/master music I'm coming up with a shitload of little effects/plugins and actually getting back into programming again because I have some incentive/actual tangible goal/solving real world problems instead of HELLO WORLDS
 
I've given up learning japanese unless I find an equal kind of incentive like japanese largely probably talk about as trivial things as us on the internet but if I found japanese version of salt world maybe that'd motivate me...

I dunno asfaras music goes I have cycles of WORK ON LOTTA SONGS vs. try to make one song sound perfect and sometimes doing one helps me learn stuff I could do with the other. Also trying to mix/master music I'm coming up with a shitload of little effects/plugins and actually getting back into programming again because I have some incentive/actual tangible goal/solving real world problems instead of HELLO WORLDS
 
I've given up learning japanese unless I find an equal kind of incentive like japanese largely probably talk about as trivial things as us on the internet but if I found japanese version of salt world maybe that'd motivate me...

 

vellfire you really pulled through for us today and i just wanna say from the bottom of my heart that I am in awe of your work

i'm really good at google image search

they have a whole shelf of that magazine here i kinda wanna buy one

I use this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Techniquehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique

Quote from: Ragnar on July 29, 2013, 04:14:10 pm

I dunno asfaras music goes I have cycles of WORK ON LOTTA SONGS vs. try to make one song sound perfect and sometimes doing one helps me learn stuff I could do with the other. Also trying to mix/master music I'm coming up with a shitload of little effects/plugins and actually getting back into programming again because I have some incentive/actual tangible goal/solving real world problems instead of HELLO WORLDS
 
I've given up learning japanese unless I find an equal kind of incentive like japanese largely probably talk about as trivial things as us on the internet but if I found japanese version of salt world maybe that'd motivate me...

 

 
haha I remember that
 
the big red text says something like "I LIKE FISHING I LIKE THE SEA"