I dunno, really. If getting goals means I have to do ::shudder:: work, then I don’t think I want goals. Also, one important thing that I like about video games is that failure has no meaningful consequences; if you fail at a job, you could be in trouble for a while, but if you fail at a game, you can just try again or even do something else.
Some other things I like about video games:
If you don’t play a video game for a long time, it’s still there, exactly as it was, if you ever want to try it again.
A video game can be played on any schedule, and it doesn’t care if you want to stay up until 4 AM and sleep until noon.
Video games don’t cost very much money.
Video games let me take my mind off my other worries. There’s no room in my head for misery while playing a video game.
Nobody threatens me with horrible future consequences if my video games don’t get played. I play them because I choose to, not because I’m being coerced.
Video games give rapid feedback, and a feeling of having achieved something.
When I have trouble with a video game, GameFAQs.com is always there to help.
I can beat many video games through sheer persistence.
I’m pretty good at video games.
I can discuss video games endlessly with my friends.
if you fail at a job, you could be in trouble for a while
If you fail at a job, you don’t have a job. If you currently are happy about not having a job, then this shouldn’t be so bad. Yeah, maybe someone will yell at you before firing you, but I simply reject that complaint. I can imagine months of stress when you believe you’ll be fired, but I think that it is possible to accept a job as transitory and avoid this stress. I think that I would find this stressful mainly because the uncertainty of what I would do when the job is over. If I knew that I’d go home and play video games for a few months, I think I could avoid the stress. But, maybe I’m wrong; and maybe you’re different. I’m probably more sympathetic to your other complaints.
If getting goals means I have to do ::shudder:: work, then I don’t think I want goals.
This is an instrumental equivalent to believing something for a reason other than that it is true. The goals are a first step, setting stage for the planning. The best available plan wins, even if it’s a “bad” plan, that is even if it doesn’t exactly “achieve” any of the goals.
For example, you may want to jump from a cliff, but not want to die (from hitting the ground). The plans not involving a parachute may dissuade this intention, prompting one to give an answer immediately, and declare the task undesirable, placing a curiosity stopper of this line of investigation. The correct approach is to keep your goals, not to stop considering them, and wait for a better plan: maybe the idea of a parachute will come, given time and careful study.
I don’t know if you’d be good at it or not, and I don’t know if your circle of friends lends itself to discussions on other topics, but apart from “exciting and intense” (and the specific applicability of GameFAQs.com), most of those criteria apply to many forms of artwork. Drawing, for instance, is cheap, can be pursued at any time and with any amount of delay between putting one down and picking it up, putting things up on the Internet or showing them to friends yields prompt feedback, persistence pays off no matter how much initial talent you have, and many people find it very absorbing. Unlike playing video games, there is some chance of art netting an income, although it would probably take a while for such an enterprise to take off.
I find many “creative” pursuits, such as writing and computer programming, to be both extremely difficult and rather exhausting. I’m often good at them, but they’re so much harder than anything that’s merely a matter of mastering and executing specific algorithms. In other words, I can’t brute force my way through writing a story the way I can brute force my way through a video game, by trying over and over again until I finally get it right. If I get stuck, I’m really, really stuck, and there’s no FAQ I can go read which will tell me what my next sentence or line of code ought to be. (Which is why I mentioned GameFAQs.com as one of the things I like about video games.)
I don’t know much about drawing, though. I never had much interest in it before...
I recommend it, personally, but that’s my hobby, and won’t be universal. There are lots of drawing tutorials available for all levels of expertise and assorted styles and at varying levels of step-by-step detail, and it’s more than a little easier to assess a ballpark of objective quality in drawing than it is with writing. If you like to write, you could do your own webcomic (although I don’t know how well you’d react to keeping an update schedule, you’d be in good company if you didn’t stick to one); that’s a good way to get in regular practice and improve. If you don’t like to write and have halfway decent art, it’s not hard to find a writer willing to collaborate.
I recommend drawing from real life. I don’t think people get stuck like writer’s block. You may get stuck at a plateau of ability, but that might be OK, depending on the level.
Playing a musical instrument is quite amenable to brute-forcing techniques* (as you might guess from the multitude of musical-instrument-simulating videogames).
*You would still need instruction to get started, and for specialized tricks, however.
I think this is a good suggestion. CronoDAS, you might also like to look into web design, or just design in general. I’m learning it right now—in an amateurish, inconsistent way - because it’ll help my website programming work. I’m really enjoying it even though my current skill level could be regarded as “terrible”. It involves learning tools like Photoshop (or GIMP if you like Linux), CSS and the principles of design. It helps me make things that appeal to my aesthetic sense and give me a sense of accomplishment, and I get satisfaction from improving a skill. As a self-directed exploration of this skill, it should be low-stress and there’s not really a way to fail.
It sounds like you have programming talent but don’t like getting stuck (I sympathize), but it’s hard to get actually stuck when your tools just include HTML, CSS and Photoshop.
I’m in a similar boat as CronoDAS. I had actually stopped playing video-games over a year ago (and stopped reading fiction months ago), though I just recently downloaded Daggerfall. I did feel really good when I got a job, though I am anxious that I could screw up and lose it (especially in this economy, as we’ve had the first layoffs in the company’s history).
Back to the issue of automatic-denial: Thought some of you might be interested in this from Mind Hacks on bias blind spot.
Not really, unless you count things like “avoid feeling bad due to boredom, hunger, cold, etc.”
I do usually want to finish whatever video game I’m playing at any given time, though, but that’s not something you need to be a millionaire to do.
Do you have any interest in acquiring goals?
If you could figure out what makes you enjoy video games and duplicate it in some other task that had more external value, would you do that?
I dunno, really. If getting goals means I have to do ::shudder:: work, then I don’t think I want goals. Also, one important thing that I like about video games is that failure has no meaningful consequences; if you fail at a job, you could be in trouble for a while, but if you fail at a game, you can just try again or even do something else.
Some other things I like about video games:
If you don’t play a video game for a long time, it’s still there, exactly as it was, if you ever want to try it again.
A video game can be played on any schedule, and it doesn’t care if you want to stay up until 4 AM and sleep until noon.
Video games don’t cost very much money.
Video games let me take my mind off my other worries. There’s no room in my head for misery while playing a video game.
Nobody threatens me with horrible future consequences if my video games don’t get played. I play them because I choose to, not because I’m being coerced.
Video games give rapid feedback, and a feeling of having achieved something.
When I have trouble with a video game, GameFAQs.com is always there to help.
I can beat many video games through sheer persistence.
I’m pretty good at video games.
I can discuss video games endlessly with my friends.
Video games are often exciting and intense.
There’s probably more things I could list...
If you fail at a job, you don’t have a job. If you currently are happy about not having a job, then this shouldn’t be so bad. Yeah, maybe someone will yell at you before firing you, but I simply reject that complaint. I can imagine months of stress when you believe you’ll be fired, but I think that it is possible to accept a job as transitory and avoid this stress. I think that I would find this stressful mainly because the uncertainty of what I would do when the job is over. If I knew that I’d go home and play video games for a few months, I think I could avoid the stress. But, maybe I’m wrong; and maybe you’re different. I’m probably more sympathetic to your other complaints.
This is an instrumental equivalent to believing something for a reason other than that it is true. The goals are a first step, setting stage for the planning. The best available plan wins, even if it’s a “bad” plan, that is even if it doesn’t exactly “achieve” any of the goals.
For example, you may want to jump from a cliff, but not want to die (from hitting the ground). The plans not involving a parachute may dissuade this intention, prompting one to give an answer immediately, and declare the task undesirable, placing a curiosity stopper of this line of investigation. The correct approach is to keep your goals, not to stop considering them, and wait for a better plan: maybe the idea of a parachute will come, given time and careful study.
I don’t know if you’d be good at it or not, and I don’t know if your circle of friends lends itself to discussions on other topics, but apart from “exciting and intense” (and the specific applicability of GameFAQs.com), most of those criteria apply to many forms of artwork. Drawing, for instance, is cheap, can be pursued at any time and with any amount of delay between putting one down and picking it up, putting things up on the Internet or showing them to friends yields prompt feedback, persistence pays off no matter how much initial talent you have, and many people find it very absorbing. Unlike playing video games, there is some chance of art netting an income, although it would probably take a while for such an enterprise to take off.
I find many “creative” pursuits, such as writing and computer programming, to be both extremely difficult and rather exhausting. I’m often good at them, but they’re so much harder than anything that’s merely a matter of mastering and executing specific algorithms. In other words, I can’t brute force my way through writing a story the way I can brute force my way through a video game, by trying over and over again until I finally get it right. If I get stuck, I’m really, really stuck, and there’s no FAQ I can go read which will tell me what my next sentence or line of code ought to be. (Which is why I mentioned GameFAQs.com as one of the things I like about video games.)
I don’t know much about drawing, though. I never had much interest in it before...
I recommend it, personally, but that’s my hobby, and won’t be universal. There are lots of drawing tutorials available for all levels of expertise and assorted styles and at varying levels of step-by-step detail, and it’s more than a little easier to assess a ballpark of objective quality in drawing than it is with writing. If you like to write, you could do your own webcomic (although I don’t know how well you’d react to keeping an update schedule, you’d be in good company if you didn’t stick to one); that’s a good way to get in regular practice and improve. If you don’t like to write and have halfway decent art, it’s not hard to find a writer willing to collaborate.
I recommend drawing from real life. I don’t think people get stuck like writer’s block. You may get stuck at a plateau of ability, but that might be OK, depending on the level.
Playing a musical instrument is quite amenable to brute-forcing techniques* (as you might guess from the multitude of musical-instrument-simulating videogames).
*You would still need instruction to get started, and for specialized tricks, however.
Indeed it is! I can play the piano at the “talented amateur” level. I enjoy it, and like performing, but it’s damn hard to make money doing it.
Have you tried programming in a language with an interactive interpreter, extensive documentation and tutorials, and open source code?
I think this is a good suggestion. CronoDAS, you might also like to look into web design, or just design in general. I’m learning it right now—in an amateurish, inconsistent way - because it’ll help my website programming work. I’m really enjoying it even though my current skill level could be regarded as “terrible”. It involves learning tools like Photoshop (or GIMP if you like Linux), CSS and the principles of design. It helps me make things that appeal to my aesthetic sense and give me a sense of accomplishment, and I get satisfaction from improving a skill. As a self-directed exploration of this skill, it should be low-stress and there’s not really a way to fail.
It sounds like you have programming talent but don’t like getting stuck (I sympathize), but it’s hard to get actually stuck when your tools just include HTML, CSS and Photoshop.
I’m in a similar boat as CronoDAS. I had actually stopped playing video-games over a year ago (and stopped reading fiction months ago), though I just recently downloaded Daggerfall. I did feel really good when I got a job, though I am anxious that I could screw up and lose it (especially in this economy, as we’ve had the first layoffs in the company’s history).
Back to the issue of automatic-denial: Thought some of you might be interested in this from Mind Hacks on bias blind spot.