2 July, 2025
Recently, I have been taking on multiple projects at once and I ended up having to ask myself whether I can endure this much pressure in making progress for each of them to reach a level that satisfies my boss, colleagues or even family sometimes. Wearing the masks of an intern, a friend, a son, and many other titles will always wear me down. In times where I fall down even lower, it’s a pretty serious matter to solve.
Understanding productivity and work efficiency is a real deal and in this post I will be briefly discussing about it and how I approach it to lift myself up from the pit of consistent procrastination.
As a game programmer intern and indie game developer myself, productivity in the game industry (and probably in many, if not all industries) comes down to how well I can avoid getting distracted by the games (of course) and content that the world generates every single second of my life, including my own. By content, I’m talking mainly from social media, memes, to all the jazz anyone’s super-smart devices can reach and most importantly (2020s onwards), A.I.
The only choices I can usually think of to tackle this are 1) Distracting Myself from Distractions, 2) Making Work Fun and 3) Serious Quitting.
To keep it simple, you just need something to actively block you from those sources of distractions. Could be as small as an alarm clock or requesting your friends to scold you for procrastinating. (It’s not like I have done that before.) For example, my brother recently recommended me an app called SpeedBump (https://speedbumpapp.com). It is invented to stop you from doom-scrolling by giving you “time budgets” and annoys you with strange things that appears on-screen when those budgets dries up. Pretty convenient, simple and totally innovative. Very very annoying.
No better way to be productive than knowing that finishing your task at hand will be so rewarding afterwards. Gamify your life! Work alongside close friends or your significant other! Write funny diary entries or even watch an episode of your favorite series every time you finish important tasks. I haven’t tried this, but check out https://habitica.com/
I’m suggesting that if 1) and 2) are even more distracting then possibly this one would be my answer. I do plan to find large spans of time to disconnect from the internet altogether, no matter the consequences. It is important that we all save our mental well-being (and eyesight from staring at bright panels all day) by being offline, immersing in nature or just rest. For Thai men like me, being a monk is another choice.
I believe that there’s no convenient set of options in this world that leads you to your most productive self. Therefore, It all comes down to how you control yourself and adapt to the distractions that occupies your mind in your everyday life.