Month: May 2021

After a long week, it’s unfortunate to say I only made the time to stream one day. It definitely has me facing some challenges I’ve been pushing aside for a couple of months now, particularly organization and initiative. On the bright side, starting up again did remind me of the parts I do enjoy about streaming.

Back to Production

Streaming on Twitch has been an on and off hobby of mine for a couple of years now, and I really do enjoy it. The idea behind this trial was to put an extra emphasis on growth and taking the hobby more serious. After several experiments with productive systems and ideas, I thought it was a good time to shift my focus back on actually doing.

The last couple of months, I’ve been in the process of sorting out moving as my prior living situation came to an end. With the move done and over, I thought I’d have the time and attention to put back into more creative endeavors. Although the move is complete, there are still a lot of pieces that I need to fit together to get myself back up and running.

Luckily, it doesn’t take much to stream.

The Appeal of Streaming

I’ve found myself coming back to this hobby time and time again. I’ve long felt I wouldn’t really enjoy trying to keep on top of it with things like a schedule and pressure to perform. Every time I come back though, I have a great time.

Almost always, I find myself having a conversation with a complete stranger about the game and tangential topics. It’s a different way to experience a game than playing through by oneself, similar to watching a movie with others and sharing the experience. One time, I remember some guy explained a bunch of mechanics in a game I completely missed when after feeling completely stuck. There’s something special about being able to connect with people through a fun passion.

I’m trying to learn more about growing in making content and finding ways to break out in a heavily saturated environment. This doesn’t just apply to streaming, but to this blog and future projects I work on. I hope that learning more about streaming will help to make other projects grow faster.

To Dos

Something I took away from the last trial is having a list of things to complete. A list is an easy tool to stay focused and motivated. By next post, I want to have a YouTube channel where I can upload my full streams to, a common practice to save old streams before they are removed from Twitch’s back catalog.

Secondly, I want to come up with a schedule for the next month. For better or worse, many of my weekends are booked with various plans making the primetime I was looking to stream unavailable. Instead, I’ll have to make a decision and stick to it for at least a few weeks. Similar to this, I want to work on something I devised back in the YouTube trial, a content calendar.

Finally, I want to find some experts in the area and see what I can learn. For this week in particular, I’ll be starting with a video released by Devin Nash, a longtime Twitch partner. The video is about starting and gaining the first milestones in streaming. I’m hoping I can start there and build on what I learn from both my trial and from those who paved a path before.

This trial has had me thinking a lot, but surprisingly, not that much about bullet journaling itself. Towards the end, I’ve been thinking about my recent focus on systems over execution. Another element has been my mediocre ability to consistently keep up with daily habits. Although, my final change to the theme journal definitely helped me get through the finish line feeling positive.

My Thoughts Overall

Over the past few months, I’ve had a number of things I’ve wanted to work on. My trials, however, have been focusing too much on trying to create habits and systems to facilitate that work, instead of the work itself. Looking back, I feel I spent too much time thinking about what I needed to do on a given day instead of just picking a project and making progress, something I did with limited success for a few days.

With that lingering thought out of the way, I don’t have much strong feelings one way or another. I struggled to keep myself consistent throughout this trial. Many days, I would jot down a few things quickly at the end of the day instead of the beginning.

Daily habits have not always been the easiest thing to introduce to my day. I’ve written before about how I find it easier to remove than it is to add. Trying to build linked habits is definitely the best approach to additions. I was able to get into a decent groove with my morning coffee, stretch, and journaling for a few days, but due to a lot of changes around the house with an upcoming move, a ton of my daily habits have been thrown out of whack.

Theme Journal

While the habit wasn’t ideal this last week, I did like the introduction to the full elements of the theme journal. Having specific prompts for gratitude, freeform thinking, and my priority every day was a nice way to get things started.

The gratitude sections were a good way to get thinking positively early in the day, especially the professional section. It can be easy to take for granted the positive elements of work when there are times when those don’t always get a chance to shine.

The least used section was the lines for free thoughts. Previous journals I’ve written have only been this section and somehow were able to fill a full page or more. Here, I felt myself writing one or two sentences, sometimes something along the lines of, “I don’t really have anything to say today.”

Looking Forward

I like the idea of revisiting this with a physical book over the app on my tablet. I also think sticking to a more rigid format would be beneficial too. I would certainly weigh the two major options, the theme journal and bullet journal methods against each other, but the former certainly has the advantage.

For now, I’m going to put this back on the shelf. For the next four weeks, I’ll be returning to a fun, creative hobby that I fell out of the last few months, streaming on twitch.tv. Over the next few weeks, I want to make an extra effort to treat it more like a part time job and see if it still offers the same, if not a greater, feeling of enjoyment.

The changes I implemented last week have helped me to get more done by focusing on just one thing and giving myself an out after that. Typically, that first win serves as a catalyst to get a few more things done. With the success of that change, I’m making one last tweak to the formula and adding the rest of the elements from CGP Grey’s Theme Journal.

Satisfaction of Completion

Last week, I discussed shifting the design of the bullet journal to the priority task. Doing so has definitely helped me make the time I need to decompress from a long day while still getting to what needs to be done.

There is something that feels great about crossing something out or checking it off a list. As a kid, I remember my brother would make massive text documents on the computer when playing through a game to track his progress. Copied from a walkthrough, it had everything that needed to be completed. As he progressed through the game, he deleted what was finished. Slowly the scroll bar got bigger and bigger, until eventually being left with a blank notepad and a satisfied player.

While likely few of us have made a document like my brother, we’ve all felt the pleasure of checking off a to-do list.

What’s really nice about that satisfaction is how easily it turns into momentum. Sure there were days that I get what I want finished and relaxed; however, I more often decide I can quickly accomplish some other things. One thing can easily turn into two, then three, and so forth.

The Theme Journal

One of the reasons for my interest in bullet journaling was the flexibility in it’s design. The priority task is something I borrowed specifically from CGP Grey’s Theme Journal, not the official “Bullet Journal Method.” Last week, I focused on removing what I felt was clutter in what I initially started with. After revisiting the video, I want to add in the elements Grey uses for his daily journaling.

While the new format is many lines longer, there really isn’t a lot of additional content. He includes his location and the date at the top of each page. I can see the location being a nice way to revisit places if looking at old journals. It can also serve as a grounding practice in the present if writing the location brings some awareness to the writer.

The next two sections consist of gratitude statements on both a personal and professional level. The former is something I do in my regular weekly reviews, but I haven’t really thought about what I’m grateful for in my professional life.

The largest section is a few lines for freeform thought to make it to the page. This is probably the typical practice we think of when it comes to journaling and helps with getting various ideas out of the mind.

Last and certainly not least, the priority for the day – the one task that needs to get done. I thought about putting this at the top of the page to give myself unlimited writing space for the freeform writing above since I’m on a tablet, but I think keeping the constraint will help keep the journal a brief practice.

One addition I made is a habit tracker to the very bottom, as I find this to be helpful not only as a way to mark off the few habits I try to uphold, but it also gives me a nudge to check back in at the end of the day to fill in what I’ve finished.

In keeping up with a bullet journal, I’ve found myself using the empty space to fill up my day with all the things I plan to accomplish. Of course, a majority of this is wishful thinking, and making this lengthy to-do list tends to only cause guilt when I’m looking to relax. Luckily, the system I’m using has an easy way to accomplish what I need while removing the weight of my expanding laundry list, the daily priority.

Prioritizing

As I’ve written before, priority effectively means the first thing. There’s a bit of a paradox when we refer to our “priorities.” While there may certainly be a number of things that are important, there is always something at the top.

Often, I think it’s somewhat easy to figure out what I really need to get done on a given day. It might be a small task or a piece of a larger project, but the problems I’m having with workload management seem to stem from what comes after. I underestimate the effort needed for what I plan to get done and overestimate how I’ll feel going into those tasks. There are some days when just the time spent at my day job makes it hard to get anything else done. I’ve fallen into this trap time and time again, yet I keep thinking, “today will be different.”

I’ve found myself in this pattern where my solution to get something done seems to be to throw as many things as I can on a list, and see what I end up finishing, rarely differentiating, with any degree, how critical a task is.  My hope is, by emphasizing a single task, I will finish what I need while also giving me an opportunity to properly relax afterward, guilt-free.

In Order to Relax

Admittedly, I’ve been pretty burnt out the last few weeks. Even what was supposed to be a non-productive trial of social media still took effort. I had to make the time in the day and think about what to write that week.

For some reason, it seems like my solution for this burnout is to throw more things on my plate. I don’t know what I’ve been thinking in this regard, but doing this has made it hard to make time to properly relax. Whenever I do find myself kicking back and trying to turn off my brain for a bit, I have a creeping sense of guilt that I need to work on what I set out that day.

Creating a long list makes starting only more difficult, as now I’ve set out to do all of these things. By limiting what I have to do to a clear and simple task, I hope that I can get through the barriers to get started and get finished what I set out for the day. If I come up with other things I want to do afterwards, that’s fine, but I am then free to do whatever else, I hope, guilt free.

I find it somewhat dumb that I need to make a system for myself to relax, but I suppose I’m just wired that way.