The Thursday Commit #1 - Focus on One thing at a Time

I’m back.

It’s been a while since my last post, and I apologize for the late return. I’ve dropped a few balls that I was juggling, so I had to spend some time to pick them up.

But now I’m back, and I came up with a new format to make sure that I will keep at least some type of regularity in my posting schedule, in reality two formats:

• A curation post about what I consumed (which will start with this newsletter issue)

• A deep dive about a specific idea that has resonated with me/all subscribers (you!)

I aim to alternate between each of these formats every week, and to post every Thursday. Let me know in the comments if you find this current format useful or if you’d prefer if I changed the format, along with some suggestions of formats to use!

Something to Think About

Focus on One Thing at a Time

Lately. I’ve seen a trend with myself that I tend to take more work than I can deal with, and I end up dropping the ball with one or more of these projects. It also seems that I’m not alone in this, as more than half of young adults report feeling overwhelmed most of the time.

And while I ended up trying a ginormous amount of productivity methods online, to the point that I think I could write a 5 thousand word article listing every single one that I know without prompting an LLM to remember them.

But a simple solution for this issue that I found would be: focus on one thing at a time until it is completed.

It doesn’t matter if it will take you 1 hour, 3 days, or 7 months to finish it. Focusing on one task, or one project at a time will still be faster than focusing on a lot of things at a time.

Something to Read

• Reddit uses AI to make fake screenshots from your own marketing artifacts, without being transparent about it - it doesn’t amaze me that Reddit is also pushing AI even more deeply into the platform. About two years ago they had added AI search into the app, but I didn’t think they would add it where people pay them to advertise. They take your ad content and generate static images that you can use on your ad campaign, and although this could be a useful feature for some, it’s won’t be that useful if it’s confusing as hell to use.

• Why Reading Matters - Cal Newport - Newport comments on Rose’s Horowitch’s article on the “death of reading”, which explains the reasons why less and less people are reading, which is heavily credited to social media. Newport’s suggestion to improve this situation is to treat social media as fast food: something you limit as much as possible, and you schedule nontrivial amounts of time to read and self-reflect about the words you’ve just read.

Something to Watch

• My entire content ecosystem (turn one newsletter into 1 week of content) - Dan Koe - Dan Koe shares his framework for creating content for his newsletter, YouTube, and all of his social medias. Even though the video focuses on Eden, the platform he heavily swears for in the video, I still found it useful for my content process. I will probably only use some of his advice though, as much of it heavily utilizes AI for it.

• Writing Game Design Docs you will ACTUALLY use (idea to demo) - This is pretty much THE video I am using as reference to making my own badly written Game Design Document (GDD). It gave me a pretty good structure that I should use for my own game. While I did have to make a few changes to make it fit better (I won’t have levels on my game, as it is a management/spreadsheet focused game), it’s heavily helping me prepare it.

What I’ve Been up To

• Bachelor Thesis: Finished making the basic setup for storing SQL-based questions on Moodle from my platform. I will start working on how to relate them to quizzes.

• Game Dev: I had an idea of making a boxing management game and started working on Game Design Document to brainstorm ideas.

• Life / University: Making some final preparations for moving to a new apartment!

And that’s a wrap! If you enjoyed this issue, consider sharing it with a friend or hitting reply to let me know what you thought!